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FCC Chief Ajit Pai makes his argument for Net Neutrality Repeal

ejabx

ejabx

Member
Oct 25, 2017
28
He's conflating two points here:

1. Whether Title II imposed regulations that made it difficult for ISPs to innovate.
2. Whether ISPs have the ability to throttle, ban, or outright charge additional fees for content.

He didn't address (2). Also, the Internet has changed significantly since the good 'ole 90s. The Internet isn't used by just hackers, gamers, and college students. Now it's a utility. Hence, the need for regulation.

It maddening how much this administration equated free markets to predatory practices....
 
LukeOP

LukeOP

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
4,749
I don't understand, prior to 2013-2014 wasn't net neutrality the norm? It wasn't until the likes of Comcast that started throttling bandwidth did this whole thing become an issue and Obama asked the FCC to step in and formalize net neutrality.

How can Pai just side step the reason why we are in this situation to begin with and pretend that net neutrality wasn't a concept from day one of the Internet?
 
jelly

jelly

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
33,841
Bought and paid for. Disgusting. Even if he gets caught taking bribes or whatever, they'll just carry on.
 
Lunar15

Lunar15

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,647
So the crux of his argument is this:
  • Under Net Neutrality, Network investment dropped more than 5.6%
  • Smaller ISPs are unable to handle the costs loaded on them by the bureaucracy
  • All ISPs are unable or slow to roll out new products and services because they have to be vetted by the bureaucracy.
There's arguably some truth behind all of these statements, but nothing in this letter really demonstrates the tangible benefits of said "new products" or the investment into networks. It's a weak statement. I'm willing to actually agree with him on the point about smaller ISPs, but that doesn't take into account that "letting the market take care of it" will eventually just mean that smaller ISPs will be dominated by the bigger ISPs who have more control over broadband as we move forward. They'll exert way more influence with creators which will effectively block out any need for smaller ISPs in the first place.
 
Netherscourge

Netherscourge

Member
Oct 25, 2017
19,035
I hate this whole administration.

It is the most pro-corporate, anti-consumer shit I've ever seen. Top to bottom.
 
a916

a916

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,933
It's frightening that there's people in power that can act so against the interests of the people and for the interests of big businesses... it's so transparent it's frightening.
 

JustinP

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,343
As millions flocked to the web for the first time in the 1990s, President Clinton and a Republican Congress decided "to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet." In the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the government called for an internet "unfettered by Federal or State regulation." The result of that fateful decision was the greatest free-market success story in history.
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...The internet grew up on phone lines that were already under Title II and common carrier regulations. So in reality, the 2015 FCC ruels brought the internet closer to the regulatory environment it was birthed from, ensuring it was free and open from the start and establishing the norm we take for granted today.

Though it's worth pointing out that the 2015 FCC rules didn't completely return the internet to Title II -- one important component left out was the idea of local loop unbundling. Remember in the dial up days when new ISPs could come out of nowhere and offer service nation wide?ISPs like AOL, Earthlink, Net Zero didn't build out redundant phone lines across the US to deliver internet -- regulations forced incumbents to lease their lines to them, resulting in a more efficient use of our resources.It's no coincidence that when we moved away from phone lines to cable and fiber, away from Title II, that ISP competition became a joke.
 

Deleted member 15737

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
4,432
He coulsnt squeeze a few more patriots or freedoms into that lie? He got the markets and obama evil namedrop, but he didnt go far enough. Maybe getting rid of net neutrality would get those punk nfl players to finally respect real heroes.

Lol what a fucking load.
 
NookSports

NookSports

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,234
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:
Maybe this will see the rise of municipality ISPs.
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Sadly there's some states that are blocking municipalities from setting up their own broadband too.

The Internet *should* be regulated like a '1930s utility' to put it in his words. It's increasingly necessary to be a fully functioning person in the modern world.

In my opinion, access to the Internet is as much a human right as food and shelter. Think about countries in Africa who are becoming cashless because they do everything in their mobile phones. We're close to that here too, I barely use cash ever.
 
lush

lush

Member
Oct 26, 2017
1,805
Knoxville, TN
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:
Maybe this will see the rise of municipality ISPs.
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Almost half of the US have state laws restricting municipal broadband from competing with private ISPs courtesy of lobbyists from Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon(along with Ajit Pai himself). Especially in the south it's a major issue, I live in East TN and EPB in Chattanooga, which was the first municipal isp to lay fiber in the US, recently lost a court battle over being able to expand their footprint outside of Chattanooga to help service people in rural areas that aren't having their needs met. Apparently these corporate behemoths just wouldn't be able to compete/function without holding a monopoly. I live right down the road in Knoxville, TN and people would kill for that here, we were one of the test markets for Comcast's data caps(300 GB lol) because we have no other competition here. Most of the country is held hostage by having only one ISP offering service in the area, as intended via these massive ISPs essentially colluding so as not to infringe on each other's coverage areas.
 
Doomguy Fieri

Doomguy Fieri

Member
Nov 3, 2017
5,298
Sho_Nuff82 said:
Pai is also moving to block states from circumventing the federal guidelines:
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/21/fcc-net-neutrality-blocking-states-183468

So it doesn't matter if you disagree or live in a state with common sense, Comcast and Verizon gonna get their pound of flesh.
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From the party that has staked their ENTIRE healthcare argument on the wisdom of state governments being freed from the oppressive yoke of Federal oversight.
 

see5harp

Banned
Oct 31, 2017
4,435
Seriously even the way this fuckhead speaks irritates me. He's smarmy like the typical evil white dude voice.
 

Deleted member 2625

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
4,596
really good comment on Ars Technica about why we've had better luck with Net Neutrality and the CRTC in Canada, for those interested:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...net-neutrality-rules-canada-strengthens-them/

I just wanted to add a bit of history here so that people understand why the CRTC cracks down so hard on net neutrality.

In 2005, workers for the telecommunications company Telus were on strike. Some of these workers set up a website that including discussions suggesting jamming Telus's phone lines and showed pictures of people who crossed the union picket lines. Note that whether or not you think that's a shitty thing to do, it was a legal thing to do.

Telus responded by completely blocking their subscribers from accessing that website.

In doing that, Telus (a major telecom here) violated net neutrality in the most spectacular way possible by blocking a website because they disagreed with the protected speech it was engaging in. That led the CRTC to start taking net neutrality very seriously, and it made opposition to that push virtually impossible by completely undermining the most frequently repeated argument against net neutrality ("we don't need it because nobody's violating it anyways") and demonstrating why it's important all in one fell swoop.

Unfortunately for the US, that's not really a lesson they've undergone. The violation that kicked off discussion of the subject there was far less offensive to most people (the ISP had blocked VOIP traffic rather than censoring speech they disagreed with) and the telecom involved was a small local outfit rather than a large national one, so there's no solid and obvious precedent there that can be used to clearly demonstrate the problem.
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Admiral Woofington

Admiral Woofington

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
14,892
What the ever living fuck you smug piece of shit.

Do you not understand essentially every major fucking city doesn't really have a God damn option with this shit. Let the consumer regulate and decide my hairy ass, if you give free reigns to isps they can implement whatever the fuck they want and the grand majority of their consumers can't do shit about it because their options are fucking horrible
 
Gennady

Gennady

Banned
Nov 5, 2017
259
ReAxion said:
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He'll change that tone when the state-ISP's will start blocking things that could damage them, like the next wikileaks scoop, or other unamerican sites.

Also:
I said:
The FCC is good for licensing and EM emissions enforcement, but content policing is not their responsibility, Splitting content providers from service providers has and should always have been the FTC's job. The DoJ anti-trust taskforce *is* already working on this when they were blocking the AT&T - Time Warner merger (though resetera was protesting that, for some reason).
ISPs want to charge content providers more for using most bandwidth, Content providers want ISPs to eat the costs. So it will end up on your bill if you use the services, Unless you choose not to.
The problem isn't that Net Neutrality disappears, it's that NN was a band-aid on the arterial spurt that is the ISP monopoly, Breaking those and allowing new enterprises (both ISPs and co-op) to enter with minimal red-tape is the key to solving the US's broken system.
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nintendoman58

nintendoman58

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,120
RustyNails said:
Ah, I was mistaken then. Welp, it was a good time.
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Well, not exactly.

Pai still needs to justify in court on why going back on the Title II order is necessary, when the order has only been around for two years.

He needs to prove that his decision isn't a "capricious" one.

There's a law known as the Administrative Procedure Act that prevents federal agencies from constantly switching regulations on and off.

There's also a good chance that the millions of comments filed in favour of Title II will come into play there.

As it's known, there is a lot of evidence that contradict Pai's arguments.

There's also a good overreach argument to be made with the fact that he's also trying to stop states from regulating telecoms as well.
 
avaya

avaya

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,140
London
Network investment dropped 5.6% because Verizon and AT&T moves away from seriously deploying fiber. Verizon even dumped the bulk of its fiber homes. Everyone knows this. Pai is so shamelessly corrupt.

As long as Democrats commit to reversing the rules no one will be making DPI investments to fuck over people. FCC will win in court no matter what based on precedent.
 

Yamajian

Member
Oct 30, 2017
1,151
Everyone has a problem with giving ISP's the ability to throttle specific sites

Dude doesn't address that problem

Great argument, asshole.
 
NESpowerhouse

NESpowerhouse

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,724
Virginia
I love the angle he's trying to make by saying that this will somehow be good for rural internet. Bull. Fucking. Shit. These kind of heavy-handed tactics are exactly how rural areas became a second thought to ISPs. Where I live, your only options are satellite internet, dial-up, and Verizon DSL with max speeds up 2.8Mbps down and 0.2Mbps up (which you cannot even get anymore since they have actually reached capacity, meaning your only options now are dial-up and satellite). A government regulated platform will finally force these ISPs to develop the infrastructure to make internet access great for everyone and finally update the ancient Broadband standard. I was actually watching a bumch of commercials from 2003, and one of them was advertising 5.0Mbps broadband download DSL. That is actually faster than what we are getting. And this was 2003! What was considered broadband in 2003 still holds true today! That is pathetic!
 
VorpalNonsense

VorpalNonsense

Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,692
Really transparent. Talks about net neutrality hurting consumers, when repealing it is an openly consumer hostile move that only benefits corporations. Talks about removing cumbersome and confusing regulation to make life easier, when repealing would turn ISPs into a confusing horrible mess of surcharges. Talks about the FCC protecting consumers, in the same breath as describing how they'll remove consumer protections. Claims to be supporting bipartisan politics while only telling the opposition to fall in line. Claims that American ISP infrastructure was the envy of the world before Obama ruined it, which is faaaaaaarrrr from the truth. Harkens back to the golden days of internet before net neutrality, when net neutrality was the norm.

Everything he is saying is an obvious, transparent lie. But he brings up rural america, blames Obama, and wants to make the internet great again so a lot of greedy folk and idiots will think he has a pretty mouth. This tactic sounds familiar...

LukeOP said:
I don't understand, prior to 2013-2014 wasn't net neutrality the norm? It wasn't until the likes of Comcast that started throttling bandwidth did this whole thing become an issue and Obama asked the FCC to step in and formalize net neutrality.

How can Pai just side step the reason why we are in this situation to begin with and pretend that net neutrality wasn't a concept from day one of the Internet?
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Because revisionist history puts more cash in his pocket. I'm sure he's perfectly aware of the facts, he just needs to convince enough people to fall for his bullshit until the check clears. It couldn't get much more slimy than this statement.
 
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LCGeek

Member
Oct 28, 2017
5,898
LukeOP said:
I don't understand, prior to 2013-2014 wasn't net neutrality the norm? It wasn't until the likes of Comcast that started throttling bandwidth did this whole thing become an issue and Obama asked the FCC to step in and formalize net neutrality.

How can Pai just side step the reason why we are in this situation to begin with and pretend that net neutrality wasn't a concept from day one of the Internet?
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Pai doesn't mention when Obama lost the courts said do title two, rarely does the media.

Pai doesn't care for actual history only to twist to suit the telcos he wishes to benefit.
 
a916

a916

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,933
LCGeek said:
Pai doesn't mention when Obama lost the courts said do title two, rarely does the media.

Pai doesn't care for actual history only to twist to suit the telcos he wishes to benefit.
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How are there not steps to keep someone in that position in check? This is so blatant in it's intent.
 

LCGeek

Member
Oct 28, 2017
5,898
a916 said:
How are there not steps to keep someone in that position in check? This is so blatant in it's intent.
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No one wants to sue or knows they could and should. Websites could simply block traffic to all Isps that do this, but again no courage to stand up for themselves out fear someone else or isps will put in their own replacements which they can and have tried in the past.

Such a shitty way to lose an otherwise great tech so glad greed gets to win out over using a tech we started. We could just develop better protocol and license it only to those who fall in with net neutrality but people want the status quo.

For the record all you who love your vpns plan on your Isps cutting them off in the next year once this goes through. Can't have customers circumventing their bullshit.
 
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ReAxion

ReAxion

Member
Oct 26, 2017
3,882
Gennady said:
He'll change that tone when the state-ISP's will start blocking things that could damage them, like the next wikileaks scoop, or other unamerican sites.
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wish somebody would do something about the unamerican sites... i get your point but honestly it's not any better now and we're literally discussing how it'll likely get worse.
 
AbortedWalrusFetus

AbortedWalrusFetus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,486
AnotherDayAnotherDollar said:
I am not educated enough on what net neutrality is so I don't have an opinion on it.
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Net neutrality is the principle that Internet providers like Comcast & Verizon should not control what we see and do online. In 2015, startups, Internet freedom groups, and 3.7 million commenters won strong net neutrality rules from the US Federal Communication Commission (FCC). The rules prohibit Internet providers from blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization—"fast lanes" for sites that pay, and slow lanes for everyone else.

Now what is your opinion?
 
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