The Worst Lies From Yesterday's Anti-Net Neutrality Speech
Libby Watson
4/27/17 5:48pmFiled to: Beltway Bullshit
https://gizmodo.com/the-worst-lies-from-yesterdays-anti-net-neutrality-spee-1794717829
Yesterday, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced his plan to repeal the 2015 Open
Internet Order, which prevented internet service providers (ISPs) from
blocking or prioritizing certain traffic, and reclassified providers as
“common carriers.” Up to that moment, Pai had kept reasonably quiet about
how he planned to dismantle net neutrality, saying only that he favored an
open internet but opposed the reclassification of ISPs as common carriers.
Pai’s announcement took the form of a poorly-reasoned attack on net
neutrality, which was later posted to the FCC’s website. He warned that net
neutrality’s proponents actually had a “longstanding goal of forcing the
Internet under the federal government’s control,” attacked the internet
advocacy group Free Press, and even name-checked the Drudge report. It was a
full-throated defense of his indefensible position on net neutrality—a
position that only the strongest free-market libertarians and people whose
paychecks come from Comcast or Verizon could support.
Of all the points contained in Pai’s rant, four particularly egregious lies
stood out to us.
1. Net neutrality is worse for online privacy
Pai argued that reclassifying ISPs as common carriers and therefore returning
them to FTC jurisdiction would be the “best path toward protecting
Americans’ online privacy,” because “the nation’s most expert and
experienced privacy regulator” would be regulating it again. As we’ve
pointed out repeatedly, the whole reason that ISPs and Republicans pushed the
idea of restoring online privacy oversight to the FTC instead of the FCC is
that they know the FTC’s regime is weaker, and that agency can only go
after violations after they’ve already happened. The FCC, on the other
hand, has the power to issue rules preventing violations before they happen.
The FCC privacy rules that Congress just obliterated were undoubtedly
stronger than the FTC status quo, because they required opt-in consent before
ISPs could sell your browsing history.
2. Net neutrality has harmed broadband investment
In yesterday’s speech, Pai repeatedly claimed that net neutrality has
reduced investment in broadband infrastructure, citing a study by the Free
State Foundation that claimed the 2015 net neutrality order has cost $5
billion in broadband investment. The Free State Foundation is a conservative
think tank with ties to ALEC, the shady group that pushes conservative
policies and even writes model legislation in the states. More to the point,
the Free State Foundation has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from
the two biggest telecom lobbying groups: the Internet and Television
Association, formerly the National Cable and Television Association (NCTA),
and the Wireless Association, formerly the Cellular Telecommunications and
Internet Association (CTIA). Between 2010 and 2014, the latest year for which
funding figures are available, NCTA gave $375,000 and CTIA gave $280,000,
according to tax documents accessed through the Center for Public
Integrity’s Nonprofit Network tool. Both are among the strongest opponents
of net neutrality; NCTA represents ISPs like Comcast and AT&T, who stand to
gain the most from repealing the rules.
Organizations that aren’t financially supported by telecoms see the
investment numbers a little differently. An analysis by Free Press provided
to attendees to Pai’s speech yesterday shows that ISPs’ capital
expenditure increased more after net neutrality was passed than in the two
years before it. Comcast, too, has invested 26 percent more since 2015 than
it did between 2013 and 2014. The same arguments about how net neutrality
would hurt investment were made in 2015, and they were wrong then, too.
Business continues to be extremely good for ISPs; so good, in fact, that AT&T
had $2 million in cash lying around to drop on Trump’s inauguration.
Indeed, ISPs themselves happily boast of investments when they’re not
whining to regulators. The CEO of Charter Communications told attendees at
the UBS Global Media and Communications conference in December 2016: “Title
II, it didn’t really hurt us; it hasn’t hurt us,” according to a
Reuters transcript of the event. Comcast, which today announced an increase
in internet subscribers, boasted of its “consistent investment and
innovation” and how it planned to “double the capacity of our network
every 18 to 24 months” in an earnings call in January; Comcast executive
Michael J. Cavanagh said the company would“increase our investment in
network capacity” during 2017. That doesn’t sound like it’s suffering
under the weight of a regulatory burden
3. Net neutrality accentuates digital redlining
This is related to Pai’s claim about investment, but it’s worth
addressing by itself because it’s so wrongheaded. Pai claimed this supposed
lack of investment will increase the problem of “digital redlining,”
whereby broadband providers avoid building out their infrastructure to poorer
areas that won’t return as much profit:
“When businesses cut back on capital expenditures, the areas that
provide the most marginal returns on investment are the first to go. And in
the case of broadband, that means low-income rural and urban neighborhoods.
As a result, Title II has kept countless consumers from getting better
Internet access or getting access, period. It is widening the digital divide
in our country and accentuating the practice of digital redlining—of
fencing off lower-income neighborhoods on the map and saying, ‘It’s not
worth the time and money to deploy there.’”
What he’s basically saying is that due to the imagined lack of investment
caused by net neutrality regulations, ISPs won’t invest in poorer
communities. There’s extensive evidence that ISPs like AT&T avoid building
out their networks to poorer (and therefore less profitable) communities, but
there’s no evidence that it’s related to net neutrality.
Obviously, Pai’s claims assume a lot here. This logic assumes that only
markets can determine what corporations do, and that state and federal
governments are unable to do anything to require broadband providers build
infrastructure to everyone, regardless of their economic situation. If the
problem is that ISPs won’t invest in areas that return lower profits, does
Pai really think that’s just a matter of those companies not having the
cash to do so? How much cash do they need before they get around to that?
AT&T had a cash flow of $16.9 billion last year; does that need to be $30
billion, or $50 billion, or $100 billion before the company gets around to
investing in the poor? Amina Fazlullah, policy advisor at the National
Digital Inclusion Alliance, says that’s just the point: “there’s not
always going to be a strong business case” for ISPs “to get into every
community.” That’s when “government has to step in” to get them in
these areas, whether that’s through programs like LifeLine (which Pai has
attacked) or the Universal Service Fund, or simply requiring ISPs to build
the infrastructure that people need to get online.
Instead, Pai ignores the entire notion of regulatory action, acting as if the
free market is the only thing that can determine where broadband service
exists. We wouldn’t accept that argument for electricity service or phone
service; why accept it for internet service?
4. The internet wasn’t broken before net neutrality rules
In his speech, Pai said “Nothing about the Internet was broken in 2015.
Nothing about the law had changed. And there wasn’t a rash of Internet
service providers blocking customers from accessing the content,
applications, or services of their choice.”
This is incredibly disingenuous. Note how Pai said ISPs weren’t blocking
traffic to certain sites, because sure, that wasn’t happening. But blocking
wasn’t the only kind of harm prevented by the net neutrality order: it also
had bright-line rules against paid prioritization and throttling, where ISPs
would limit or boost traffic to certain websites.
One of the most high-profile examples of abuse was Comcast throttling traffic
to Netflix in order to extract a payment deal from the streaming video
provider, which it eventually agreed to pay. And in 2012, AT&T blocked
FaceTime on iPhones, claiming it was using too much bandwidth. In this case,
critics argued it was an attempt to block a service that competed with its
own voice services. And as the biggest ISPs keep gobbling up
content-producers, like AT&T buying DirectTV and then providing free access
to itscontent, the risks that ISPs will start prioritizing traffic only
increase.
The debate over net neutrality has been raging for years, and it gets very
exhausting to re-litigate these arguments over and over again. No, net
neutrality is not tantamount to government control of the internet; no,
broadband investment hasn’t evaporated since net neutrality was passed. But
these tiresome arguments, the lines that Pai trotted out yesterday, are all
the ISPs have. This is the tired, unconvincing, misleading shit that will be
flung at the public over the next few months, because anti-regulation
stalwarts have nothing else to go on. Certainly, they don’t have the truth
on their side.
Recommended Stories
