The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post

Mon Apr 28 12:24:54 UTC 2014

> For large ISPs, Netflix provides caching appliances that can be inside
> their network, so it is not a question of transit costs. It has
> everything to do with a company that is heavily involved in TV, and
> which controls the ISP market is such a large areas of USA wanting to
> replace lost TV revenus by billing whoever is stealing those revenus.

The use of the word stealing here is offensive and inaccurate. It implies a
sense of entitlement to those revenues which is, IMHO, absurd.

It’s like political candidates who complain about third party candidates
“stealing their votes”. The votes don’t belong to the candidates, they belong
to the voters.

If $CABLECO wants to preserve their television revenues, they should do so
by providing a competitive product that is attractive to customers. If another
company is able to provide a more attractive product, then that’s how competition
and a free market is supposed to work.

What is absolutely contrary to the public interest is allowing $CABLECO to
leverage their position as a monopoly or oligopoly ISP to create an operational
disadvantage in access for that competing product.

The so-called “internet fast lane” is a euphemism for allowing $CABLECO
to put competing video products into a newly developed slow-lane while
limiting the existing path to their own products and those content providers
that are able to and choose to pay these additional fees.

Once you follow the money trail to its logical conclusion, at its heart, it’s
the epitome of the kind of anti-competitive practices the Sherman act
was intended to prevent.

> In other words, they use their market power to hurt competitors. While
> the FCC is getting the news, this should have gone to the FTC because it
> is clearly an anti-competitive and predatory measure that proves Comcast
> is using its market power to hurt competitors.

This isn’t limited to $CABLECO. While they’re at the front of this effort, reality
is that if it succeeds, incumbents of all flavors will start using this tactic to
improve their revenues to the detriment of consumers.

Owen