Comment by ansible | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ansible | Hacker News Reader

There was a discussion about all this during NPR's Morning Edition.

The FCC chair talked about how there was very loose regulation of the Internet back in 1996 during the Clinton Administration. And this should be a model for regulation of the ISPs going forward.

Except that the world was quite different in 1996. You actually had a lot of competition with ISPs, because most people were doing dialup. If I didn't like AOL, I could just switch to Prodigy (yes, I know), or one of the local ISPs. That was easy.

People like me can and did switch ISPs on a regular basis. In my case, looking for a reliable Net News feed.

Compared to today, where there is only one (or if you are lucky) two ISPs for the area. You don't have a choice, so these ISPs are defacto monopolies.

The reasons given for repeal are just wrong, and this is a transparent attempt by the big ISPs to make more money, without benefit to the average citizen or even the other Internet companies which made the Internet awesome to begin with.

It does remind me a bit of the trickle down economics. They are making it sound like that the only thing holding them back from massive innovation is profits lost to regulations and as soon as we get rid of those the floodgates will open - but they never do. The ISPs are going to use that money to consolidate their power, buy more companies that depend on their infrastructure and shovel money back to their shareholders and drive their stock price up. This is exactly what is going to happen with the tax bill (and is already happening due to the expectation of a tax bill), we're being sold that companies have been right on the cusp of increasing wages and hiring if it weren't for those pesky taxes they had to pay. When the jobs and wages don't come, they'll blame something else and down the road they'll take away another important thing, like labor protections or something. And we'll fall for it (collectively), its like a mystery box or something, we can't resist the idea of the free market as this chained beast that just has to be released and it will solve everything with no oversight or maintenance.

This is exactly what is going to happen with the tax bill (and is already happening due to the expectation of a tax bill), we're being sold that companies have been right on the cusp of increasing wages and hiring if it weren't for those pesky taxes they had to pay.

Exactly.

I know business. Extra profits are extra profits. Wages won't rise unless there is a labor supply shortage.

> The FCC chair talked about how there was very loose regulation of the Internet back in 1996 during the Clinton Administration

Of course, the web was a few years old and the internet was just becoming used by the general public. Pointing to the state of broadband regulation in 1996 is kind of like pointing to the state of automobile safety regulation in 1912.

Verizon fought against those loose regulations and won. IIRC, a judge on that case said (I'm paraphrasing) that the Obama-era FTC couldn't use legally achieve what it was attempting to under those rules, but might (wink and a nudge) under Title-II.

I agree the answer is either more ISP competition, or more regulation. The middle ground is hell.

Any chance this repeal lead to more ISPs? Ajit Pai mentioned it would in interviews, but I don't know enough to say whether that had any merit.

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