The net neutrality debate is far from over, especially since the FCC is still sorting through more than one million comments on the matter. Quartz reports that one of those comments comes directly from Major League Baseball, which argues against allowing for Internet “fast lanes” despite the fact that its own MLB Advanced Media (BAM) platform could benefit from such a scheme as long as MLB agreed to pay the proper fees to ISPs.
MLB wasted no time pointing out the problems with the FCC’s proposal and argued that, ultimately, the regular consumer would pay the price, and that fast lanes would also affect competition.
“Fast lanes would serve only one purpose: for Broadband ISPs to receive an economic windfall. American consumers would be worse off as the costs of fast lanes are passed along to them in new fees or charges where there were none, or higher fees or charges where they existed,” MLB said through BAM.
“Fast lanes would create new economic barriers for start-up entrepreneurs and innovators that have been critical to the growth of the Internet economy. As bad, since fast lanes would necessarily mean there are slow lanes, they would amount to ‘picking winners and losers online,’ with Broadband ISPs acting as fast lane ‘gatekeepers,’ precisely the opposite of the Commission’s past policy,” the company added.
“The Commission would be rolling the dice by allowing ‘commercially reasonable’ fast lane deals,” BAM said. “We are equally as concerned about how fast/slow lane regulations could be adequately enforced.”
The full BAM letter, available at the source link below, also details other issues that should be considered for the FCC when devising net neutrality regulations, such as the fact that some customers only have Internet access from a single provider in their areas, and the “mega-mergers” between Comcast and Time Warner Cable, and between AT&T and DIRECTV.
No matter how sound BAM’s arguments are, ISPs will always find insanely ridiculous claims to back up their need to sell some content providers, such as BAM, Netflix, and others, access to a faster lane.
