Cisco And Oracle Applaud The Looming Death Of Net Neutrality
from the friends-like-these dept
Both Oracle and Cisco (not coincidentally major ISP vendors) have come out in full-throated support of the FCC's plan to kill net neutrality. FCC boss Ajit Pai has been making the rounds the last few weeks in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, trying to drum up support of his attack on broadband consumer protections. Pai met with Cisco, Oracle, Facebook and Apple in a number of recent meetings, but so far only Oracle and Cisco have been willing to enthusiastically and publicly throw their corporate fealty behind Pai's extremely-unpopular policies.
In its letter, Oracle (which also supported the recent dismantling of consumer broadband privacy protections) is quick to trot out the stale and debunked canard that net neutrality stifled telecom investment:
"From our perspective as a Silicon Valley technology company, what should have been a purely technological discussion of managing traffic on internet networks has inexplicably evolved into a highly political hyperbolic battle, substantially removed from technical, economic, and consumer reality. Further, the stifling open internet regulations and broadband classification that the FCC put in place in 2015 – for just one aspect of the internet ecosystem – threw out both the technological consensus and the certainty needed for jobs and investment."
If you're playing along at home, you should, by now, realize this is bullshit. Once again, public SEC filings, earnings reports, and ISP executive statements contradict this claim. Killing net neutrality and broadband privacy protections is about one thing: letting giant incumbent ISPs make more money by abusing the lack of competition in the broadband last mile. And while that's good for ISP vendors like Oracle, that's not so great for the smaller companies that need a healthy, level playing field to do business. That's why over 800 startups have come out in opposition to the FCC plan.
Like Oracle, Cisco was similarly eager to ignore the vast negative repercussions of the FCC's plan in a statement over at the company's website. In its statement, Cisco also falsely claims that net neutrality stifled investment:
"The proposal will review what is needed to protect consumers and prevent anti-competitive behavior, while rolling back Title II reclassification, which has inhibited investment. The balanced approach Commissioner Pai unveiled will encourage new investments in broadband networks and speed the development of innovative services, including Internet of Things technologies, telemedicine, distance learning, emergency services, and mobile 5G."
As we've noted, Pai's "balanced approach" involves first gutting all FCC authority over broadband, then shoveling the remaining, paltry authority back over to an already limited FTC authority that AT&T lawyers have demostrated they're able to tap dance around. Both Cisco and Oracle are well aware that the goal here isn't "balanced" regulations or "protecting consumers"; the goal is to turn a blind eye to the lack of competition in the broadband space (a disease for which neutrality violations are just one symptom) for the sole benefit of their clients at AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and Charter.
Oracle and Cisco's vocal support of the killing of net neutrality comes as former net neutrality supporters like Netflix and Google have remained notably silent this go-round. Contrary to some media narratives, Google hasn't really been a vocal net neutrality supporter since 2010, and its interest in protecting an open internet has waned exponentially after launching an ISP (Google Fiber) and jumping into wireless. Netflix has similarly toned down its rhetoric to aid its lobbying under the Trump administration, while shifting its overall focus toward international expansion.
That has left startups, consumers, smaller companies (like Roku and Mozilla) under-funded and under-gunned as they fight to keep the internet resembling something vaguely like a level playing field.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: fcc, net neutrality, title ii
Companies: cisco, oracle
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Google and Netflix are big enough that they can pay for the fast lanes and they are shifting into the kill competition before it can flourish mode that plagues all companies when they get fairly big and their pockets become fairly deep.
So yeah. Again it's the people versus the corporations, the new aristocracy.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Could be worse. It's not like these companies have databases of the daily activities of the entire population, a history of predicting and shaping behavior and thought, and platforms that can reach you at any time and place.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
Gee thanks. You cynic idiot.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Oracle's motives are less clear. But the most likely explanation is simply that Oracle is evil.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
you'd think their bottom line would be the opposite
fewer startups means fewer new customers
reduced competition means fewer upgrades
fewer customers and upgrades means reduced sales
reduced sales means less profits
less profits means unhappy investors
unhappy investors means new ceos
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: you'd think their bottom line would be the opposite
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: you'd think their bottom line would be the opposite
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: you'd think their bottom line would be the opposite
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: you'd think their bottom line would be the opposite
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
https://www.aclu.org/
https://www.eff.org/
https://www.freepress.net/
https://www.fightforth efuture.org/
https://www.publicknowledge.org/
https://demandprogress.org/
also you can set them as your charity on
https://smile.amazon.com/
also write to your House Representative and senators
http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/
https://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information /senators_cfm.cfm?OrderBy=state
and the FCC
https://www.fcc.gov/about/contact
You can now add a comment to the repeal here
https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/search/filings?proceedings_name=17-108&sort=date_disseminated,DESC
h ere a easier URL you can use thanks to John Oliver
www.gofccyourself.com
you can also use this that help you contact your house and congressional reps, its easy to use and cuts down on the transaction costs with writing a letter to your reps.
https://resistbot.io/
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Silver lining?
Net neutrality (NN) is necessary because of ISP monopolies.
It's a treatment for the symptom, not a cure for the disease (monopoly).
Given that NN is a dead letter in the Trump administration, it's time to change focus to the state and municipal level regulations that enable ISP monopolies - that keep out real competition.
Maybe that's what we should have been doing in the first place - fixing the disease instead of treating the symptoms.
Call your state legislators, your city council members, and start screaming.
If we'd all put the same effort into opening up the ISP market that we've been putting into NN, we wouldn't have to worry about NN in the first place.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Silver lining?
the disease was regulation. the FCC created and blessed these monopolies under the guise to protecting us from them.
There is government in a nutshell.
In order to justify their existence, they need enemies to fight. They do no need to eliminate the enemies, that is bad for business, they just need to fight them.
Governments need things like monopoly fears, market fears, corruption, terrorism to keep citizens wrapped up in symbiotic relationship.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Silver lining?
Yes, regulation created the monopolies.
But almost all of that regulation, in this case, is at the state and local level.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Silver lining?
The problem is not regulation, but regulatory capture, driven by the heads of regulatory bodies being political appointees, and so always having an eye out for their next job.
.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Silver lining?
Every time. That's the nature of the beast.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Companies in decline trying to slow progress
Cisco and Oracle are giant companies in decline. Their customers are almost exclusively other large companies that are locked into the Oracle and Cisco infrastructure. They both have a strong interest in hindering small innovative companies from gaining a toehold.
Eliminating the principle of an neutral internet allows creating a "first class" internet to access preferred large company services, and a deliberately degraded and unreliable "third class" that new companies can be relegated to.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Companies in decline trying to slow progress
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
What Oracle and Cisco Really Want.
Here are two typical messages which Oracle and Cisco would want to intercept. Both were transmitted by means which federal law still strictly prohibits Oracle and Cisco from meddling with, a letter in the mailbox, and two dial-up telephone calls, one to a modem bank at a state agency, and one to a restaurant. Oh, and the restaurant people physically came and hung a flyer on my doorknob.
I cannot see why Cisco should expect to receive a substantial portion of the price of a bag of dried onions, or of a dish of Orange Shrimp.
=================================================
copy of snailmail order, July 16, 2015 (with prices and stock numbers pulled from the website)
-------------------------------------------------------------------
To: Pendery's World of Chilli's and Spices
1221 Manufacturing St.
Dallas, TX 75207
Sirs:
Kindly ship me the following items:
1 BELL PEPPER-GREEN DICED 4OZ 00046-25 $7.42 $7.42
1 BELL PEPPER-RED DICED 4OZ 00047-25 $7.71 $7.71
1 BELL PEPPER-GREEN POWDER 8OZ 00048-50 $10.07 $10.07
1 CURRY POWDER-MILD 8OZ 100031-50 $8.49 $8.49
2 ONION-CHOPPED 1LB 00097-11 $10.79 $21.58
1 PAPRIKA-AMERICAN 95 ASTA 8OZ 00110-50 $6.74 $6.74
Subtotal: $62.01
Shipping (Ground) $10.99
Total $73.00
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------
For which a check is enclosed.
Andrew D. Todd
======================================================
To New Foo Sheen restaurant, Morgantown, WV (order by telephone, aide-memoire to simplify dealing with an order taker whose English is limited)
#1, Egg Roll, quantity: 1
#2, Shrimp Roll, quantity: 1
#62, Shrimp w. Garlic Sauce, pint
#79, Shrimp Fried Rice, pint
#S14, Orange Shrimp
And the usual quantities of rice, fortune cookies, soft drinks, duck sauce, etc. A fair proportion of the stuff goes into the refrigerator for left-overs. With a good tip, it comes to forty bucks.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No worries
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The reason why...
Cisco sells routers that allows for complex rules for traffic prioritisation.
Now you know why they both want net neutrality dead.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_day_trader
The entire Wikipedia article is worth reading, especially all the criticisms.
Another argument that can be made is that if the government really wanted to protect us from ourselves they would limit gambling, which costs poor people a lot and is known to result in unfavorable odds, and they would discontinue the lottery. Instead because the lottery and gambling make the government and big institutions money they are legal. Restricting pattern day trading is, likewise, an attempt to give those with money more leverage over those without money. This law is directly aimed at discriminating against those without money and it was passed by those with money. The government has essentially passed two sets of laws, one for the rich and one for the poor. These laws were undemocratically passed by the rich for the rich under the false pretense of protecting the poor. Such is a hallmark of an aristocracy. No nation should have a different set of laws for the rich than for the poor.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
If they (authority) really wanted to protects us they would not allow such dangerous things as:
- cars that can speed more than 40mph
- all that junk food
- all those miracle products
- TOBACCO!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Google's motto for a long time was "Don't be evil." If Oracle had a corporate motto it would read, "Be evil."
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
500-601 is one of the most coveted certification exams of IT world. Now pass your 500-601 exam in just a first trial with the help of Braindumps4IT exam dumps. We offer the first class Application Centric Infrastructure Support Representative 500-601 dumps in the form of PDF files along with 500-601 Exam Engine. All 500-601 Exam Questions are latest and verified by professional experts to guarantee your success. For more queries and details just visit us today: https://www.braindumps4it.com/braindumps-500-601.html
[ link to this | view in chronology ]