Wall Street Journal Upset That Wall Street Isn't Upset About Net Neutrality
from the isn't-the-market-always-right? dept
A few weeks ago, after it was more or less confirmed that the FCC was going forward with full Title II reclassification of broadband, we noted that the stocks of the big broadband companies actually went up suggesting that Wall Street actually knows that reclassification won't really impact broadband companies, despite what they've been saying publicly. Perhaps this is partly because those same companies have been telling Wall Street that the rule change won't have an impact.However, for the Wall Street Journal -- which has become weirdly, obsessively, anti-net neutrality -- this is an abomination. The newspaper has spent months trying to whip everyone into a frenzy about how evil net neutrality is, using some of the most blatantly wrong arguments around. Just a few days ago, the WSJ turned to its former publisher, now columnist, L. Gordon Crovitz to spread as much misinformation as possible. This is the same L. Gordon Crovitz who a few years ago wrote such a ridiculously wrong article on the history of the internet that basically everyone shoved each other aside to detail how he mangled the history. He, bizarrely, insisted that the government had no role in the creation of the internet. Crovitz also has a history of being wrong (and woefully uninformed) about surveillance and encryption. It's difficult to understand why the WSJ allows him to continue writing pieces that are so frequently factually challenged.
In this latest piece, Crovitz suggests that Ted Cruz didn't go far enough in comparing Obamacare to net neutrality, arguing that net neutrality is even "worse."
The permissionless Internet, which allows anyone to introduce a website, app or device without government review, ends this week.Um, no, actually, the reverse. The rules say that no website or app needs to get permission. The government isn't going to be reviewing anything, other than anti-consumer practices by the large ISPs.
Bureaucrats can review the fairness of Google's search results, Facebook's news feeds and news sites' links to one another and to advertisers. BlackBerry is already lobbying the FCC to force Apple and Netflix to offer apps for BlackBerry’s unpopular phones. Bureaucrats will oversee peering, content-delivery networks and other parts of the interconnected network that enables everything from Netflix and YouTube to security drones and online surgery.None of this is true. The BlackBerry thing isn't real. It's a stupid political stunt cooked up by the telcos to try to make the new rules look bad. But the rules do not, in any way, apply to Google's search results or Facebook's news feed or any other content online. It covers internet access services, and all it does is put in place some straightforward rules against discrimination.
Still, all this fear mongering isn't working. Following yesterday's decision by the FCC, the folks over at Quartz noticed that the big broadband stocks have actually had a pretty damn good month:
Investors actually seemed to breathe a sigh of relief when FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler unveiled his proposal on Feb. 4, sending cable stocks higher. Investors were cheering the chairman’s assurance that the commission wouldn’t invoke the Title II power to regulate prices.Bullshit. Frankly, things can always change in the future, in either direction, so claiming that things might change is meaningless FUD. At the end of the article, the WSJ pretends that maybe the reason why stocks are up is because investors expect that the broadband players will win an eventual court battle, but that seems like wishful thinking on multiple levels. Let's go with Occam's Razor on this one. The market is up because everyone knows that Title II won't make a huge difference at all for the prospects of broadband companies. Multiple Wall St. analysts have been saying this for months, as have the big broadband companies to the analysts themselves.
But investors, beware: Broadband’s new status opens the door to the possibility of a future that is far less lucrative and more uncertain for the companies that provide it.
The Wall Street Journal should take a page from its own playbook: maybe the markets do know best.
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Filed Under: gordon crovitz, investors, market, net neutrality, title ii, wall street, wall street journal
Reader Comments
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Time to change the name
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Re: Time to change the name
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Re: Re: Time to change the name
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Re: Time to change the name
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Re: Time to change the name
What Title II does is prevent incumbents from monopolizing the last mile, i.e. it helps to free the market up a bit, which is probably why WSJ is freaking out.
I'm glad the government did its job last week; serving the public interest, not that of the corporations.
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Re: Re: Time to change the name
What Title II does is prevent incumbents from monopolizing the last mile,
No, it doesn't do that. It just prevents some abuses of that monopoly.
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My guess
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'I told you to start freaking out, why are you still calm?!'
Why, it's almost as though people were able to see through their fearmongering, and in fact are better informed about the matter than they seem to think.
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Re: 'I told you to start freaking out, why are you still calm?!'
FTFY
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Simple rule
Not weird at all. Obama was for it, so they're against it. It's a simple rule that saves a lot of time when writing editorials.
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I'm curious
I am undecided on this controversy and have looked to Techdirt for unbiased, factual information but your assertions in this article make me doubt your objectivity.
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Re: I'm curious
> reverse" and "None of this is true"? I thought you said
> earlier that the actual rules haven't been released and no
> member of the public has been able to read them?"
The rules were released yesterday, genius. Maybe you saw the headline in every paper and every news website on earth. And they say what we already knew -- that "none of this is true" and "it's actually the reverse."
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Re: Re: I'm curious
In yesterday's Techdirt article "The FCC's Historic Day: Voting Yes For Net Neutrality, Voting No On Protectionist State Telecom Law" he states "it's important to note that despite a 3-2 vote approving the Title II-based rules, we won't get to see the actual rules today. Despite claims by neutrality opponents that this is some secret cabal specific to net neutrality, the agency historically has never released rules it votes on (pdf) until well after the actual vote."
So, my question still stands.
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Re: Re: I'm curious
If the language has been released maybe you could link me some articles, you know, the things beneath the headlines, that have the language. Thanks.
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Re: I'm curious
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Re: I'm curious
The overall concept behind the rules has been released, which shows those claims are not true.
I'm still concerned about the details *on the margins* which may have some bad or worrisome stuff in there, but nothing like what the WSJ was talking about. Enough people have seen the rules to know what the overall issues are.
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Re: Re: I'm curious
But placing the internet under the regulatory umbrella of the Communications Act does give the government power over ISPs and the internet that previously didn't exist. The current rules more than likely won't have anything problematic, and net neutrality is probably for the best, but who knows what some future bureaucrat will push for in the future using this as the framework (but that's a slippery slope and it's a small worry compared to current problems).
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Re: I'm curious
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With all due credit to Ronald Reagan, it's not what the Wall Street Journal doesn't know that makes them dangerous, it's all the things they do know that just ain't so!
Neither Ronald Reagan nor his speech writer deserve the credit for that line, though it's not clear who does.
http://wellnowbob.blogspot.com/2008/07/it-aint-what-you-dont-know.html
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He's doing his job
Repeat the lie and repeat it often. Propaganda at its finest.
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Government takeover was unnecessary
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Re: Government takeover was unnecessary
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Re: Government takeover was unnecessary
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Re: Government takeover was unnecessary
Indeed, Obama certainly brought overwhelming force to the matter, it's a wonder they didn't cave to his might before now.
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Re: Government takeover was unnecessary
Then Verizon sued against the agreement and got the courts to rule that the FCC could only enforce net neutrality rules on "telecommunications services" (Title II), not "information services" (Section 706).
Since the Ninth Circuit previously ruled that cable internet services are both, the FCC is just doing what courts said they have to do to enforce the net neutrality rules similar to those previously agreed to by using Title II instead of Section 706.
Oh, and the FCC is not Obama. Two out of their five commissioners disagreed with him. Obama didn't even have a vote in the matter. You appear to be demonstrating what Anonymous Coward's comment above claims forms the basis for Wall Street Journal's editorial decisions.
If you base your opinion so much on anything Obama is in favor of you must be against, why would you put so much stock in what Obama thinks to let him make your decisions on what to hate for you?
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Simple, they have an agenda and are willing to let him lie to help it. Follow the money and you'll find out why, I'm sure.
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The problem is Murdoch
In Australia most of the media is owned by News Corp and the reporting is constently ultra-right wing, unhinged propaganda for special interests and the tea party wing of domestic politics. This is entirely consistent with the views held by the demented old bloodsucker Murdoch himself.
Our current tea party government only got in because of a sustained campaign by Murdoch media. The first thing that the new government when it got in was to "refund" $900,000,000 in taxes to Murdoch and begin demolishing a major infrastructure project that was underway called the NBN (National Broadband Network). Murdoch is anti-internet for a variety of reasons. Some to do with his business interests, other more to do with him simply being a ****.
The sooner the cancer of the Murdoch media is struck from this earth the better.
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Why do people feel the need to make up this shit? Maybe I should inform the Wall Street Journal that the reason BlackBerry devices are 'unpopular' is because they're unavailable. Seriously, the last time I saw one for sale, it was pre-owned, and I didn't want it because if it terminally glitched in the fourth month of ownership, there'd be nothing I could do unless I could find the receipt.
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