Hate Monopolies? Then You Should be Pissed About the Abolition of Net Neutrality

NEsnake12 said:

GrundleStiltzkin said:

Or: The chinfrastructure companies want to maximize their chinvestments. Naturally. The content companies want to distribute for the lowest possible cost. Naturally.
I fail to see heroes and villains in all this.

False equivalency because the chinfrastructure companies and content companies exist in 2 completely different competitive markets.

ISP's, especially high-speed cable ones, are (and need to be treated like) utilities. Many markets are limited to a single high-speed ISP because of extreme barriers to entry for any competition... whether they're either too remote to be economically feasible to set up in infrastructure in or (in downtown Seattle's case with Comcast) there are historical landmark laws protecting the only existing infrastructure.

Content companies exist in a much more open market where the only real barriers to entry are the web hosts and search engines they have to work to get their content to pop up on searches.

So I'm of the opinion that it's not fair to let an ISP that has near monopolistic power in many markets to be allowed to do whatever they please to maximize their investments BECAUSE there's no competition to block them from abusing consumers and content providers without net neutrality.

GrundleStiltzkin said:

NEsnake12 said:

GrundleStiltzkin said:

Or: The chinfrastructure companies want to maximize their chinvestments. Naturally. The content companies want to distribute for the lowest possible cost. Naturally.
I fail to see heroes and villains in all this.

False equivalency because the chinfrastructure companies and content companies exist in 2 completely different competitive markets.

ISP's, especially high-speed cable ones, are (and need to be treated like) utilities. Many markets are limited to a single high-speed ISP because of extreme barriers to entry for any competition... whether they're either too remote to be economically feasible to set up in infrastructure in or (in downtown Seattle's case with Comcast) there are historical landmark laws protecting the only existing infrastructure.

Content companies exist in a much more open market where the only real barriers to entry are the web hosts and search engines they have to work to get their content to pop up on searches.

So I'm of the opinion that it's not fair to let an ISP that has near monopolistic power in many markets to be allowed to do whatever they please to maximize their investments BECAUSE there's no competition to block them from abusing consumers and content providers without net neutrality.

Don't think I made an equivalency betwixt the two. In very simple terms, those are two of many business aims concerned parties are pursuing through governmental action.

There seems to be a big guy vs little guys narrative in this debate. Big big money came in on both sides. No one gives a shit about sweatpants blogs. Netflix cares very much about its licensing deals.

The last mile comparison between isp and utilities kinda works and kinda doesn't. We haven't seen anyway to get electricity into a house other than a wire and probably won't. Sorry Nikola, good try good effort. There are two, maybe 4, connectivities for residiential broadband. I wonder what more regulation would do to investments in fixed point wireless, which is a big deal for underserved areas.

Then there's the focus on what might be taken away. Ignored are what could be added. For instance, QoS on voip, or site-to-site vpn.

Most this shit, I don't really care about. But I guess why I don't want FCC involvement is because of FCC involvement.