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The Digital Erosion of Collecting and Ownership

07 Thursday Oct 2021

Posted by Nuetzel in Digital Revolution, Technology

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8-Tracks, Blockbuster, Blockchain, Cassettes, Cloud Storage, Collecting, Crypto-Assets, Digital Assets, DVDs, Electronic Books, Film Collections, Grateful Dead, Hardware Requirements, Kyle Chayka, Microsoft Office, Music Collections, Netflix, NFTs, Non-Fungible Tokens, Ownership Rights, Personal Library, Phonographs, Photo Albums, Physical Media, Rent vs Own, Streaming Content, Use Rights, VCRs

Our material possessions aren’t the most important things in the world, but they are often part of our identities as people. Almost anything qualifies, from the big, expensive stuff like a home or a car, to whatever we find worth keeping. Declutter if you must, but the things that remain have a lot to do with our well being, even if they exist simply as part of our surroundings. They reflect our past, present, and hopes for the future, and they embody important aspects of our interests and passions.

I don’t doubt that individuals of high spiritual or metaphysical consciousness are able to transcend the desire for material goods. Very well, though for most of us, certain physical possessions matter. People collect things like matchbook covers or fine art because they are important in one way or another. Great works and quirky novelties all have their place… with someone.

We’ve witnessed an accelerating erosion in the personal art of “collecting” certain kinds of things, however, and that is the main subject of this post. It draws heavily on Kyle Chayka’s excellent piece, “The Digital Death of Collecting”. There are at least two aspects of this decline. One has to do with digital storage, which eliminates physical media and presents a new set of administrative issues. The other strand has to do with a loss of ownership. That’s a distinct phenomenon, but it has probably been driven by digital technology, at least to this point.

Losing Physical Control

Much of the entertainment we experience today is delivered electronically. Historically, we used physical storage media of various kinds: books, vinyl records, CDs, DVDs, books on tape, etc… so it was (and still is) possible to accumulate and possess a physical collection of music, for example. It can be fun to document those collections, like my old bootleg Grateful Dead concert tapes. Now, actually owning a collection of physical music media is an anachronism to many (mostly younger) people. Instead, their favorite music is stored on a device, a server, or “in the Cloud”. Often, without a shred of awareness, this has led to a kind of interference with the individual’s ability to possess and control a whole class of property closely associated with the cultural and intellectual self.

For example, with respect to physical media and storage, we used to shoot photos and, once developed, we’d curate them and put our favorites into photo albums. However, for the better part of the past two decades, phones have allowed us to snap photos and take videos more or less indiscriminately. I periodically transfer my photos to an electronic hard drive, with minimal curation, where they are automatically assigned names with inscrutable combinations of letters and numbers. I’ve been doing it for years now, and it’s a mess. How long will it take me to find a particular photo? Even one photo from a particular event? What if the drive fails?

I need to back them up, of course, but that was the original purpose of the external hard drive! As I updated and transitioned to new computers over the years, I failed to maintain a complete set on the new laptop hard drives. Now, they reside only on the external hard drive. Sadly, in the end, many of us are simply unable or unwilling to implement better record management practices. My “collection” of photos has been neglected. I could try to rename these images descriptively and sort them into folders, but digging into it now seems almost an insurmountable task.

To some extent, the advent of digital players had the same impact on music collections. Some listeners never made the transition and consigned themselves to the use of older media and technologies, despite the increasing difficulty and expense of finding recordings. But they kept their physical collections active, which is a gratifying thing. Those who made the transition grappled with new issues in managing their “collections”, often without the satisfaction of arranging and beholding the physical media. Granted, this isn’t always an either/or proposition, but doing both requires extra effort.

Similar transitions took place with digitized movies and reading material. I have a small movie collection, mostly movie musicals, animated children’s films, and a few cult films and classics. Not all are on DVD, and I haven’t added anything to this little trove in years. I still rent discs from Netflix, but like most people, streaming accounts for a growing share of my viewing. As for books, it’s less common today to see handsome collections of books arranged on shelves, but some doggedly attempt to maintain personal libraries, even if they aren’t all bound hardcovers.

Loss of Ownership

The other strand of our evolving relationship with digitized entertainment has to do with ownership itself. Today, we often purchase what amount to listening, viewing, or other “use rights”. This has sealed Chayka’s “Digital Death of Collecting”. Here’s how he sums it up:

“My lostness comes from the sense that our cultural collections are not wholly our own anymore. In the era of algorithmic feeds, it’s as if the bookshelves have started changing shape on their own in real time, shuffling some material to the front and downplaying the rest like a sleight-of-hand magician trying to make you pick a specific card — even as they let you believe it’s your own choice. And this lack of agency is undermining our connections to the culture that we love.”

Again, books are a case in point. Chayka notes that building a personal library is an expression of one’s intellectual history and interests. Yet today, with electronically delivered reading material sans physical media, you don’t really “own” the books you purchase. This blogger states the case well:

“As I’ve tried to point out before, both publishers and distributors like Amazon have spent the past decade or so removing rights that we used to have when books were physical property, and were something that you actually bought — along with the right to resell and/or lend them to whomever you wished, whenever you wished. Those rights no longer exist, which is why it’s better to think of an ebook purchase as an agreement to rent access under specific terms rather than an actual acquisition of something tangible.”

Free To Rent … and Pay As You Go

Subscriptions are replacing ownership in all sorts of contexts, and the use rights they confer are obviously of limited duration. For example, I was surprised when I realized that I could no longer “purchase” Microsoft Office and then download and install it to my computer. Instead, I have to buy annual subscriptions to continue to use it. Now, I don’t really “collect” software, unless the plethora of apps I’ve downloaded to my phone qualifies. Also, I understand that software becomes obsolete, so my “ownership” of Office was really equivalent to an indefinite but limited rental period. Maybe one-year subscriptions will be a better deal, though I have my doubts.

Renting certainly isn’t new in the “film space”. Blockbuster was a huge success for a time. And again, I get two discs at a time from Netflix to this day. People can still “collect” videos, but I suspect it’s not quite as common today in terms of collecting physical media.

I’ll always argue that renting is an economically rational alternative to homeownership. Same with leasing vs. owning a car, or anything else. And people often take a measure of pride even in things they rent. These own vs. rent choices and their relative values depend on one’s circumstances in life as well as one’s preference for control over the items in question.

Our Carts Runneth Over

A huge upside of all these changes is that we’re enjoying an astonishing array of choices as well as unprecedented convenience. (We can argue about the quality of the art, but that’s for another day.) In fact, the scarcity of new “collectibles” in the categories I’ve mentioned here might not be such bad news to collectors who’ve been at it for a while. After all, their existing collections might gain value. However, some forms of storage media might require technical or mechanical skill on the part of the collector. That’s because they have rigid hardware requirements. Eight-track players? Cassette tapes? VCRs? Who supports them? Yes, you can still buy a phonograph, but finding compatible “content” can be challenging. For the rest of us, streaming digital content frees us from those requirements and their inevitable obsolescence.

Unfortunately, our relationship to so much of our personal entertainment bounty seems more ephemeral than in the past. Streaming music and films is fine, but I’m much less likely to “burn them”, and ownership is an all but forgotten possibility. Like Chayka, I find the loss of owned, physical collections that has accompanied the digital revolution lamentable, not to mention the loss of control. I truly believe that if publishers ever quit printing physical books we’ll be poorer for it. But I’m not a complete technophobe, and I think there’s promise in recent developments in blockchain technology that might restore our ability as consumers to own more encompassing rights to digital assets.

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are essentially digital assets of almost any kind, with ownership documented in the blockchain. Some of the most publicized NFTs we’ve seen thus far are notoriously lacking in the actual rights they confer to the buyer. However, advances in standards are enabling the creation of more robust NFTs. There is no reason, in principle, why a consumer could not possess an NFT documenting ownership for a digital copy of a particular film, piece of music, e-book, or any other form one might collect. That might solve the ownership issue if and when crypto assets gain more acceptance. Individuals who are especially proud of their collections of NFTs could produce physical tokens to represent each NFT for display, if only for themselves to gaze upon lovingly. These could be plaques, for example, or the physical tokens could look like DVDs or books! Granted, it’s not the same as a real collection of physical media, but it might serve an emotional purpose.

Net Neutrality: Degradation For All

20 Tuesday Jun 2017

Posted by Nuetzel in Net neutrality, Regulation

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Ajit Pai, Bronwyn Howell, Common Carriers, Consumer Surplus, Content Providers, Coyote Blog, FCC, Internet Backbone, ISPs, Net Neutrality, Netflix, Network Capacity, Network Congestion, Oligopoly, Price Discrimination, Tiered Rates, Tim Wu, Usage-Based Pricing, Warren Meyer

The FCC recently voted to reverse its earlier actions on so-called net neutrality, which would have treated internet service providers (ISPs) as “common carriers” and subjected them to detailed federal regulation of their services, pricing, and profits. Many believe net neutrality would ensure a sort of fairness and nondiscrimination on the internet, but it is actually a destructive regulatory regime under which certain firms are allowed to extract economic rents from the efforts of others. Warren Meyer has a nice take on this at Coyote Blog:

“Net Neutrality is one of those Orwellian words that mean exactly the opposite of what they sound like…. What [it] actually means is that certain people … want to tip the balance in this negotiation towards the content creators ….  Netflix, for example, takes a huge amount of bandwidth that costs ISP’s a lot of money to provide. But Netflix doesn’t want the ISP’s to be be able to charge for this extra bandwidth Netflix uses – Netflix wants to get all the benefit of taking up the lion’s share of ISP bandwidth investments without having to pay for it. Net Neutrality is corporate welfare for content creators.“

I made the same point almost three years ago in “The Non-Neutrality of Network Hogs“. Meyer emphasizes that in the net-neutrality fight, the primary tension is between content creators and ISPs (and transport providers), but it is like any other battle to capture the gains from a vertical supply chain. Think of suppliers of goods versus shippers, for example, or traditional publishers versus delivery services, or oil extraction versus refining. Ultimately, all of the various parties must cover their costs in order to survive, and obviously each would like to capture a larger share of the value from its stage of the production process. In a series of arms-length transactions, one might assume that their shares would correspond roughly to the value they add to the final product, but things are more complicated than that. Much depends on the competitive state of the market and on the cost structures faced by different parties.

While the ISPs are often said to exercise monopoly power, there are few if any local markets in which that is actually the case, even in rural areas. Almost everywhere in the U.S., local internet markets could be better described as oligopolistic: there are at least a couple of rival firms (and alternatives for consumers), even if the technologies are sometimes radically different, so some competition exists. The same is true of the internet backbone.

Obviously, content providers compete with one another in a large sense, but many popular forms of content are unique and consumers demand access to them through their ISPs. Therefore, some content providers exercise a degree of monopoly power. And they might also require a lot of bandwidth.

The nature of the costs faced by ISPs and content providers is quite different. The latter have a much lower proportion of fixed costs than ISPs, who must invest in network capacity. Ultimately, the costs of providing that capacity must be priced. At first blush, it seems natural for users of capacity to be billed proportionately, but allocating those costs over customers and over time is a complex undertaking. Like all problems in economics, however, network usage involves a scarce resource. A large increment to demand can lead to network congestion and higher costs, not only directly to the ISPs but to users experiencing a degradation in the speed and quality of their service. ISPs have traditionally had the flexibility to negotiate with large content providers, reaching mutually agreeable terms. That’s what brought us to the state of today’s internet, and most observers would say that it’s pretty damn good!

It is the network that makes all of these wonderful services possible. The ISPs provide and maintain that network, and they must provide for expansion of that network as traffic grows. It is important that ISPs have adequate incentives to do so. However, the form of regulation to which so-called common carriers are subjected is known historically for its failure to provide good incentives. That history goes back as far as 130 years in transportation and about 80 years in telecommunications. This is why many analysts, and FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, contend that common carrier status for ISPs, and “net neutrality”, would lead to shortfalls in network capacity and a deterioration in the quality of service. It would also reward large content providers (think Netflix) in the short term at the expense of ISPs, essentially giving the former access to the existing network at less than cost. That’s the whole idea for industry advocates of net netrality, of course. But in the end, net neutrality is a shortsighted goal, even for the content providers.

The content providers have made every effort to propagandize the public, stoking fears that the ISPs are treating certain kinds of traffic unfairly. Without net neutrality, would ISPs unfairly discriminate against certain kinds of content? Or against certain types of users? Price discrimination is one of the primary criticisms of the presumed behavior of ISPs in the absence of net neutrality. Economist Bronwyn Howell points out that price discrimination is not unusual, however, and is not necessarily undesirable. Indeed, consumers of internet, telephone, mobile, and cable TV services seem to prefer certain forms of price discrimination! Consumers with heavy usage who purchase flat rate monthly internet access pay a lower charge per Gb than light users. Consumers who purchase “bundles” of internet and voice service may benefit from price discrimination relative to those who choose not to bundle their services. Strictly usage-based pricing would prevent price discrimination on this basis, but few would advocate the abolition of bundled offers, which provide benefits in terms of flexibility of use and predictability of cost, yielding net welfare gains for many consumers at no incremental cost to others. Like all voluntary trade, these are positive sum transactions: consumers capture more  “surplus” value while ISPs earn a greater contribution to the fixed costs of the network.

When ISPs charge a data rate based on usage, consumers face a positive marginal cost on incremental data. As usage increases, its marginal value to the consumer declines; the consumer will not use data beyond the point at which its value equals the data rate they pay. That places a cap on consumer surplus (the area above the price and below the consumer’s demand curve). When the consumer faces a zero marginal cost (an unlimited data plan), their usage rises to the point at which its marginal value is zero. The total amount of “surplus” in that scenario is larger, and it is possible for an ISP to split the gain with the consumer by offering a price for unlimited usage. Thus, as long as the network capacity is in place, both parties are made better off! If not, the practice can lead to congestion, but competition for users often dictates that such packages be offered.

Especially in the presence of positive network externalities, it makes no sense for the ISPs, as a group, to price users or traffic out of the market, unless they are punished for doing otherwise at below cost. As always, pricing is an exercise in balancing costs with the benefits to potential buyers. It should remain a private and unfettered exercise ending only in trades that are mutually beneficial.

And what of network capacity and the big content providers? At the “price discrimination” link above, Howell says:

“… available bandwidth allowed Netflix to happen, not the other way around. But now, as Netflix comes to dominate existing bandwidth, leading to higher costs, it is causing externalities (delays) and higher costs (ISP fees are now rising in real terms in some markets) to pay for new capacity.“

Should the ISPs charge all customers higher rates in order to manage growth in traffic and fund new capacity? How can they allocate costs to the cost-causers? Usage-based data rates are one simple alternative. Tiered rates would act to minimize the extent to which light users are penalized. ISPs have also negotiated with individual content providers directly, reaching agreements to compensate ISPs for access to their customers. Tim Wu, the Columbia Law professor credited with coining the term “net neutrality”, was quoted at the last link bemoaning these types of deals:

“‘I think it is going to be bad for consumers,’ he added, because such costs are often passed through to the customer.“

Well, yes! Netflix charges its customers, and it will attempt to recover these payments for network capacity. Streaming is an integral component of the service they offer, and they cannot do it without the ISPs. Would Wu propose that the pipes be provided at less than cost?

Some have said that it is more economically efficient for ISPs to charge users directly for incremental short-run network “externalities” caused by large data demands. (Conceptually, it is better to think of these costs as long-run marginal costs of network expansion.) It may be that a tiered rate structure can approximate the optimal solution, and packages are often tiered by download speed. Nevertheless, passing costs along to large content providers is a viable approach to allocating costs as well.

Another argument is that small content providers cannot afford these payments. However, if they don’t generate a significant amount of traffic, they probably won’t have to negotiate special deals. If they grow to require a large share of the “pipe”, it would indicate that they have passed a market test. Ultimately, their customers should pay the costs of providing the capacity in one way or another.

Net neutrality and regulation of ISPs is the wrong approach to encouraging the growth and value delivered by the internet. It would stifle incentives to provide the needed capacity and to develop new network technologies. We certainly didn’t get here by treating the ISPs like public utilities. Rather, the process was facilitated by the freedom to experiment technologically and contractually. ISPs are well aware that the value of their networks are enhanced by ubiquity. Affordable access to a broad share of the population is in their best interest. In the end, consumers are sovereign and should be the sole arbiters of the value offered by ISPs and content providers. Regulators will promise to protect us, but the inevitable result will be a market hampered by rules that degrade the network, leading to substandard service and a less vibrant internet.

Parks, Prisons and Profits

30 Friday Sep 2016

Posted by Nuetzel in Government, Profit Motive

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Ann Althouse, Bernie Sanders, Coyote Blog, Cronyism, Hillary Clinton, incentives, Morality of Profit, Netflix, Occupancy Guarantees, Orange Is the New Black, Private Operators, Private Park Operations, Private Prisons, Profit Motive, Reason Foundation, Sasha Volokh, The Volokh Conspiracy, Warren Meyer

img_3117

One of my favorite pastimes is tallying the economic and social death wishes espoused by leftists, populists and other statists. A frequent theme of their entreaties is the presumed ugliness of profits sought by private businesses. Their expressed distaste is usually couched in terms suggesting that profits are a certainty, which of course they are not. Profits are always at risk unless protected by government. The critics are sometimes focused on lines of business that involve public assets or a supposed public purpose, such as education. Two other examples of that nature recently came up in my news feed: privately-operated prisons and private management of public parks.

The complaints heard about these kinds of business operations are based on ill-founded notions about the function of profit: that it is appropriate for resources to earn rewards only in some endeavors and not others, regardless of the property invested and the risks assumed by the enterprise. Another fallacy is that somehow, as if by magic, the motives and competence of public employees are beyond question. In fact, the ineffective and sometimes perverse incentives faced by public institutions and employees tend to undermine effective performance. That’s the underlying reason why privatization of services is often in the public interest. The detractors of profit usually rely on anecdotal evidence of poor performance by private managers without any objective basis of comparison.

Warren Meyer at Coyote Blog discusses the common misconception held by many regarding the relative morality of profits and wages. His comments are in the context of the company he owns and manages, which operates public parks under contract with the US Forest Service (USFS) and other public agencies, collecting revenue via entry and camping fees. Meyer (and I) find it astonishing that the aversion to private park operations is so common:

“The most typical statement I hear from USFS employees that summarizes this opposition — and it is quite common to hear it — is that ‘It is wrong to make a profit on public lands.’ …. This general distaste for profit, which is seen as “dirty” in contrast to wages which are relatively ‘clean’ (at least up to some number beyond which they are dirty again), is not limited to the USFS or even to government agencies in general, but permeates much of the public.“

Meyer goes on to describe a conversation he had with a USFS District Ranger. I provide a few excerpts below:

“Me: If you think it’s wrong to make money on public lands, I assume you must volunteer, else you too would be making money on public lands.
Ranger: No, of course I get paid.
Me: Well, I know what I make for profit in your District, and I have a good guess what your salary probably is, and I can assure you that you make at least twice as much as me on these public lands.
Ranger: But that is totally different.
Me: How? … My profit is similar to your wage in that it is the way I get paid for my effort on this land — efforts that are generally entirely in harmony with yours as we are both trying to serve visitors and protect the natural resources here. But unlike your wage, my profit is also a return on the investment I have made. Every truck, uniform, and tool we use comes out of my profit, whereas you get all the tools you need paid for by your employer above and beyond your salary. Further, your salary is virtually guaranteed to you, short of some staggering malfeasance. Even if you do a bad job you likely would just get shunted to a less interesting staff position at the same salary, rather than fired. On the other hand if I do a bad job, or if one of my employees slips up, or even if some absolutely random occurrence entirely outside my control occurs (like, say, a flood that closes our operations) my profit can completely evaporate, or even turn into a loss. So like you, I get paid for my efforts here on public lands, but I have to take risk and make investments that aren’t required of you. So what about that makes my profit less honorable than your wage?
Ranger: Working on public lands should be a public service, not for profit
Me: Well, I think you are starting to make the argument again that you should be volunteering and not taking a salary. But leaving that aside, why is profit inconsistent with service to the public?”

Privatization is not inconsistent with service to the public except under one circumstance highlighted by Meyer in a postscript. The ranger might have asked:

“How do we know your profits are not just the rents from a corrupt, cronyist government contracting process?“

Of course, if that were true, it would not necessarily be worse than a park operated exclusively by a public agency with no incentive to operate efficiently. The key here is to have effective review of the contracting process and good performance incentives in place. Meyer notes that his company serves millions of visitors each year at high service levels for a cost that is low relative to government-operated parks, and the company receives excellent reviews. More power to him! Profits are not synonymous with graft. Unfortunately, the purely emotional “feeling” that profits are immoral or dishonorable is amplified by the public nature of park assets, and that idea won’t ever be purged from the populist mind.

Ann Althouse brought similar thoughts to mind in describing Hillary Clinton’s weakly-reasoned condemnation of privately-operated prisons. Here’s Hillary at the first presidential debate early this week, after expressing approval of the Obama Administration’s decision to phase out most privately-operated federal prisons:

“You shouldn’t have a profit motivation to fill prison cells with young Americans.“

You can almost hear Althouse, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin, laughing at the idea that operators of private correctional facilities have any ability “to fill prison cells”. That’s not how our justice system works, Hillary! Some argue that “occupancy guarantees” in private prison contracts give prosecutors an incentive to seek harsh sentences, but that is a tenuous argument, especially with prisons generally over-crowded as they are. And it isn’t as if private prisons are free of oversight. Althouse contends that Hillary Clinton’s position is a concession to the left made necessary by earlier outrage that the Clinton campaign had accepted contributions from the private prison industry, itself prompted by a Bernie Sanders’ attack on that point.

Reason Magazine commented on Sanders’ condemnation of private prisons last year, which then housed only about 12 percent of the federal prison population. Reason noted that closing private federal prisons would contribute to over-crowding at publicly-operated facilities. Sanders also proposed forcing state and local governments to close private prisons under their jurisdictions within two years. Not only would that action ignore objective measures of performance and cost, it would violate established contracts and constitute an outrageous overreach of federal authority.

The Administration’s decision to phase out private prisons was subjected to an even-handed critique by Sasha Volokh (younger brother of Eugene) in August. Volokh covers the evidence on costs and quality of private versus publicly-operated prisons. He finds that the DOJ memo announcing the decision to phase out private operators exaggerates cost and quality differences that favor government operations, and discounts evidence that favors private prisons. Reminiscent of Warren Meyer’s notes on privately-operated parks, Volokh stresses the importance of creating appropriate incentives for operators. Current quality incentives are weak, and he believes there is vast room for improvement:

“It might seem surprising, but private prisons have almost never been evaluated on their performance and compensated on that basis. …. In light of that, maybe it’s even surprising that private prisons have done as well as they have in the comparative studies. Be that as it may, the advent of performance-based contracting could open up possibilities for substantial quality improvements. This could work in the public sector too (bonus payments for public prison wardens?), but the private sector is probably better situated to take advantage of monetary incentives.“

The Reason Foundation published a report earlier this year entitled “Private Prisons: Quality Corrections at a Lower Cost“. The study reveals the leftist critique of private prisons to be a sham. Here are the two major takeaways:

“Private prisons save money-10 to 15 percent average savings on operations costs, based on fourteen independent cost comparison studies.

Private prisons provide at least the same quality services that government prisons do-based on six independent quality comparison studies, rates of American Correctional Association accreditation, recidivism comparison studies, contract terminations, and prisoner and correctional officer lawsuits.“

People often get their “facts” from questionable sources. As to privately-operated correctional facilities, I’ve heard critics state that people should watch the fictional Netflix serial “Orange Is the New Black” to gain a proper understanding of the horrors of private prisons. And many seem eager to accept that narrative without any knowledge of the facts. That’s probably because they have been taught that profits are “dirty”, that public purposes like the operations of parks and prisons are so pure of public purpose that private operators can have no legitimate role, and that government operation can be counted upon for quality and efficiency. Now doesn’t that sound oxymoronic?

 

Netflix: Oops… No, Let’s Not Regulate The Internet

10 Tuesday Mar 2015

Posted by Nuetzel in Net neutrality

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Broadband ISPs, Common Carrier, Croney Capitalism, FCC, Geoffrey Manne, John Perry Barlow, L. Gordon Crovitz, Net Neutrality, Netflix, Reed Hastings, regulation, The Grateful Dead, Wall Street Journal

john-perry-barlow

Netflix was heralded only recently as a strong supporter of net neutrality, but the company has changed its position in the wake the the FCC’s decision to reclassify broadband ISPs as common carriers. The link goes to a Google search page. The top article listed there should be ungated, from L. Gordon Crovitz in the Wall Street Journal. I have posted a number of times on the misguided policy of net neutrality (see here, here, here, and here). While I hesitate to post on the topic again, I think a short description of the Netflix flip-flop, or should I say its “evolving position“, is worthwhile, and especially with a few quotes from the Crovitz article.

Crovitz notes that Netflix videos “take up one-third of broadband nationwide at peak times.” The company’s support for so-called neutrality seemed grounded in its frustration at the prospect of having to negotiate for massive use of resources controlled and sometimes owned by the ISPs. Here’s Crovitz:

“Today Netflix is a poster child for crony capitalism. When CEO Reed Hastings lobbied for Internet regulations, all he apparently really wanted was for regulators to tilt the scales in his direction with service providers. Or as Geoffrey Manne of the International Center for Law and Economics put it in Wired: ‘Did we really just enact 300 pages of legally questionable, enormously costly, transformative rules just to help Netflix in a trivial commercial spat?‘”

Indeed! But the powers at Netflix have had a revelation:

“Net-neutrality advocates oppose ‘fast lanes’ on the Internet, arguing they put startups at a disadvantage. Netflix could not operate without fast lanes and even built its own content-delivery network to reduce costs and improve quality. This approach will now be subject to the ‘just and reasonable’ test. The FCC could force Netflix to open its proprietary delivery network to competitors and pay broadband providers a ‘fair’ price for its share of usage.

There’s no need for the FCC to override the free-market agreements that make the Internet work so well. Fast lanes like Netflix’s saved the Internet from being overwhelmed, and there is nothing wrong with the ‘zero cap’ approach Netflix is using in Australia. Consumers benefit from lower-priced services.”

I will leave you with my favorite part of the Crovitz piece:

“Last week John Perry Barlow, the Grateful Dead lyricist-turned-Internet-evangelist, participated in a conference call of Internet pioneers opposed to the FCC treating the Internet as a utility. He called the regulatory step ‘singular arrogance.’

In 1996 Mr. Barlow’s ‘Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace’ helped inspire a bipartisan consensus for the open Internet: ‘Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.’“

Big Daddy Wants To Neutralize Your Net

09 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by Nuetzel in Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

AEI, Bureaucracy, central planning, Common Carrier, Cronyism, Don Boudreaux, FCC, Google, Internet REgulation, ISPs, Jeffrey Eisenach, Market Solutions, Net Neutrality, Netflix, Peter Suderman, Reason, Ronald Coase, Tom Wheeler, Wired

Net-Neutrality

Once again, President Obama is trying his hand as populist candyman, now pressing the FCC to adopt “net neutrality” rules for regulating internet service providers (ISPs) as common carriers. Net neutrality refers to regulations on ISPs that would prohibit different treatment of different types of internet content, matters that are better left to market participants. Obama has no idea what he’s doing or who he’ll be hurting (hint: internet users of all stripes). The candy is an illusion. Peter Suderman’ has an aptly titled article on this topic at Reason: “Will 2015 Be the Year the FCC Regulates the Internet Back to 1934?” He offers some background on the history of U.S. telecommunications regulation and explains the context within which FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and the Commission will deal with the issue. Suderman closes with this thought:

“If Wheeler does take this route (reclassification of ISPs as common carriers], as he now seems to determined (sic), we’ll end up with an Internet that is more regulated, more subject to regulatory uncertainty in the near-term, and more like a public utility from another era than an information delivery service for the modern age. It’ll be 2015—but for the Internet, it’ll be 1934 all over again.”

Wired also gives its perspective but implies that Wheeler is seeking ways to reclassify the ISPs, impose neutrality rules, while also creating sufficient exceptions to mollify the ISPs, avoiding litigation as well as market disruption. That would be nice as far as it goes.

Net neutrality is a misnomer, as Sacred Cow Chips has discussed on two previous occasions in “The Non-Neutrality of Network Hogs“, and “Net Neutrality: A Tangled Web“. A lowlight is the corporate cronyism inherent in calls for net neutrality. The biggest beneficiaries are not consumers, but large content providers such as Netflix and Google, though the latter has altered its position on neutrality now that it is entering the market as an ISP. Another lowlight is the disincentive for network expansion created by forced subsidies to the large content providers, who are extremely heavy users of internet capacity.

Jeffrey Eisenach at AEI picks apart the arguments in favor of internet regulation. He also counters assertions that consumers are likely to benefit from internet regulation. Here are two choice quotes:

“And while much is made of consumers’ limited choices, the broadband market is actually less concentrated than the markets for search engines, social networks, and over-the-top video services: discriminatory regulation of ISPs cannot be justified on the basis of market power.”

“Finally, there’s the argument about fast lanes and slow lanes, or, in regulatory jargon, “paid prioritization.” The simple reality is that edge providers like Netflix require prioritization for their services to work. It’s just the “paid” part they don’t like.”

Finally, Don Boudreaux provides two relevant quotes on regulation, one from the great Ronald Coase, along with some of his own thoughts. I close with Boudreaux’s summation:

“Government imposition of “net neutrality” will substitute bureaucrats’ politically poisoned judgments on what are and what are not appropriate business practices for the market-tested judgments of legions of suppliers competing for the patronage of hundreds of millions – indeed, often billions – of consumers.“

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Ominous The Spirit

Ominous The Spirit is an artist that makes music, paints, and creates photography. He donates 100% of profits to charity.

Passive Income Kickstart

onlyfinance.net/

TLC Cholesterol

Nintil

To estimate, compare, distinguish, discuss, and trace to its principal sources everything

kendunning.net

The future is ours to create.

DCWhispers.com

Hoong-Wai in the UK

A Commonwealth immigrant's perspective on the UK's public arena.

Marginal REVOLUTION

Small Steps Toward A Much Better World

Stlouis

Watts Up With That?

The world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change

Aussie Nationalist Blog

Commentary from a Paleoconservative and Nationalist perspective

American Elephants

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The View from Alexandria

In advanced civilizations the period loosely called Alexandrian is usually associated with flexible morals, perfunctory religion, populist standards and cosmopolitan tastes, feminism, exotic cults, and the rapid turnover of high and low fads---in short, a falling away (which is all that decadence means) from the strictness of traditional rules, embodied in character and inforced from within. -- Jacques Barzun

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How economics, morality, and markets combine

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