[opendtv] Re: The History of Net Neutrality In 13 Years of Tales of the Sausage Factory (with a few additions). Part I
- From: "Manfredi (US), Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2020 23:06:10 +0000
Monty Solomon posted:
The History of Net Neutrality In 13 Years of Tales of the Sausage
Factory (with a few additions). Part I
Harold Feld
January 10, 2018
At freaking long last, someone gets it.
https://wetmachine.com/tales-of-the-sausage-factory/the-history-of-net-neutrality-in-13-years-of-tales-of-the-sausage-factory-with-a-few-additions-part-i/
A few excerpts:
"The Internet managed to evolve quite nicely over the last 30 years because,
contrary to popular myth, **the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
regulated the sh#@ out of it**. Specifically, until the Bush administration
took over, the FCC required the companies that owned the lines over which the
bits traveled (the phone companies) to leave the traffic alone - **no getting
in the way of customers and the information they want to download, the
applications they want to run, or the devices they want to attach to the
network**."
I keep wondering why that's hard to understand, even for lawyers and yahoo
extremist politicians.
"At the same time [2002, beginning of the broadband era], the FCC announced
four 'principles' that it would use as a guide for what behavior it would and
wouldn't allow from broadband access providers:
"1) consumers (that would be us) can access any legal content they want;
"2) consumers can run any application they want (subject to the needs of law
enforcement);
"3) consumers may connect to the network any legal device that does not harm
the network;
"4) consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application
and service providers, and content providers."
Excellent. All very neutral. Note that the #4 principle, in the broadband era,
could not hold. Few have access to even as many as two providers. No problem,
if these lawyers could be made to understand that a car consists of chassis,
engine, drivetrain, and brakes, so to speak.
"Life was simple, then. You had telecommunications services, meaning the actual
business of moving bits from one place to the other, and 'enhanced services'
(later, 'information services'), meaning all the stuff that didn't involve
moving the bits around [i.e. the content and apps like email]. A law originally
adopted by the FCC in the 1970s (the 'Computer I proceeding') and modified a
few other times in the 1980s and 1990s (Compute II, Computer III) kept the
'telecommunications service' component and the 'information service' component
separate and easy to distinguish."
The guy who owns the wires, to route the telephone call, or the digital
packets, is called the telecom guy.
"Then along came 'cable modem service,' which combined the telecommunications
service (moving the bits at the instruction of the user) and the information
service pieces (things like email, caching and other storage and retrieval of
content) in one service."
Combined, but only because this new guy was never mandated to be neutral. The
technical functions, connecting to households, routing packets, and offering an
email service (or TV service, WTH, no real difference), are still different
functions. Sure, when offering cable TV service, these local monopolies never
had to promise anything about neutrality, on their wires. The wires were only
used to carry TV programs. Big whoop. And so what? They are big boys now,
playing in a different field. Repeating the quote above, "the FCC required the
companies that owned the lines over which the bits traveled (the phone
companies) to leave the traffic alone." Duh. No sensible person would take
issue with that, then or now, for either telephone service or Internet service.
"COPE puts the FCC's four principles into law. So far so good. But it then
strips the FCC of any rulemaking authority. It limits the FCC to doing case by
case adjudications on the principles.
"Those of us familiar with the history of the industry and the FCC understand
this is just nuts. Prophylactic regulation in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s made
it possible for people to develop the internet. If an emerging Amazon found it
needed to file a complaint with the FCC to show that phone companies were
blocking traffic to its website unless it paid up, or because the phone company
had partnered with Barnesandnoble.com, they would have died before staff goit
around to denying the complaint for want of evidence. No venture capitalist
would have invested in web services anymore than they invest in cable channels.
Blogs like this would not have happened, because no one would have bothered to
develop them.
"And we would never miss any of it, because we would never have known what we
could have had.
"As if stripping the FCC of rulemaking weren't bad enough, COPE also allows the
cable and telco companies to charge third parties for 'premium access' to
subscribers, a behavior I call 'Whitacre Tiering' after AT&T CEO Ed Whiatcre.
As I've written before, I think Whitacre tiering would prove a disaster for
democracy and a disaster for business (and, apparently, the banking and
financial services industry are starting to agree)."
Again, Duh. Why should this take so long? What kind of greedy, self-serving SOB
would not understand that much? The inexcusable part, in all of this, is that
the current FCC Chairman can't wrap his head around these fundamental concepts.
If anything, his job description REQUIRES that he lobby in favor of the people,
and not the special interests, when arguing with lawyers who can legitimately
be clueless about telecoms.
According to this blog, the idiots aren't done yet, messing with a good thing.
Bert
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