Net Neutrality and Comcast/Netflix agreement

[Weaver]

I want the government far far far fucking away from the Internet.

Honest? Lets let, for once, the free market decide. I mean this is technology, one of the few places the free market can really make an impact. All it takes is someone to come along, bring a faster download speed for less a price or even the same price and there ya go. The only problem is educating Joe Public... because hell, I myself I don't know my download speed. All I know is I haven't had much problems with anything.

the moment we bring the FCC into it... I mean thats a whole can of worms, and I'd really rather not pay taxes for it.

How can they? When Comcast/Time Warner is the only ISP in the area, unless you're a billionaire who can run fiber all over the city they won't let you use the lines, and they won't let you start up an ISP on their infrastructure. People don't use them because they want to, they use them because they're literally the only way to get internet in their entire city.

It's a complete and utter monopoly which leads to the breakdown of free market philosophies.

In such a case, government oversight is required unless you want to start paying $250 a month for internet because they can charge it as they're the only game in town.

I honestly don't understand why people think it's okay for Comcast/Time Warner to strong arm websites into paying them money for access. If you're trying to start a website and don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay Comcast or they just cut off access to your site, what would you do? What if customers have to pay a $60 a month fee on top of their current plan if they want to properly use a video streaming service? It is total bullshit.

This is against the philosophy of the internet and is the culmination of corporate collusion and immense greed at the cost of one of the greatest things we've made as humanity. The merger, in my opinion, is in violation of antitrust laws but nothing will come of it because corporations rule America now. They rule the government, they rule the citizens, and they line the pockets of politicians to get everything they want which is to fuck you out of money, and hard.

 

[tangoprime]

Are you a Comcast user? I am, and I'm here to tell you that streaming netflix is a nightmare on Comcast with a 50mb download speed (which shouldn't be an issue, since I can stream it over AT&T's 4g without issue). Well, it turns out that Comcast has been "affecting" the streaming speeds somehow since November (for me and millions of other users) and has decided to strong-hand Netflix into paying them (Comcast) extra money to make "direct" connections and enhance the streaming speeds and qualities.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-02-24/business/sns-rt-us-comcast-netflix-20140223_1_netflix-broadband-network-providers

What does this say for the current state of Net Neutrality laws in the US, and would you support the FCC in its attempts to restructure the law in an attempt to get it back in place? As for Comcast, how many of us use them for their ISP, and if you do, do you also have issues with Netflix?

Hmm, so THAT's why I've noticed netflix problems and poor quality streaming for the last 3 months. As if I needed more reason to boot comcast and give ATT or Verizon a try, maybe ATT will actually replace the fucked up 10 year old drop line to my house instead of just patching it a dozen times.

 

[Weaver]

How can they? When Comcast/Time Warner is the only ISP in the area, unless you're a billionaire who can run fiber all over the city they won't let you use the lines, and they won't let you start up an ISP on their infrastructure. People don't use them because they want to, they use them because they're literally the only way to get internet in their entire city.

It's a complete and utter monopoly which leads to the breakdown of free market philosophies.

In such a case, government oversight is required unless you want to start paying $250 a month for internet because they can charge it as they're the only game in town.

I honestly don't understand why people think it's okay for Comcast/Time Warner to strong arm websites into paying them money for access. If you're trying to start a website and don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay Comcast or they just cut off access to your site, what would you do? What if customers have to pay a $60 a month fee on top of their current plan if they want to properly use a video streaming service? It is total bullshit.

This is against the philosophy of the internet and is the culmination of corporate collusion and immense greed at the cost of one of the greatest things we've made as humanity. The merger, in my opinion, is in violation of antitrust laws but nothing will come of it because corporations rule America now. They rule the government, they rule the citizens, and they line the pockets of politicians to get everything they want which is to fuck you out of money, and hard.

It's because it's expensive to create the ISP infrastructure. We have a small population density in the United States.

Those of us with practical and professional economic experience and knowledge know why the ISP market is the way it is. And unless America suddenly doubles or triples in population, this won't change until the technology and construction of it gets much, much cheaper. But labor, especially organized labor, is insanely high in the United States in various locales (PA being one of them) making infrastructure jobs take forever to do, cost a buttload of money, and see very little profit long-term.

Monopolies string up because nobody but the one company cares to invest in a particular area. The Internet is a stationary product unlike, say, DVDs. It requires infrastructure and cannot be "produced" in one place and shipped over. It involves planting down towers, cables, and buildings for servers and shit. It's very expensive.

I know it's expensive that's my entire point. No one can reasonably compete with them them, which is why they can charge you $5 a gigabyte in overage charges when it actually costs them about two cents to route that data. Try and make a startup company that's an ISP. You can't do it.

No competition in a market is simply bad, because unless there is government oversight the populace is going to get fucked because all the company wants is money from your wallet. Capitalism, monopoly laws, and anti-trust laws were setup to explicitly avoid market manipulation from occurring and monopolies from forming but it keeps happening because the laissez-faire attitude with which these protections are upheld. The system tends towards companies merging and getting bigger and bigger. It's inevitable. The end result is consumers getting screwed as a single entity can simply call the shots of a market and have it bend to their whims.

Comcast isn't just some poor company scraping by, they have an operating revenue of 13.563 billion USD.

 

[Gorrath]

Monopolies string up because nobody but the one company cares to invest in a particular area. The Internet is a stationary product unlike, say, DVDs. It requires infrastructure and cannot be "produced" in one place and shipped over. It involves planting down towers, cables, and buildings for servers and shit. It's very expensive.

Yes, and part of the cost of building that infrastructure was financed by the taxpayers. I am all for free market forces, but only if the correct protections are in place. Anti-trust laws must be enforced and collusion must be prosecuted. The issue is that the government at various levels helped to create an infrastructure monopoly and now it must regulate that monopoly.

Simply saying that it was ruled that the FCC doesn't have the authority and thus the FCC has nothing to do with it isn't sensible. In this case, Net Neutrality needs to be protected, and if that means changing the FCC's powers to accommodate that then so be it. This does not mean the judge was wrong to rule what he ruled, but it does mean that the law needs to be changed.

What we can't do is have our government help establish an infrastructure based monopoly and then turn around and claim that the free market is going to somehow sort the problem out. Free market forces don't fix problems caused by monopolies, that's why Anti-trust laws were established in the first place.

 

[Weaver]

snip

It's expensive, good, you realize that. What practical things can we do about it? Seriously.

The free market can cause natural monopolies in products like this. There's little that can be done.

Giving the government more regulatory authority doesn't fix the problem. It'll probably make it worse on Internet consumers.

How will, say, forcing Comcast to not charge you for accessing youtube, make things worse for consumers? From a technological standpoint it costs them virtually nothing to route that data.

Look, Comcast invested in Telecom and they were a key part in providing infrastructure to areas. Do they deserve their revenue? Absolutely. I'm not arguing against that.

What I am arguing, however, is that business without ethics is bad business. And any company that can get away with say, dictating what sites people can and cannot access unless they want to pay more, is unethical to me. The Time Warner/Comcast merger makes a huge company that is able to call the shots of basically the majority of the telecom infrastructure of the country. This is dangerous.

Now, I'm not American so my knowledge of the US Antitrust laws isn't great. My understanding is, however, they should have prevented this horizontal merger to begin with. However, it's an incredibly complex merger and my unfamiliarity with American law does prevent me from speaking with any reasonable informed opinion on what should or shouldn't be done.

This Reuters article on the merger was quite interesting. It claims they are a "Monopsonie" which avoids much of the litigation levied at monopolies.
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2014/02/19/the-anti-trust-case-against-comcast-time-warner/

 

[Trelmayas]

That has nothing to do with the FCC rules. I just feel bad for Comcast. They bought the worst network from GE and have thus far done nothing to change that, at all. Now, they want to buy the worst customer service rated ISP. Why do they keep buying bad companies?

"Protect citizens" from voluntary contracts they don't have to have makes no sense. I can understand the reasoning for protecting water basins and reservoirs. That makes sense. Protecting people from voluntary consumer interactions makes no sense. Do your own research before taking the plunge like any reasonable person. Netflix has become a streaming giant in the last few years with their insanely popular and all-dropped-at-once-seasons-of shows. They're chugging down data like it was a Jaeger Bomb. Comcast responded to what was probably screwing their bottom line like it was hot.

I don't feel the least bad for Comcast. In college, they cut off my house's internet access, wouldn't tell us why, but continued to bill us anyways, threatening to sue if we didn't pay the bill for service they acknowledged they were not providing. It wasn't until we got legal representation of our own that they backed down. Comcast has always been run as a corrupt company using their market position and size for borderline illegal activities. And for the past several months they've been throttling Netflix in order to promote their own video streaming service. And they get away with it because in many communities they have a monopoly, and the average customer is likely to blame the slow speeds on Netflix, not Comcast's sabotage.

Monopolies are bad for everyone. A company using their monopoly in one field (ISP) to force out competitors and attain a monopoly in another field (video streaming) is outright detestable. As much bungling as comes with government intervention, I prefer the incompetence of the government to the outright malice of companies like Comcast.

 

[faefrost]

Here's my main issue with "Net Neutrality". At it's heart it is attempting to solve through heavier government regualtion and essentially takings of private networks, a problem that was essentially created by government regulation and takings in the first place.

The problem with Net Neutrality isn't that we need government to force the monopoly providers of the last mile of telco/internet service to treat all traffic the same. The problem is that through government regulations we gave those providors monopolies in the first place and continue to enforce that status. Don't regulate the whole internet. De regulate the last mile and the problem goes away.

 

[Gorrath]

snip

And this op-ed in the WSJ lays out all your complaints and throws them off the table:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303426304579404832175692084?mod=opinion_newsreel

That article didn't say one damned thing about collusion, government backed monopolies or the free market's power to fix issues with the former. What's more, the author of the op-ed tips his hand by referring to anyone who backs the idea of Net Neutrality as "crazies". Netflix and Comcast coming to a deal that will serve both of their interests does not in any way assuage the problems I mentioned.

The following part of the op-ed is particularly ridiculous.

Jenkins writes:

"Netflix's Reed Hastings routinely touted their ideal to gain leverage over downstream carriers like Comcast. Then a federal court in January invalidated Washington's net-neut rules and he rushed out a statement of the obvious to reassure shareholders, saying in essence: Never mind! Comcast et. al. don't really have an economic or political incentive to block our service. Just the opposite. Consumer expectations of the Internet are set. Carriers must supply unimpeded access to every kind of web content or else."

Consumer expectations are set and thus carriers must supply unimpeded access to every kind of content or else? Or else what? The consumer will find a non-existent competing service to go with instead? Consumer expectations are a market force applicable to markets that aren't controlled by monopoly or collusion and are completely meaningless where the consumer has no other options.


Jenkins also writes:

"We could go into a disquisition about how public policy has left America with inadequate last-mile broadband competition, but even so, the deal is favorable to Netflix, not Comcast."

So sure, we COULD talk about government back monopolies and why they are inadequately controlled by free market forces, but instead we'll just talk about how this deal helps one corporation over the other, not how it may impact the actual consumer.

But Jenkins actually mentions a bit about that a few paragraphs earlier when he writes:

Now in other newspapers you can read experts fretting that the cost of Netflix's solution will be "passed along" to Netflix's customers. This is idiotic. All businesses collect their costs from their customers or they aren't long in business. But the real question here wasn't who bears the cost. It was who bears the incentive to handle traffic efficiently.

Right, the customers are, in fact, going to end up eating the cost. The real question in the Net Neutrality debate is exactly what he says it isn't; who is going to bear the cost of price increases when ISPs have monopoly power? No one worth their salt was saying Netflix was going to have to eat the cost, or that Netflix was going to suddenly cease to exist or that Netflix and Comcast couldn't or wouldn't come to some kind of agreement that's beneficial to them. The question was who ends up paying for the cost of their new relationship? And the answer is, the consumer, who in turn may have no other market choice with-which to prevent further increases in cost to themselves.

The article didn't address a single point that I made and when it did skirt my points, it either dodged them outright or admitted the problem and then immediately claimed that it wasn't the REAL problem. And that the REAL problem is also now not a REAL problem.

 

[barbzilla]

Yes, it has everything to do with the FCC since the FCC is the one who was recently banished from the books on this scenario. You can avoid it all you like, but lobbying for big business is like saying you want Walmart to run for President.

You do not know what you are talking about. The FCC lost the court battle because the other side said "They do not have the statutory authority to regulate the Internet." And that is true. The FCC, like most other government bureaucracies, loves to find ways to expand its authority outside of what it is tasked to do. If people are smart, they sue to stop that shit in its tracks.

And normally I would agree with you on government stepping outside its power. However, in this scenario the power the government wanted to assume was to prevent big businesses from abusing its customers. I am a business owner myself, and I am well aware of what ethical business practices look like, and net neutrality helps to enforce that. Did the FCC overstep its bounds? Yes, but there is nothing in place to protect the internet as of yet as it is a new technology and not included in our existing law. That is nothing more than an oversight, and I'm certain you are well aware of that fact, but have chosen to ignore it.

 

[barbzilla]

How can they? When Comcast/Time Warner is the only ISP in the area, unless you're a billionaire who can run fiber all over the city they won't let you use the lines, and they won't let you start up an ISP on their infrastructure. People don't use them because they want to, they use them because they're literally the only way to get internet in their entire city.

It's a complete and utter monopoly which leads to the breakdown of free market philosophies.

In such a case, government oversight is required unless you want to start paying $250 a month for internet because they can charge it as they're the only game in town.

I honestly don't understand why people think it's okay for Comcast/Time Warner to strong arm websites into paying them money for access. If you're trying to start a website and don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay Comcast or they just cut off access to your site, what would you do? What if customers have to pay a $60 a month fee on top of their current plan if they want to properly use a video streaming service? It is total bullshit.

This is against the philosophy of the internet and is the culmination of corporate collusion and immense greed at the cost of one of the greatest things we've made as humanity. The merger, in my opinion, is in violation of antitrust laws but nothing will come of it because corporations rule America now. They rule the government, they rule the citizens, and they line the pockets of politicians to get everything they want which is to fuck you out of money, and hard.

It's because it's expensive to create the ISP infrastructure. We have a small population density in the United States.

Those of us with practical and professional economic experience and knowledge know why the ISP market is the way it is. And unless America suddenly doubles or triples in population, this won't change until the technology and construction of it gets much, much cheaper. But labor, especially organized labor, is insanely high in the United States in various locales (PA being one of them) making infrastructure jobs take forever to do, cost a buttload of money, and see very little profit long-term.

Monopolies string up because nobody but the one company cares to invest in a particular area. The Internet is a stationary product unlike, say, DVDs. It requires infrastructure and cannot be "produced" in one place and shipped over. It involves planting down towers, cables, and buildings for servers and shit. It's very expensive.

These are just the facts on the ground right now. Bethlehem Steel had a near monopoly on jobs in the Lehigh Valley area for decades. When it crashed and burned (the song "Allentown" by Billy Joel was actually about Bethlehem but nothing rhymes with it) due to not adapting to the globalized economy, the area didn't completely fold up. It even has a casino now. And the only place where Peeps are made in the entire world is at the Just Born factory in Bethlehem.

This is the first real point I feel you have made, and I wanted to acknowledge that. You are correct about why the prices are high, and I also agree with you on paying for the level of data usage that you go through. What I don't agree with is the business model where large corporations get to double dip the pool (so to speak). It isn't fair for them to charge for the usage on one end, then charge netflix extra for the privilege of not sucking for all of its customers. This is why there needs to be safe guards in place to prevent profiteering and exploitation of customers.

 

[Kolby Jack]

When it comes to big business versus government, I'll stick with the government. The FCC was 100% in the right on this one; private companies have no right to limit the content produced by OTHER private entities. We pay them for bandwidth, and we pay the content providers for content (directly or otherwise). Having the content providers pay the ISPs just to provide content is bullshit. It'd be like paying a publisher for the promise of books, then paying for the books when they come out, while ALSO having the author give a portion of the earnings to the publisher as well. Hopefully this shit won't fly.

Then, you're a little foolish. Big business can't force you to do something. Government can and does on a regular basis.

No, the FCC was not. They do not have statutory authority to regulate the Internet. That's out of their purview. That's why the FCC lost the case. And why so many on the right made a big stink last week about that "editorial bias" study the FCC wanted to conduct. As the FCC has zero authority over print media.

You might not like that, but certain sites take a massive amount of bandwidth, which uses a lot of data, which screws over the ISPs, who under the rules could only offer "unlimited" plans. So, if you want massive price increases or for them to be able to charge you what you actually use, fine. I'd rather the market shape itself.

Actually, the FCC DOES have authority to regulate the internet. It's kind of IN THE NAME. Is the internet not part of communications all of a sudden? The communications act which created the FCC way back when gave them authority to regulate communications through wire and airwaves. The internet may not have even been in the imaginations of the 1930's congressmen, but I'm pretty sure the spirit of the act would include the internet in its scope. It just so happens that the FCC's stance on internet regulation is that its lawful use SHOULDN'T be regulated by ANYONE, and they enforce that stance. This whole dumb business started because the wording they used to have such authority was deemed poor. They're looking to change the wording now, which hopefully will fix things.

And cry me a fucking river about some web content being higher bandwidth than others. That's just a reality of data transfer. If the ISPs weren't ready to deal with it, that's their own damn problem to solve with their own damn money, which, by the way, they seem to have plenty of. It's not like Verizon is on the verge of going bankrupt due to high-bandwidth content providers.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

I want the government far far far fucking away from the Internet.

Honest? Lets let, for once, the free market decide. I mean this is technology, one of the few places the free market can really make an impact. All it takes is someone to come along, bring a faster download speed for less a price or even the same price and there ya go. The only problem is educating Joe Public... because hell, I myself I don't know my download speed. All I know is I haven't had much problems with anything.

the moment we bring the FCC into it... I mean thats a whole can of worms, and I'd really rather not pay taxes for it.

How can they? When Comcast/Time Warner is the only ISP in the area, unless you're a billionaire who can run fiber all over the city they won't let you use the lines, and they won't let you start up an ISP on their infrastructure. People don't use them because they want to, they use them because they're literally the only way to get internet in their entire city.

It's a complete and utter monopoly which leads to the breakdown of free market philosophies.

In such a case, government oversight is required unless you want to start paying $250 a month for internet because they can charge it as they're the only game in town.

I honestly don't understand why people think it's okay for Comcast/Time Warner to strong arm websites into paying them money for access. If you're trying to start a website and don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay Comcast or they just cut off access to your site, what would you do? What if customers have to pay a $60 a month fee on top of their current plan if they want to properly use a video streaming service? It is total bullshit.

This is against the philosophy of the internet and is the culmination of corporate collusion and immense greed at the cost of one of the greatest things we've made as humanity. The merger, in my opinion, is in violation of antitrust laws but nothing will come of it because corporations rule America now. They rule the government, they rule the citizens, and they line the pockets of politicians to get everything they want which is to fuck you out of money, and hard.

The excuse my ignorance, because I'm in the suburbs of NY where we actually have options. Optimum. Verizon. The like.

By all means, if it's a legit monopoly then unfortunately the government has to step in... That being said, I still wonder what good that is going to do. The only thing that'll temper the storm competition. How the competition is created is beyond me, unfortunately.... I suppose the ideal would be if we had the government somehow make it easier for new internet startups to be created.

Because honestly, you regulate Comcast... well great, a corrupt government overlooking a corrupt organization. That doesn't work.

 

[barbzilla]

snip

And this op-ed in the WSJ lays out all your complaints and throws them off the table:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303426304579404832175692084?mod=opinion_newsreel

That article fails at the most basic level. If you want to complain about through-put as the basis of your reasoning for not enforcing net neutrality, then comcast should be throttling youtube and not netflix, as pound per pound Youtube eats Netflix's throughput over all ISPs (go check the numbers, I'll wait....). Why doesn't Comcast attack Youtube? Because Youtube is owned by Google, and Google's wallet is much larger than Netflix's. To top that off, Youtube doesn't require a subscription, so Comcast knows that Google isn't reliant on Youtube for its revenue (even though it is substantial). Instead Comcast targeted Netflix because Netflix is reliant on its streaming service to maintain its revenue source.

It is just another example of opportunistic predation on smaller businesses.

 

[Kolby Jack]

I want the government far far far fucking away from the Internet.

Honest? Lets let, for once, the free market decide. I mean this is technology, one of the few places the free market can really make an impact. All it takes is someone to come along, bring a faster download speed for less a price or even the same price and there ya go. The only problem is educating Joe Public... because hell, I myself I don't know my download speed. All I know is I haven't had much problems with anything.

the moment we bring the FCC into it... I mean thats a whole can of worms, and I'd really rather not pay taxes for it.

Do you know the FCC's stance when it comes to the internet? It's probably the best stance they could possibly have on it, which is to say not much of one at all. They believe the internet should be basically regulated by nothing but the laws our society has already established, and nobody has the right to change that. THAT'S net neutrality. It's a GOOD thing.

Please don't just be one of those goons who immediately thinks "FCC= government, government= bad, FCC= bad."

 

[DudeistBelieve]

I want the government far far far fucking away from the Internet.

Honest? Lets let, for once, the free market decide. I mean this is technology, one of the few places the free market can really make an impact. All it takes is someone to come along, bring a faster download speed for less a price or even the same price and there ya go. The only problem is educating Joe Public... because hell, I myself I don't know my download speed. All I know is I haven't had much problems with anything.

the moment we bring the FCC into it... I mean thats a whole can of worms, and I'd really rather not pay taxes for it.

Do you know the FCC's stance when it comes to the internet? It's probably the best stance they could possibly have on it, which is to say not much of one at all. They believe the internet should be basically regulated by nothing but the laws our society has already established, and nobody has the right to change that. THAT'S net neutrality. It's a GOOD thing.

Please don't just be one of those goons who immediately thinks "FCC= government, government= bad, FCC= bad."

I know of their position. I also know they fined the NFL over the janet jackson nipple slip... and mind you, even the former head of the FCC has said publicly that the only reason they reacted the way they did was because they were expected to. I have very little belief that what they are arguing now will be what they will argue 30 years from now.