angrymnk wrote:
Most reasonable people would agree that oligopoly/duopoly/monopoly is, typically, considered worst case free market scenario, As such, the onus is on you to defend the oligopoly status as something that is beneficial to the customer. So, Gbaji, why is the oligopoly beneficial to me? Higher prices? Non-competitive behavior? Tell me why the current status is so good for me.
I didn't say it was "good for you". I said it was a necessary evil due to the issue of having to manage physical wires run to your home:
gbaji wrote:
That's not a sufficient answer. The existence of oligopoly is necessary because they're physically running wires to your home. We can talk about the long history of local governments licensing only one or two companies to do this and why it's necessary if you want, but how about we just accept that it is and move on?
Simply saying "it's an oligopoly" isn't useful because any system involving physical wires, pipes, etc to your home involves the same sort of thing. That's the part we can't get around and isn't fixable. So that, by itself, isn't a problem we can solve. All I'm saying is that you need to turn the discussion to whatever abuses of that privilege you think are going on.
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You want me to be specific? How about the companies apart from trying to be ISPs also wanting to be ICPs.
Excellent. We've come full circle, but at least this is in the ball park. BTW, I'm not actually in disagreement with you. I just don't get why you went off on a 10 post long side track about oligopoly that isn't actually useful to the subject we're discussing.
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I do not want the company to be able to favor their own content over some random cat video I want to see at this point.
Agreed. And on the few occasions where an ISP has attempted throttling, they've been... well... throttled. So, as I pointed out like 15 posts ago, this is something that already has a solution that does not require additional regulation.
I think where the issue gets muddled is that legitimate rate charging for traffic flow is sometimes treated as some kind of anti-competition thing. So if ISP A charges netflix X dollars for bandwidth they're using to ISP A's customers, the assumption is that ISP A is doing this to make netflix more expensive and drive customers to ISP A's video product. And while this *can* be the case, we should not assume it is always the case. It's not as simple as "they're charging netflix to deliver high speed streaming video to their customers, so this must be an unfair use of their mono/duo/oligoploy!". Imagine if your ISP provided zero video services themselves. Do you think they wouldn't charge netflix money for using their bandwidth? Of course they would. They have to.
The question is one of degrees, not absolutes.
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How about the company planning to monetize my traffic information so that after buying 50 gallon of lube on amazon, the company B is able to recommend me newly divorced singles over 60 in my area. I do not want the company to sell information about my lube buying habits to the general public or select vendors. In short, I want them to be just ISPs. I do not want them to do anything else than to provide me unfettered access to the lube I so sorely need. I want them to just focus, AND DELIVER, on one service. Is it that much to ask?
I agree. You're talking to a pretty hard core online privacy advocate. My issue here is that this is not a problem specific to ISPs and it's not something that net neutrality legislation (which is the only solution I've heard you advocate or support) actually addresses or solves.
Do you honestly think that Amazon isn't maintaining a profile of you based on your purchase? Or Google? Or every other online service you use? And heck. Your grocery store does this. Do you avoid using a credit card? Cause if not, you're providing tons of information about you that is being passed around from vendor to vendor as we speak. There are a whole lot of things that I don't like about this. The difference is that I don't leap from that to support for network neutrality legislation.
I'd love to see some kind of laws that protect consumers from having their activity (of any kind) used in ways they don't like. The problem is that I have yet to see one proposed that would actually fix this. And frankly, I'm not sure it can. There already exist laws that prohibit companies from requiring you to provide them information to do business with them (well, unless you use certain types of payment). But most people don't choose to use them. It's kinda like my response when people get into an uproar when they discover that the NSA crawls the web gathering up information about everyone, yet they actively use social media to let anyone and everyone know details about their lives. Um... Where do you think they're getting that info?
Same deal here. As long as people will sign up for the rewards plan, they can't really complain when the information they provide is used for marketing. That's why they create those plans. Sucks. But there you have it.
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Since you did not appreciate the carrier reclassification, would you prefer I resurrected the idea of Sherman Antitrust Act? ISPs then would be forbidden from being ISPs, ICPs, ICBMs and ***** sellers. I could stop buying all that lube then. I am just saying.
It's not about classification. It's that I'm not sure that you understand what is meant by the terms you're using. This is why I keep asking you to explain in your own words what you think is the problem and what you think we should do to solve it. It just seems like you are caught up on buzzwords. And I still get the distinct impression that for you, regulating ISPs is less about implementing useful and necessary regulation, but to punish the ISPs because you don't like them. But that's a terrible reason to support regulation for two reasons:
1. You may be being manipulated into not liking them specifically to get you to support the regulation without questioning it.
2. The regulation may have (almost certainly will have) unintended consequences that you haven't considered in your haste to pass something that will hurt those companies.
And in the case of NN, there are clear problems with every single version of a proposed NN legislation I've seen. Huge problems. As I said earlier, it's like trying to swat a fly with a sledge hammer, 5 feet to the left of the fly, and right at something you value. You're so pissed off about the fly that you aren't really paying attention to what you're going to hit.
I'll also point out that you still haven't said what solution(s) you think we should implement to fix these problems. I mean, I don't like it when it rains, but my "solution" isn't to randomly kill people's house pets. Why? Because that's not actually a solution to the problem. Similar deal here. You need to support a solution that addresses the problem(s). But if you can't explain how said solution solves said problem, then why are you supporting it?
Edited, Nov 13th 2014 6:26pm by gbaji 
