
U.S. FCC chairman plans fast-track repeal of net neutrality: sources - doctorshady
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-internet-idUSKBN1790AP
======
tchock23
Part of the problem 'net neutrality' faces is its name. The average US citizen
has no idea what 'net neutrality' means when they hear it, and can't be
bothered to learn about it.

If it had been branded 'internet freedom' then we wouldn't even be having this
discussion because it would be toxic for politicians to mess with something
called 'internet freedom.'

Source: Sat through way too many focus groups testing communications concepts
in my life...

~~~
oxide
Calling this concept anything but "internet freedom" once it crossed from
"concept" to "mainstream political debate" is a little bit like shooting your
horse in the hoof before it leaves the gate.

Sticking to "net neutrality" seemingly resulted in ISP's treating the phrase
like courts treat jury nullification and the FCC making this an across-the-
isle issue about corporate investment and infrastructure costs rather than
regional monopolies, tiered access, slow lanes, etc.

I'm not naive enough to blame this on the name alone, but I'm also curious to
see how net neutrality might fair when pushed onto ISP's and mobile carriers
alike as "internet freedom."

------
Paul-ish
Isn't this what happens when you do everything through the executive, rather
than legislative, branch? If net neutrality were required by law, the FCC
chairman would to some degree be compelled to enforce it.

~~~
wfo
Weird, I seem to remember the legislative branch repealing some regulations
that nearly all Americans support exactly on party lines in order to make the
Internet worse recently...

It doesn't matter at all in this particular instance because the people who
want to remove NN own both branches and can do it just as easily no matter
where the rules come from. The only things that can persist in the face of a 1
party lockstep government like this is a constitutional amendment, or
something that is so widely popular and easily understandable that repealing
it is political suicide, like health care.

~~~
Paul-ish
There is a good chance you are right. With that said, privacy isn't important
to Google and Facebook, but net neutrality is important to their business. I
think if net neutrality repeal were in a congressional bill, a lot of big
companies would come out to lobby against the repeal. That has a chance of
making a difference, whereas in this case everything is up to Ajit Pai.

Also, if it didn't make a difference if you used a bill or not, why wouldn't
the conservative FCC commissioners just strike down the privacy rules at the
FCC and be done with it? My guess is because they want to make it harder to
bring privacy rules back if a democrat president were elected.

------
kablaa
It's amazing how much money influences these politicians. I would be amazed if
any of the people who voted for this bill even fully understand what it is.

~~~
seanp2k2
It's also amazing how little it costs to buy them. It's on the order of a
hundred thousand dollars. Check out campaign contributions and you'll see. It
needs to be at least 10-100x more expensive to really make a difference. It'd
be hilarious / depressing is politicians started colluding to squeeze
companies for orders of magnitude more in bribes (sorry, "campaign
contributions").

~~~
kablaa
I wonder if it would be possible to make some kind of "internet superpack".
Like a collection of registered voters who would crowdfund more money than
they are getting.

~~~
bluejekyll
Isn't that effectively what the EFF is?

------
saboot
Kind of depressing how easily all that past effort and public campaigning gets
brushed aside for Telecom concerns

~~~
kablaa
For every bill we manage to push back, they just make another one with a
slightly different name. They are taking advantage of the fact that people can
only get up in arms so many times.

~~~
chillwaves
They are paid to fight, our side is just volunteers. Who have to work being
productive to make a living.

------
akinalci
Part of me wants to make a really nice website to shine a spotlight on these
corporate shills and track their offenses. Obviously, we can legitimately
argue about the merits of some laws and regulations, but others are obvious
corporate power grabs that objectively leave us worse off. And to officials
who sell us out but are sure to be re-elected, like Marsha Blackburn, she
needs to know that there are people who recognize her as a traitor to the
interests of the American people.

~~~
aoeu345
If something like this existed, with the source code on Github with a detailed
contributing.md document, I would spend time on it. We have great tools
available to do this and it is a worthy cause.

~~~
akinalci
Best case scenario, it gains attention. Worst case scenario, it gains
attention and I drive my car into a tree one night or spontaneously OD.

~~~
intended
Worst case scenario, like every tool made to deal with humans on the internet
- you live long enough to see it turn against you.

Make no tool you wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of.

------
doctorshady
Is there anything that can be done here? Pai and his little buddy O'Rielly
have an easy majority on the FCC here, and I doubt they'll listen to any
comments. Short of like, the Trump government being dismantled before then,
how do you get rid of such a transparently corrupt head of a federal agency?

~~~
seanp2k2
Let them do their thing until people are so mad that they go after them. At
the end of the day, if politicians aren't scared of armed mobs, we don't have
real democracy anymore. Because a real militia capable of overthrowing DC in
2017 is laughable, I'm not sure how we keep the power of politicians in check
anymore.

They do whatever they want, and the people have little recourse. Call and
complain all you want, they'll still do whatever they want for the next three
and a half years. Start a riot and you'll get zip-tied up into jail, blasted
with a water cannon, get on watchlists and have trouble flying + re-entering
the country, and they'll still do whatever they want.

~~~
nebabyte
> if politicians aren't scared of armed mobs, we don't have real democracy
> anymore

I've never accepted that idiotic premise. If your ultimate trump card is armed
mobs ousting a 'regime' if it occurs, you're just _inviting_ your ruling class
to start acquiescing to draconian measures in the name of 'national security'
for their own safety.

You already see this with "freedom spaces" or whatever the hell you americans
call them. If the 'right to petition' is a basic right, you'll just start
seeing courts "define" and restrict when and how you can petition in the name
of public safety - because when is a court ever going to rule that a
potentially violent mob is the _correct_ solution to a problem?

"Real democracy" is a laughable term to use while you're shrugging your
shoulders and looking around to see who has the biggest rocks. If 'might makes
right' is your only remaining fallback, you might need to stop lying to
yourself about your 'democracy' first.

------
shmerl
Voluntarily and monopolists don't combine. This whole corrupted "lawmaking"
process is disgusting.

~~~
saboot
Couldn't the companies simply reorg to effectively become a different business
and not re sign up on the voluntary agreement?

------
aanm1988
Can we have another day without most common internet sites?

No facebook/google/netflix/amazon/youtube. 2 days if necessary. Show a video
explaining what net neutrality is and why many of the arguments it are so
dumb.

~~~
natoliniak
these are the incumbents and even though these companies would not have been
build without net neutrality, they can afford loosing net neutrality and
paradoxically it might be in their interest. Loosing net neutrality will hurt
startups and small sites who won't be able to afford payments to ISP's "fast
lanes."

~~~
dawnerd
Bingo. It'll only be a minor cost to the large companies that'll end up
writing it off anyways. And they'll probably end up signing more peering deals
to make their content even faster.

------
wyager
This is a somewhat unpopular opinion on HN, but I think net neutrality is only
a mediocre local optimum. We can do much better without it.

Look at Denmark; they top the global ITU ITC ranking for internet service, and
how do they do it? By totally deregulating ISPs while setting government
policy to allow for competition (instead of trying to force ISPs to follow
some arbitrary notion of good behavior in the abject lack of competition).
They removed many ISP regulations (nominally antitrust regs) back in 2006 and
it worked so well that they completely dissolved their rough FCC equivalent
(NITA) in 2011.

We don't need the FCC ham-fist to improve or preserve the quality of our
internet services. All we need is to set local and regional line lease policy
to encourage actual ISP competition. Every X years, have an open auction to
sell shared cable leases to Y different ISPs or something. Now instead of
having to force net neutrality, some of the Z different ISPs that now service
your house will use privacy guarantees as a cheap competitive advantage.

~~~
kablaa
>encourage actual ISP competition

I don't know about you but in my town ISP competition is practically
nonexistent. Usually it's a choice between Comcast and _maybe_ one other local
ISP. It's practically a monopoly right now, which is why treating internet as
a utility and treating huge ISPs like Comcast as a "government regulated
monopoly" makes sense.

This would be just like what we already have with our local power companies.
It's technically a monopoly, but it's heavily regulated so that they can't
raise prices on your electricity for no reason. It's also very easy to argue
that internet is every bit as much of a necessity as power or water is these
days.

~~~
narrowrail
In Texas, one can choose their electrical utility, but the transmission line
are obviously the same for all of them. Public Utility Commissions (PUCs) work
differently in different states.

BTW, reading some other comments of yours on this submission indicates you
believe this action has something to do with a law and/or legislators; it does
not.

~~~
kablaa
I do understand that this isn't an affect of any legislation. But if we were
to have legislators who (as bombastically unrealistic as this sounds) had the
best interest of the people in mind and who made informed decisions about
technology, they could have passed legislation protecting net neutrality. I
believe Obama tried to do something like this.

------
dzdt
Cable television periodically has "channel blackouts" where the cable operator
feuds over price with the content provider. I guess we can expect to see this
now for internet. Imagine going to Netflix to find an error 5xx instead:
unavailable until they agree on payments to the cable company.

~~~
coldcode
Perhaps we should suggest a new http error code.

~~~
dawnerd
Kinda already have one. 451. Although stated for legal reasons I could see
it's use here as well.

------
graycat
IIRC a well thought out idea has long been to have _privacy,_ in various
forms, handled by the FTC. Then the recent change for the FCC was to go ahead
and get the FCC out of _privacy_ and move, hand over, transfer what the FCC
was doing on privacy to the FTC.

I have read nothing and have no idea what the consequences will be for
privacy. E.g., maybe the FTC will, net, give us better regulation of _privacy_
or maybe worse.

~~~
narrowrail
My understanding is that once these companies were deemed common carriers, the
FTC was prevented from regulating them at all. State attorneys general will
still be able to prosecute civil cases where harm can be shown, however.

~~~
graycat
Interesting. What I read didn't mention the common carrier issue and
consequences.

Gee, again we could use better written news.

------
coldcode
Someday we will look back fondly on the days when we could read Hacker News
without buying the Hacker Channel Group.

~~~
intended
No, no you won't.

Hacker channels will be free. Most of the people who would be upset by this
will be mollified, or sidelined.

------
hitthefan
aaaaand keep the episodes of Black Mirror rollin'

------
EGreg
And once again, this is why representative democracy is worse than this:

[http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=212](http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=212)

------
nashashmi
When it comes to net neutrality, all I can think of is what Jimmy Wales once
said about the lesson he learned from Neupedia: "Don't make rules people are
not breaking."

No one has really broken net neutrality principles yet. But there are ideas
out there and innovation out there, where this net neutrality is turning out
to be a hindrance to it all.

Why cannot cable company provide cable TV over cable Internet? Because of net
neutrality! Why cannot T-mobile provide TV experience on its network for
everyone without breaking its network? Because of net neutrality. Why cannot
Verizon offer free stuff for its customers over its network? Because of net
neutrality.

Net neutrality was not supposed to prevent ISPs from doing great stuff. It was
supposed to prevent ISPs from making alliances with certain companies and
enemies with other companies. It was supposed to prevent ISPs from harming
innovation. It was supposed to prevent ISPs from hurting content providers and
content types.

Yet, now it is preventing ISPs from offering better services.

~~~
dragonwriter
> When it comes to net neutrality, all I can think of is what Jimmy Wales once
> said about the lesson he learned from Neupedia: "Don't make rules people are
> not breaking."

The first Open Internet (the then-majority at FCC's term for net neutrality)
Report and Order was drafted and issued after the FCC's use of "ancillary
authority" action against Comcast for blocking use of peer-to-peer file
sharing software was struck down in FCC v. Comcast [0]. People were breaking
the rules that became the FCCs Open Internet rules before they were adopted,
so the "Don't make rules people aren't breaking" line, however valid it might
be as a general principle [1], is inapplicable.

> But there are ideas out there and innovation out there, where this net
> neutrality is turning out to be a hindrance to it all.

No, it's not.

> Why cannot cable company provide cable TV over cable Internet? Because of
> net neutrality!

False. Open Internet rules don't prevent this. They so prevent the cable
company from blocking access to third-party video services also provided over
the internet, though.

> Why cannot T-mobile provide TV experience on its network for everyone
> without breaking its network? Because of net neutrality.

Again false, of something is really necessary to prevent breaking the network,
it falls under the ambit of the reasonable network management exception in the
Open Internet Order.

> Why cannot Verizon offer free stuff for its customers over its network?
> Because of net neutrality.

The Open Internet Order does not prevent ISPs, mobile or fixed, from providing
free stuff to subscribers. So, again, this is false.

[0]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comcast_Corp._v._FCC](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comcast_Corp._v._FCC)

[1] Itself a debatable point when there are foreseeable and preventable
problems.

~~~
nashashmi
> FCC's use of "ancillary authority" action against Comcast for blocking use
> of peer-to-peer file sharing software was struck down in FCC v. Comcast

Good point! I was only vaguely familiar with the event.

------
liquidise
A part of me wonders if net neutrality ending would be unintuitively
beneficial. Right now we are depending on policy decisions to protect the
internet's privacy and neutrality. This has been a flawed approach for over a
decade.

At some point we need to solve this with technology in a similar way that E2E
encryption is a step toward solving chat privacy. Maybe the selling of browser
histories and then end of net neutrality will be the kick that finally gets us
moving.

~~~
ajross
How does encryption solve the problem of Verizon squeezing Netflix to degrade
its service in favor of its own offerings?

Net neutrality isn't about consumer surveillance (which is a problem too, just
a different one). It's about access to markets and the ability to choose the
services you use on the internet.

~~~
liquidise
I'm not saying encryption is the solution. The solution to internet neutrality
and user privacy may be something entirely different. Maybe it is mesh
networks of an open source wifi solution. I'm not an expert in networking, but
it doesn't take much to understand the policy-first approach is fundamentally
flawed.

~~~
ac29
>I'm not an expert in networking, but it doesn't take much to understand the
policy-first approach is fundamentally flawed.

Why is policy first flawed? An analogy:

Imagine if your county sold the rights to build and maintain (or not maintain)
all the roads, highways, and public transportation in your county to Car
Company X. Vehicles from competitors Y and Z were then forced to pay tolls.

If government policy isn't the solution this, what is? "The free market" is
not the answer.

Bad car analogies aside, "lets just build our own internet, with WiFi meshes
and encryption or something" isn't the answer to internet service either.

