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TOTM Disclosure: The one time I met Ajit Pai was when he presented a comment on my book, “The Political Spectrum,” at a Cato Institute forum . . .
Disclosure: The one time I met Ajit Pai was when he presented a comment on my book, “The Political Spectrum,” at a Cato Institute forum in 2018. He was gracious, thorough, and complimentary. He said that while he had enjoyed the volume, he hoped not to appear in upcoming editions. I took that to imply that he read the book as harshly critical of the Federal Communications Commission. Well, when merited, I concede. But it left me to wonder if he had followed my story to its end, as I document the success of reforms launched in recent decades and advocate their extension. Inclusion in a future edition might work out well for a chairman’s legacy. Or…
Read the full piece here.
TOTM Pai’s tenure at the FCC was marked by an abiding appreciation for the importance of competition, both as a guiding principle for new regulations and as a touchstone to determine when to challenge existing ones. Perhaps his greatest contribution to bringing competition to the forefront of the FCC’s mandate came in his work on media modernization.
I’m delighted to add my comments to the chorus of voices honoring Ajit Pai’s remarkable tenure at the Federal Communications Commission. I’ve known Ajit longer than most. We were classmates in law school … let’s just say “many” years ago. Among the other symposium contributors I know of only one—fellow classmate, Tom Nachbar—who can make a similar claim. I wish I could say this gives me special insight into his motivations, his actions, and the significance of his accomplishments, but really it means only that I have endured his dad jokes and interminable pop-culture references longer than most.
TOTM Ajit Pai has been, in my view, the most successful, impactful minority commissioner in the history of the modern regulatory state. And it is that success that has led him to become the most successful and impactful chairman, too.
Much of this symposium celebrates Ajit’s contributions as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and his accomplishments and leadership in that role. And rightly so. But Commissioner Pai, not just Chairman Pai, should also be recognized.
TOTM The technical and business challenges of connecting rural America are different. Rural America needs different things out of its infrastructure than urban America. And the attitudes of both users and those providing service are different here than they are in urban America. Aji Pai gets this.
I was having a conversation recently with a fellow denizen of rural America, discussing how to create opportunities for academics studying the digital divide to get on-the-ground experience with the realities of rural telecommunications. He recounted a story from a telecom policy event in Washington, D.C., from not long ago. The story featured a couple of well-known participants in federal telecom policy as they were talking about how to close the rural digital divide. The punchline of the story was loud speculation from someone in attendance that neither of these bloviating telecom experts had likely ever set foot in a rural town.
TOTM Ajit Pai will step down from his position as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) effective Jan. 20. Beginning Jan. 15, Truth on the Market will host a symposium exploring Pai’s tenure, with contributions from a range of scholars and practitioners.
Ajit Pai will step down from his position as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) effective Jan. 20. Beginning Jan. 15, Truth on the Market will host a symposium exploring Pai’s tenure, with contributions from a range of scholars and practitioners.
Regulatory Comments On behalf of the International Center for Law & Economics, I offer the following reply comments in support of the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Notice . . .
On behalf of the International Center for Law & Economics, I offer the following reply comments in support of the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to expand and enhance the use of the 5.850 – 5.925 GHz spectrum band.
In previously submitted comments, I offered support for the FCC’s proposed reallocation of the lower 45 MHz of the 5.9 GHz band based on the spectrum’s current underuse relative to its value in the context of Wi-Fi. Since those comments were submitted, subsequent studies have estimated that opening the lower 45 MHz of the 5.9 GHz band would result in $28.14 billion in economic value by 2025. These findings lend further support to the FCC’s proposed plan of action. Yet, opposition from elements of the transportation sector persists. Those opponents have offered, broadly, four justifications for delaying, modifying and/or abandoning elements of the FCC’s 5.9 GHz NPRM. ICLE’s reply comments will address and rebut each, in turn.
Click here to read the full comments.
Regulatory Comments ICLE submitted comments to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) on Developing the Administration’s Approach to Consumer Privacy.
Last week, ICLE submitted comments to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) on Developing the Administration’s Approach to Consumer Privacy. Scholars Geoffrey Manne, Kristian Stout, and Dirk Auer urge the agency to avoid legislation mandating tight controls on private companies’ use of consumer data akin to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Although the US does not have a single, omnibus, privacy regulation, this does not mean that the US does not have “privacy law.” In the US, there already exist generally applicable laws at both the federal and state level that provide a wide scope of protection for individuals, including consumer protection laws that apply to companies’ data use and security practices, as well as those that have been developed in common law (property, contract, and tort) and criminal codes.
In addition, there are specific regulations pertaining to certain kinds of information, such as medical records, personal information collected online from children, credit reporting, as well as the use of data in a manner that might lead to certain kinds of illegal discrimination.
Getting regulation right is always difficult, but it is all the more so when confronting evolving technology, inconsistent and varied consumer demand, and intertwined economic effects — all conditions that confront online privacy regulation. Given this complexity, and the limits of our knowledge regarding consumer preferences and business conduct in this area, ICLE’s evaluation suggests that the proper method of regulating privacy is, for now at least, the course that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has historically taken: case-by-case examination of actual privacy harms, without ex ante regulations, coupled with narrow legislation targeted at problematic uses of personal information.
Many (if not most) services on the Internet are offered on the basis that user data can, within certain limits, be used by a firm to enhance its services and support its business model, thereby generating benefits to users. To varying degrees (and with varying degrees of granularity), services offer consumers the opportunity to opt-out of this consent to the use of their data, although in some cases the only way effectively to opt-out is to refrain from using a service at all.
Critics of the US approach to privacy sometimes advocate for a move to an opt-in regime (as is the case in the GDPR). But the problem is that “‘[o]pt-in’ provides no greater privacy protection than ‘opt-out’ but imposes significantly higher costs with dramatically different legal and economic implications.” In staunching the flow of data, opt-in regimes impose both direct and indirect costs on the economy and on consumers, reducing the value of certain products and services not only to the individual who does not opt-in, but to the broader network as a whole. Not surprisingly, these effects fall disproportionately on the relatively poor and the less technology-literate.
U.S. privacy regulators have generally evidenced admirable restraint and assessed the relevant tradeoffs, recognizing that the authorized collection and use of consumer information by data companies confers enormous benefits, even as it entails some risks. Indeed, the overwhelming conclusion of decades of intense scrutiny is that the application of ex ante privacy principles across industries is a fraught exercise as each firm faces a different set of consumer expectations about its provision of innovative services, including privacy protections.
This does not mean that privacy regulation should never be debated, nor that a more prescriptive regime should never be considered. But any such efforts must begin with the collective wisdom of the agencies, scholars, and policy makers that have been operating in this space for decades, and with a deep understanding of the business realities and consumer welfare effects involved.
Read the full comments here.
TOTM It’s fitting that FCC Chairman Ajit Pai recently compared his predecessor’s jettisoning of the FCC’s light touch framework for Internet access regulation without hard evidence . . .
It’s fitting that FCC Chairman Ajit Pai recently compared his predecessor’s jettisoning of the FCC’s light touch framework for Internet access regulation without hard evidence to the Oklahoma City Thunder’s James Harden trade. That infamous deal broke up a young nucleus of three of the best players in the NBA in 2012 because keeping all three might someday create salary cap concerns. What few saw coming was a new TV deal in 2015 that sent the salary cap soaring.
Popular Media Netflix’s latest net neutrality hypocrisy (yes, there have been others. See here and here, for example) involves its long-term, undisclosed throttling of its video traffic on AT&T’s and . . .
Netflix’s latest net neutrality hypocrisy (yes, there have been others. See here and here, for example) involves its long-term, undisclosed throttling of its video traffic on AT&T’s and Verizon’s wireless networks, while it lobbied heavily for net neutrality rules from the FCC that would prevent just such throttling by ISPs.
It was Netflix that coined the term “strong net neutrality,” in an effort to import interconnection (the connections between ISPs and edge provider networks) into the net neutrality fold. That alone was a bastardization of what net neutrality purportedly stood for, as I previously noted:
There is a reason every iteration of the FCC’s net neutrality rules, including the latest, have explicitly not applied to backbone interconnection agreements: Interconnection over the backbone has always been open and competitive, and it simply doesn’t give rise to the kind of discrimination concerns net neutrality is meant to address. That Netflix would prefer not to pay for delivery of its content isn’t surprising. But net neutrality regulations don’t — and shouldn’t — have anything to do with it.
There is a reason every iteration of the FCC’s net neutrality rules, including the latest, have explicitly not applied to backbone interconnection agreements: Interconnection over the backbone has always been open and competitive, and it simply doesn’t give rise to the kind of discrimination concerns net neutrality is meant to address.
That Netflix would prefer not to pay for delivery of its content isn’t surprising. But net neutrality regulations don’t — and shouldn’t — have anything to do with it.
But Netflix did something else with “strong net neutrality.” It tied it to consumer choice:
This weak net neutrality isn’t enough to protect an open, competitive Internet; a stronger form of net neutrality is required. Strong net neutrality additionally prevents ISPs from charging a toll for interconnection to services like Netflix, YouTube, or Skype, or intermediaries such as Cogent, Akamai or Level 3, to deliver the services and data requested by ISP residential subscribers. Instead, they must provide sufficient access to their network without charge. (Emphasis added).
A focus on consumers is laudable, of course, but when the focus is on consumers there’s no reason to differentiate between ISPs (to whom net neutrality rules apply) and content providers entering into contracts with ISPs to deliver their content (to whom net neutrality rules don’t apply).
And Netflix has just showed us exactly why that’s the case.
Netflix can and does engage in management of its streams in order (presumably) to optimize consumer experience as users move between networks, devices and viewers (e.g., native apps vs Internet browser windows) with very different characteristics and limitations. That’s all well and good. But as we noted in our Policy Comments in the FCC’s Open Internet Order proceeding,
In this circumstance, particularly when the content in question is Netflix, with 30% of network traffic, both the network’s and the content provider’s transmission decisions may be determinative of network quality, as may the users’ device and application choices.
As a 2011 paper by a group of network engineers studying the network characteristics of video streaming data from Netflix and YouTube noted:
This is a concern as it means that a sudden change of application or container in a large population might have a significant impact on the network traffic. Considering the very fast changes in trends this is a real possibility, the most likely being a change from Flash to HTML5 along with an increase in the use of mobile devices…. [S]treaming videos at high resolutions can result in smoother aggregate traffic while at the same time linearly increase the aggregate data rate due to video streaming.
Again, a concern with consumers is admirable, but Netflix isn’t concerned with consumers. It’s concerned at most with consumers of Netflix, while they are consuming Netflix. But the reality is that Netflix’s content management decisions can adversely affect consumers overall, including its own subscribers when they aren’t watching Netflix.
And here’s the huge irony. The FCC’s net neutrality rules are tailor-made to guarantee that Netflix will never have any incentive to take these externalities into account in its own decisions. What’s more, they ensure that ISPs are severely hamstrung in managing their networks for the benefit of all consumers, not least because their interconnection deals with large content providers like Netflix are now being closely scrutinized.
It’s great that Netflix thinks it should manage its video delivery to optimize viewing under different network conditions. But net neutrality rules ensure that Netflix bears no cost for overwhelming the network in the process. Essentially, short of building new capacity — at great expense to all ISP subscribers, of course — ISPs can’t do much about it, either, under the rules. And, of course, the rules also make it impossible for ISPs to negotiate for financial help from Netflix (or its heaviest users) in paying for those upgrades.
On top of this, net neutrality advocates have taken aim at usage-based billing and other pricing practices that would help with the problem by enabling ISPs to charge their heaviest users more in order to alleviate the inherent subsidy by normal users that flat-rate billing entails. (Netflix itself, as one of the articles linked above discusses at length, is hypocritically inconsistent on this score).
As we also noted in our OIO Policy Comments:
The idea that consumers and competition generally are better off when content providers face no incentive to take account of congestion externalities in their pricing (or when users have no incentive to take account of their own usage) runs counter to basic economic logic and is unsupported by the evidence. In fact, contrary to such claims, usage-based pricing, congestion pricing and sponsored content, among other nonlinear pricing models, would, in many circumstances, further incentivize networks to expand capacity (not create artificial scarcity).
Some concern for consumers. Under Netflix’s approach consumers get it coming and going: Either their non-Netflix traffic is compromised for the sake of Netflix’s traffic, or they have to pay higher subscription fees to ISPs for the privilege of accommodating Netflix’s ever-expanding traffic loads (4K videos, anyone?) — whether they ever use Netflix or not.
Sometimes, apparently, Netflix throttles its own traffic in order to “help” a few consumers. (That it does so without disclosing the practice is pretty galling, especially given the enhanced transparency rules in the Open Internet Order — something Netflix also advocated for, and which also apply only to ISPs and not to content providers). But its self-aggrandizing advocacy for the FCC’s latest net neutrality rules reveals that its first priority is to screw over consumers, so long as it can shift the blame and the cost to others.
