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How did they "realize" that, suddenly a couple years ago? I am not doubting you, I am genuinely confused.

I mean, human greed is a constant, and the rules didn’t change from 1996-2015, yet during the same period you said that Wal-Mart would have paid to destroyed Amazon, Amazon became one of the most wealthy and powerful companies in the world. So... it must be something more than the rules, right? Greedy companies were just unimaginative with their greed until a few years ago?

To put it another way: If Wal-Mart simply didn’t realize some trick in those days, what information would the Walton family need to take with them in their time machine to destroy Amazon from 1996-2015?

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The rules did change between 1996 and 2015. The FCC reclassified DSL and cable ISPs as information services in the mid-2000s, ending line-sharing rules that enabled competition and common carrier rules that were more stringent than the net neutrality rules that replaced them. In 2014, the courts ruled that the FCC couldn't continue enforcing net neutrality under the post-2005 classification.

Ok, so this is a pretty useful answer that's starting to clear things up a bit for me. Let me see if I’ve got this straight.

Sometime in the 2000s, ISPs were classified as Title I entities. Then in 2010, there was an "open internet order" that tried to enforce Net Neutrality in some new way, which the DC courts shot down when Verizon (represented by Mr. Pai) sued over it, saying that Title I didn’t give FCC the authority to regulate in the way that it was trying to in 2010. So then they reclassified ISPs as common carriers e.g. under Title II, so they could impose the same rules that existed in 2010.

So, what I'm still confused about:

1. Prior to 2015, were ISPs ever actually considered common carriers?

2. Did any regulation or legislation exist prior to the "FCC Open Internet Order 2010" that served the same explicitly stated purpose (FCC chairmen saying similar, nice sounding things without actually having the force of law doesn't count)?

Well, there were regulations in place, but due to a technicality, they no longer officially applied once home internet started arriving over cable/dsl/fiber as a networked service instead of dial-up.

Lots of people pointed this technicality out, and wanted to update the regulations to account for it. The ISPs, naturally, weren't too keen on that, so they spent a lot of money on lobbyists to say "everything is fine, if you add more regulation you will break the internet". Thing is, they couldn't really do this on the one hand while simultaneously selling the Waltons the keys to the e-commerce kingdom. They had to adhere to the norms established by regulations, mostly.

But 20 years later, they can pretend that there never were any regulations, and that these norms magically enforce themselves, so why regulate?

> If Wal-Mart simply didn’t realize some trick in those days, what information would the Walton family need to take with them in their time machine to destroy Amazon from 1996-2015

That this internet thing will really take off.

Forget Wal-Mart, tell that to Sears.

> what information would the Walton family need to take with them in their time machine to destroy Amazon from 1996-2015

Amazon was massively in the red (investment liabilities) until they had enough extra capital to start the 2004ish AWS initiative. Having dealt with AMZ techs in the 90s, I certainly didn't think they would do any better than Pets.com did.

and the rules didn’t change from 1996-2015

They did change, read through this thread again. Many comments detail how the regulations changed in 2005 and then why they did again in 2015 (hint: Verizon, the same ISP Pai worked for at that time).

I recall that L3 was shaking down netflix in that that time period. This is what I was able to find quickly...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/netflix-agrees-to-pay-comcast-t...

Sorry for the paywall. there are many sites that refer to the episode, but they may not all be qualified as journalism.

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