"So, I've seen this meme out there before and finally put in the effort to do a thorough debunking of it.
TL;DR
If you get your information from Reddit, you’re gonna have a bad time. It’s all cherry picked hyperbole.
So, off we go to the races.
“2005 - Madison River Communications was blocking VOIP services. The FCC put a stop to it.”
- This is because the ISP was both a holdover telephone (a Title II classification) provider and an ISP (a consequence of ISPs being regional monopolies, which the NN Title II classification exacerbates). In total, 200 customers were affected, Vonage filed suit with the FCC, and a settlement was reached. End of story, no NN rules necessary.
“2005 - Comcast was denying access to p2p services without notifying customers.”
- One can argue as to whether Comcast should have notified customers but 2005 was the height of p2p file sharing when media and music companies were on the backs of ISPs like horny monkeys to get them to stop people from “stealing” content. This was Comcast’s solution, perhaps ill guided, to the state created problem of IP. This is why you used to get emails from your ISP directly about complaints of pirating, because the IP holders kept looking at ISPs as facilitators and accomplices and threatened legal action if they didn’t do something to stop it. Luckily, with all the changes to media in the last few years, this practice has all but disappeared.
“2007-2009 AT&T was having Skype and other VOIPs blocked because they didn’t like there was competition for their cellphones.”
- This was a decision by Apple, not AT&T. The iPhone was just released in 2007 and you’ll notice there was not a version of Skype available on the Apple App Store for a long time. This was because Apple, not AT&T, was blocking it from being there and eventually allowed a Skype app there so long as it was wi-fi only (just like FaceTime would eventually be, more on that one in a bit).
“2011 - MetroPCS tried to block all streaming except youtube. (Edit: they actually sued the FCC over this)”
- MetroPCS offered plans that explicitly stated they would block all streaming, so as to offer customers a bare bones data plan at a cheap rate. They sued the FCC because just before Christmas in 2010, the FCC passed Net Neutrality rules for mobile carriers restricting traffic discrimination. The FCC declared MetroPCS’s plans to be in violation (even though customers were able to choose full data plans) and MetroPCS sued the FCC because the FCC left a hole for “reasonable network management” to justify traffic blocking which is what MetroPCS claimed it was doing.
Verizon filed a joint suit with MetroPCS for the same reason. The verdict is at the bottom of this comment.
“2011-2013 - AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon were blocking access to Google Wallet because it competed with their bullshit. Edit: this one happened literally months after the trio were busted collaborating with Google to block apps from the android marketplace”
- That’s called competition, get over it. This has nothing to do with Net Neutrality as it is about an APP, not about network traffic. To this day I don’t hear anybody bitching that Android Pay and Apple Pay are not available on the competing platform. I don’t hear anybody bitching about how Fox and CBS have exclusive NFL deals and how nobody else can air the NFL games without cable. These three companies were part of something called ISIS, which became known as Softcard (thanks to Middle East ISIS screwing up their name). Go figure…Softcard was shutdown March 31, 2015 and was replaced by Google Wallet (which became Android Pay) for all Android devices.
“2012 - Verizon was demanding google block tethering apps on android because it let owners avoid their $20 tethering fee. This was despite guaranteeing they wouldn’t do that as part of a winning bid on an airwaves auction. (Edit: they were fined $1.25 million over this)
- Correct, Verizon violated the terms of a contract they signed and they paid a fine for it. No Net Neutrality necessary (not to mention NN wouldn’t have stopped this since again this was a matter of manipulating the applications on the phone, not network traffic itself).
“2012 - AT&T tried to block access to FaceTime unless customers paid more money.”
- Not true in the slightest. Up until June of 2012, Apple had restricted, via the application itself, FaceTime to WiFi only calling. In June 2012, Apple updated FaceTime to be able to use the wireless data network. Just one year prior, January of 2011, AT&T had lost their exclusivity of the iPhone but as a result of having that exclusivity for so many years still had more than 80% of iPhone users on their network. Their concern was that a flood of FaceTime users on their network would have unforeseeable consequences on network behavior, so they placed initial restrictions on FaceTime use on the data network. Specifically those restrictions were that if you had a capped data plan, you could use FaceTime (with the expectation that as someone with a capped plan, you will be conservative in your use of FaceTime compared with other apps that use data) and if you had an unlimited plan, you were still restricted to using FaceTime over WiFi only.
Over the next 6 months, AT&T was making changes and adapting to the traffic flow of FaceTime and in less than a year had opened FaceTime up on the data network to all users of all plans without any FCC interference.
“2013 - Verizon literally stated that the only thing stopping them from favoring some content providers over other providers were the net neutrality rules in place.”
- This stems from the case of Verizon v FCC where Verizon sued the FCC stating that the existing rules at the time applied only to Title II carriers and Verizon did not fall under that category.
“Verizon argued that the FCC’s order violated the company’s First Amendment right to free speech, claiming the company has the right to block, slow or prioritize content for a fee as it chooses. In response to a question from the judges about favoring some websites over others, Helgi Walker, Verizon’s lawyer, responded, “I’m authorized to state from my client today that but for these [FCC] rules we would be exploring those types of arrangements.””
https://www.thenation.com/.../verizon-fcc-and-what-you.../
The question is, are they wrong? Why should anyone get to tell a service provider what they will provide? We are back to “bake the cake” arguments. Should a newspaper be forced to publish every story, every advertisement that someone solicits them to publish? Should a book publisher not have the option to say “yes” or “no” to books of specific content?
The courts ultimately ruled in Verizon's favor."
- Sean Harcourt
I don't know anything about Net Neutrality, but if I wanted to know I would first look for economists on a cost/benefit analysis, I would be suspicious of anyone who seems to be on a good vs. evil crusade, and survey for social pressures to be a part of a bandwagon. The pro net neutrality side may well be right, but they're hitting all the ideological tones of religious believers. It leaves my skeptic senses tingling.
For more smart things on Net Neutrality, also try this man's thread on Twitter
