Internet Taxes Could Happen. Harold Furchtgott-Roth of Forbes writes that by making the internet subject to the strictures of the interstate telecommunications industry, the FCC could impose fees on internet service:I personally believe that this is what its really all about. Think back. First the president laid out a
By classifying broadband access services as “interstate telecommunications services,” those services would suddenly become required to pay FCC fees. At the current 16.1% fee structure, it would be perhaps the largest, one-time tax increase on the Internet.
With everything on the Presidents plate...ISIS, Ukraine, Ebola, Immigration, Deficits, Defense, Healthcare, Unemployment...the list goes on...suddenly we get hit out of the blue with net neutrality being the burning issue of the day?
It doesn't make sense.
SIDENOTE: I continue to marvel at all the "tech geeks" that argue that this has been a long time in the making. NO IT HASN'T. It might have been a focus in your corner of the universe but for the general public this was on no ones radar. I'm also surprised at how tech geeks that generally are against govt interference suddenly believing that having bureaucratic slime dripping over the internet will be a good thing! My point? Spare me your moralizing, your so called facts and your opinion. I know better. If govt gets involved things get fucked up.
A) you might want to try to find slightly more time relevant sources.
ReplyDeleteB) You timeline is widely inaccurate.
C) This has been a debate that has been going on for a couple years now
D) The solution that the FCC adopted has been the front running solution for months now
E) Harold Furchtgott put out purposely disingenuous and inaccurate information
F) Reclassification doesn't require any new fees and anyone who says it does either doesn't know how the FCC works or is willfully lying to you.
And now to debunk that horribly inaccurate breitbart piece:
1) We haven't had net neutrality and there is little to no competition between internet service providers. The vast majority of americans have at most 1 option for broadband internet service.
2) This is disingenuous at best. The ISPs customers demand that content. The customers pay their ISPs for that bandwidth. In addition, Netflix pays their ISP for their bandwidth used. The issue is despite having significant unused backhaul bandwidth, the ISPs were throttling service from Netflix. Both Comcast and Netflix's ISP had multiple ports available at multiple peering locations available. Comcast refused to allow the ports to be used.
3) All the network providers know exactly what "reasonable network management" means. Anyone claiming otherwise is a fool or lying. The problem is that even understand what "reasonable network management" means, Comcast et al have been continuously cause employing what is certainly not "reasonable network management"
4) Barriers to entry aren't created by net neutrality, they are reduced. Net Neutrality is about content and content delivery. And it lowers barriers for entry there. In addition, the FCC is also lowering barriers for entry to new ISPs and for ISPs to expand into new service area.
5) ISP competition is largely completely orthonormal to net neutrality. As such net neutrality doesn't hard ISP competition in any way.
6) As already stated, the net neutrality rules passed by the FCC have nothing to do with internet taxes or fees. In addition, Internet taxes and fees can occur just as easily without reclassification.
7) Government content restrictions are completely orthogonal to net neutrality. The rules passed by the FCC doesn't make it any easier or harder to the US government to impose content restrictions.
And anyone who thinks there is no market failure with broadband internet is quite honestly ignorant or lying. The vast vast majority of the US has at best 1 option for high speed internet. Customer service can only be described as atrocious. Progress vs the rest of the world can only be described as atrocious.
you're still refusing to answer the basic question. why did net neutrality rise to the level of national debate and a talking point for the president at this time? you still haven't solved the question of all the issues that are on his plate why he would debate so much time to this issue.
ReplyDeleteand you still seem to believe that govt regulation doesn't always inevitably lead to taxation.
if anyone is being misleading its you. why you want to see only sunshine and unicorns with this move is beyond me but if you "google" net neutrality is a bad idea the returns will be legion.
Why did this become a national debate?
ReplyDeleteTry a huge grassroots campaign by normal internet users, ad to that the big non profits of the internet, like Firefox and Wikipedia and end with the big internet content providers and search engines..
There is no questions to solve about Obama or whatever else is being added to the discussion because the core subject is clear as a bell and can't be debated.
Net Neutrality is a necessity and protects you and me from monopolies like it has since the birth of the internet. It is not a new measure, nor some partisan issue.
Taxes on the internet , internet for everyone, wanting to make Telitubbies a national treasure or whatever else Obama or any lawmaker might do has NOTHING TO DO WITH NET NEUTRALITY!!!!
Complain about that, rant about taxes on the internet, rant about Michelle Obama's new haircut.. but do not fall for the confusion brought to you courtesy of ISP's who want to charge us 3 times for the same thing.
Don't let big money use you as their pawn!
Quote: " Internet Taxes Could Happen."
Yes they might.. and the FCC could be used to do it, at which point you can protest that and lawmakers can stop it. But compare your "might happen" to what actually WILL HAPPEN and has happened: Charges by ISP's to content makers that eventually will have to be payed by you and me like a tax. You know as well as me that part of capitalism is that costs end up being paid by the consumers part of their price/fee.
Let me ask you, Obama is not going to be in office for that long anymore, if he does not put a tax on the internet that this article predicts to scare us all, will you then admit being wrong?
Scratch that.. I fell for the trap myself and confused side issues with net neutrality..
Just so it does not get lost in my huge reaction:
ReplyDeleteYou are confusing the issue by talking about everything but Net Neutrality. Taxes, Obama and his nonsense, partisan issues..
Basically we see whatever talking points ISP's pay for to distract us from the fact that Net Neutrality is a very clear and simple issue: it forces ISP's and governments to treat every bit of data equally. The End.
Sadly ( for them) that does not work for ISP's since it also prevents them from putting their own 'tax' on internet-traffic by blackmailing content-makers.
Do everyone a favor and rant about taxes, Obama and whatever else.. but support Net Neutrality!
Because this has been a grassroots campaign a long time coming, Solomon. With lots and lots of money on both sides of the issue. It has been national for months now. In the tech sector it has been a major issue for years. And it is an issue that has some pretty serious long term implications. And a president ALWAYS has a lot on their plate.
ReplyDeleteAnd the Internet has been regulated in one form or another for DECADES. And its not like this is some new regulation either. Its the exact same regulations that the Internet has operated on for the vast majority of it life. And that other data services albeit analog have operated under for the better part of a century!
As to you final question, because there has been momentous amounts of money and astro turfing thrown at this by the major monopoly ISPs. Because this basically is shutting the door on a quite significant way they have been able to extract monopoly rents for the past several years. The monopoly ISPs have been very good at saying: "if you want access to our subscribers you are going to have to pay us". Completely ignoring the fact that the monopoly ISPs already are paid by their customers. Its has been described by many as extortion and they are pretty much right.
Could there be problems with the change? Sure, as there could be problems with any change. Is it likely to be any worse than it already is? Sure that's possible. But the odds are it will be better over time than if we didn't have the change. As the case with Netflix clearly showed, there was basically nothing that the monopoly ISPs wouldn't do to increase their monopoly rents and in the process cause all types of problems for other business and basically ignore the history of the internet or the point of the internet.
So really, our options are partial government regulation or aggressive monopoly control. While governments can be bad, monopolies have historically been much much worse when left unchecked.
We're convinced that this has been a long time in the making because it has. The FCC has had a significant focus wrt net neutrality for quite some time. This whole thing dates back BEFORE 2010! In 2010 in response to actions taken by Comcast et al, the FCC issued the Open Internet Order. This was almost immediately challenged by Verizon in court and that Court case was resolved in January 2014 vacating most of the Open Internet Order. The FCC spent the last year after that ruling looking for all possible ways to comply with the opinion and still have the same effect. The end result is that based on that court ruling(and a couple others), the only option the FCC had was reclassification as Title II. And sure, the tech sector payed more attention to it, cause well, the tech sector was and is the most affected by it. But to say it was only the tech sector is a bit incorrect. There have been numerous discussions and notices about this outside of the tech sector from TV news shows to College Humor videos, etc. Its not like any of this was a secret. It might of bored people to death so they didn't notice, but its been on the news here and there for years. And the Last Week Tonight segment on it 10ish months ago certainly got a lot of views and news stories.
ReplyDeleteI think I would be fair to classify pre-2010 as a long time in the making.
And yes, the tech sector is generally against govt interference, and only turned to the government and the FCC as a last resort. And they did that because things were already fucked up and getting worse. Basically its comes down to monopoly power or the government. Add in the fact that that monopoly power was interfering WORSE than government, and your only option is the government.