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Re: Richard Bennett, NANOG posting, and Integrity

From: Richard Bennett <richard () bennett com>
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2014 13:43:23 -0700
Owen, your mother should have told you that you need to play nice if you want the other children to play with you. 

On 7/28/14, 12:02 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:

On Jul 27, 2014, at 9:08 PM, Richard Bennett <richard () bennett com> wrote:


I don't think it's conflation, Joly, since the essence of NN is for the eyeballs to pay for the entire cost of the network and for 
edge providers to use it for free; isn't that what Netflix is asking the FCC to impose under the guise of "strong net 
neutrality?" Professor van Schewick is pretty clear about making the users pay for the edge providers in her tome on Internet architecture 
and innovation.

This is as absurd as the people you shill^wpoopy-head (per your request) for.

The users pay either way.

Either the content provider(s) pay the carriers and then bill the users (at a mark up) or the users pay directly 
(hopefully without the markup).

We are, after all, not talking about data that Netflix wants to inflict on the unsuspecting user. We are talking about 
data that the user REQUESTED from Netflix.

Saying “Content providers should pay” sounds great, because it sounds like it gives the end-user a free ride, but the 
reality is a little different.
Let’s have a look at the unintended consequences of such a policy:

        1.      End users get billed more by the content providers to cover this additional cost.
        2.      Content providers have to mark up what they are charged by the end-user’s ISPs, and they want to charge 
a uniform
                rate to all customers, so the most likely result is that they bill end users based on a marked up rate 
from the most
                expensive eyeball ISP they are forced to pay.
        3.      As a result of these additional charges, you create barriers to competition in the content space which 
begins to turn
                content into more of an oligopoly like access currently is. Its a giant step in the exact opposite 
direction of good.

Frankly, I give Netflix a lot of credit for fighting this instead of taking the benefits it could provide and screwing 
over their customers and
their competition.



Competition is a wonderful thing where it can work, but it's not a panacea, especially for the poor and for high-cost, rural 
areas. Communication policy has pretty much always relied on some form of subsidy for these situations, that's the universal 
service fee we pay on our phone bills.

How would you know… Let’s _TRY_ it and see what happens? Subsidy for those situations is probably necessary, but so 
far, subsidy has always been structured to subsidize monopolies and block competition (at the request(demand) of the 
very people you shill^wpoopy-head for).

If we changed the subsidies a tiny bit so that all subsidized infrastructure was built in a manner open to multiple 
higher-level service providers (e.g. subsidized open fiber builds to serving wire centers with colocation capabilities) 
and made those facilities available to all service providers on an equal footing (same cost, same ToS, same SLA, same 
ticket priority, etc.) I bet you’d see a very different situation develop rather quickly.


Susan Crawford explicitly complains that American ISPs "gouge the rich" by charging more than the OECD norm for 
high-speed (50 Mbps and above) service, but she fails to point out that they also charge less than the norm for low-speed (15 
Mbps and below) service.

Whatever… The bottom line is that overall, throughout the US, even in the most densely populated areas, we are far 
behind what you can get in places like NL, KR, SG, SE, etc. and paying generally more for it.


I think it's easy to create unintended consequences if you don't look at how specific regulations affect real people, 
no matter how high-minded and principled they may appear at the surface.

OK, so please tell me what are the horrible unintended consequences of making layer 1 an open platform available on an 
equal footing to all competing L2+ providers that want to compete? As you point out, most L1 has been built with 
taxpayer money and/or subsidy, so what’s the horrible downside to letting it actually work or the taxpayers instead of 
the oligopolistic law firms masquerading as communications companies?

Owen


RB


On 7/27/14, 7:08 PM, Joly MacFie wrote:

Conflating zero-rating with NN is not necessarily helpful.  I somehow doubt that is ultimately what convinced all those 
groups to suddenly come out against NN at the last minute.

The EFF did recently address the issue.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/net-neutrality-and-global-digital-divide

<quote>

However, we worry about the downside risks of the zero rated services. Although it may seem like a humane strategy to offer 
users from developing countries crumbs from the Internet's table in the form of free access to walled-garden services, 
such service may thrive at the cost of stifling the development of low-cost, neutral Internet access in those countries for 
decades to come.

Zero-rating also risks skewing the Internet experience of millions (or billions) of first-time Internet users. For those who 
don't have access to anything else, Facebook /is/ the Internet. On such an Internet, the task of filtering and 
censoring content suddenly becomes so much easier, and the potential for local entrepreneurs and hackers to roll out their 
own innovative online services using local languages and content is severely curtailed.

Sure, zero rated services may seem like an easy band-aid fix to lessen the digital divide. But do you know whatmost 
<http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/more-competition-essential-for-future-of-mobile-innovation.htm>stakeholders 
<http://a4ai.org/policy-and-regulatory-best-practices/>agree <http://www.itu.int/net/pressoffice/press_releases/2013/27.aspx>is a 
better approach towards conquering the digital divide? Competition—which we can foster through rules that reduce the power of 
telecommunications monopolies and oligopolies to limit the content and applications that their subscribers can access and share.  Where 
competition isn't enough, we can combine this with limited rules against clearly impermissible practices like website blocking.

</quote>





On Sun, Jul 27, 2014 at 8:28 PM, Richard Bennett <richard () bennett com <mailto:richard () bennett com>> wrote:

    So we're supposed to believe that NAACP and LULAC are phony
    organizations but pro-neutrality groups like Free Press and Public
    Knowledge that admit to collaborating with Netflix and Cogent are
    legit? Given their long history, I think this is a bit of a stretch.

    It's more plausible that NAACP and LULAC have correctly deduced
    that net neutrality is a de facto subsidy program that transfers
    money from the pockets of the poor and disadvantaged into the
    pockets of super-heavy Internet users and some of the richest and
    most profitable companies in America, the content resellers,
    on-line retailers, and advertising networks.

    Recall what happened to entry-level broadband plans in Chile when
    that nation's net neutrality law was just applied: the ISPs who
    provided free broadband starter plans that allowed access to
    Facebook and Wikipedia were required to charge the poor:

    "A surprising decision in Chile shows what happens when policies
    of neutrality are applied without nuance. This week, Santiago put
    an end to the practice, widespread in developing countries
    
<http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/29/twitters-emerging-market-strategy-includes-its-own-version-of-a-facebook-zero-like-service-called-twitter-access/>,
    of big companies “zero-rating” access to their services. As Quartz
    has reported
    
<http://qz.com/5180/facebooks-plan-to-find-its-next-billion-users-convince-them-the-internet-and-facebook-are-the-same/>,
    companies such as Facebook, Google, Twitter and Wikipedia strike
    up deals
    <http://qz.com/69163/the-one-reason-a-facebook-phone-would-make-sense/>
    with mobile operators around the world to offer a bare-bones
    version of their service without charging customers for the data.

    "It is not clear whether operators receive a fee
    
<http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/29/twitters-emerging-market-strategy-includes-its-own-version-of-a-facebook-zero-like-service-called-twitter-access/>
    from big companies, but it is clear why these deals are
    widespread. Internet giants like it because it encourages use of
    their services in places where consumers shy away from hefty data
    charges. Carriers like it because Facebook or Twitter serve as a
    gateway to the wider internet, introducing users to the wonders of
    the web and encouraging them to explore further afield—and to pay
    for data. And it’s not just commercial services that use the
    practice: Wikipedia has been an enthusiastic adopter of
    zero-rating as a way to spread its free, non-profit encyclopedia."

    http://qz.com/215064/when-net-neutrality-backfires-chile-just-killed-free-access-to-wikipedia-and-facebook/

    Internet Freedom? Not so much.

    RB



    On 7/27/14, 5:07 PM, Joly MacFie wrote:

    Now, this is astroturfing.

    http://www.thenation.com/blog/180781/leading-civil-rights-group-just-sold-out-net-neutrality



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--
Richard Bennett
Visiting Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy
Editor, High Tech Forum


--
Richard Bennett
Visiting Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy
Editor, High Tech Forum
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