They might fall under your useful idiot category but it seems like a free market/small government libertarian might be fine in principle with repealing net neutrality. Hopefully they would see the loss of innovation and be conflicted but perhaps not.
I think the real conservative approach is that it’s generally bad to engage in needless prospective legislation, i.e. legislation designed to advance harms that have not materialized, may not materialize,and can be fixed with retrospective legislation even if the harms DO materialize. The harms in @CraigM’s post, for instance, are framed as “If ISPs start mucking around…” and “It can create new barriers” – hypothetical harms, which is when most conservatives, and certainly libertarians, are wary of involving the state.
The Net Neutrality push wasn’t created in a vacuum and you damn well know it. Look at the fucking thread title for reference.
This explainer would seem to suggest the Comcast/Netflix dispute you reference, despite appearances, does not implicate net neutrality at all: Comcast vs. Netflix: Is this really about Net neutrality? - CNET
It’s a Net Neutrality issue. Stop being a fucking tool.
Comcast/Netflix is a Net Neutrality issue in the political realm, certainly. Is it from a legal POV as well?
The point I made was that the Net Neutrality debates didn’t come from a vacuum. Gman handwaives off Craig’s issues as “hypotheticals”, as if everyone was behaving well to begin with and then Obama wanted to take over all the internets.
This is not ‘handwaving,’ and your personal insults do not help make your point. From Obama’s FCC chairman, this is a fundamentally important point about how the Internet works, and what net neutrality is:
The problem with Comcast/Netflix, while not about “Network Neutrality” in the strict sense, illustrates the motivations that the broadband providers would have to violate network neutrality to the detriment of consumers. To this extent it is about network neutrality.
In particular, Netflix is providing a service that competes with services that Comcast provides, and Comcast singled out Netflix for worse terms than it offered other CDNs. Comcast was using its control of last-mile broadband for anti-competitive purposes, to the detriment of its own subscribers.
Comcast’s purpose in refusing to accommodate Netflix’s extraordinarily additional bandwidth (again, before its traffic reaches its network) are not ‘anti-competitive’ though – it’s to save Comcast money, not simply to stifle competition and raise prices. Comcast would have to be willing to voluntarily incur added costs in your scenario, to voluntarily help consumers. Its refusal to do so is not “anti-competitive” within the legal meaning of that phrase. A company’s refusal to engage charitably with other companies may harm consumers, but as a business decision, it is not improper.
Remember that things like run-of-the-mill exclusivity deal, such as where a a game development company offers preferential treatment for Microsoft’s Xbox customers (after exchanging money with Microsoft, of course), are legal as well. The idea is that companies can pay others for the privilege of enhancing consumer access, if they want, but they are not forced to.
You are only looking at one side of the coin.
The other side of the coin is Comcast CUSTOMERS paid for the bandwidth for netflix to be delivered to them. This is merely Comcast trying to both double dip (get paid by both ends of the transaction instead of one side right now) and trying to make it so they can throttle netflix and keep their NBC offerings fast.
Your argument only makes sense when comcast is a low level infrastructure offering (i.e. netflix has to go through comcast to go from their servers to a Verizon customer), but Comcast is not operating at that level.
The customers paid for access to Netflix and other sites through Comcast, yes, but not the additional accommodations that Netflix has requested in the form of the interconnection deal. Are you arguing there is some sort of fraud going on? I am a little confused.
That’s just not true. Peering with Netflix CDN’s would’ve been less costly for Comcast than taking the same traffic from existing CDNs. Comcast was rent seeking, pure and simple. It is exactly this sort of behavior that Network Neutrality is designed to avoid.
You are definitely confused.
One of the big reasons Netflix is pursuing additional accomodations is because both Comcast and Verizon have been caught keeping their peering connections to Netflix provided systems as minimal as possible. Prior to Net Neutrality their only remedy to this was to pay Comcast to locate servers inside Comcast’s network.
This is the exact type of action that has drove Netflix to require in network accomodations
No, he’s not. He’s disingenuous.
Are you suggesting there was nothing extraordinary about Netflix’s bandwidth demands? (The source I linked above demonstrates how extraordinarily Netflix’s demands on Comcast were). Also, note that the “rent-seeking” as you describe it is legal in many other contexts. My apartment building certainly is free to charge a fancy, oblivious out-of-state lawyer more than a more scrupulous potential tenant who knows the market. That’s true even if it’s the only building in town.
Here again, Verizon is being asked to spend to upgrade its networks. The issue is not that Verizon is intentionally stifling competition, but rather that it’s refusing to spend voluntarily.
Verizon is being asked to upgrade its networks TO ALLOW SERVICES VERIZON CUSTOMERS ARE PAYING FOR.
Verizon (and Comcast) are trying to refuse because they know their customers have no where else to go.
Can you articulate why that’s a net neutrality issue, as opposed to one best handled by fraud or antitrust law? That doesn’t strike me as a net neutrality issue, at all, which was my original point. If you are paying for something and not getting it, that’s a fraud issue.