
Net Neutrality Was a Terrible Strategy - angel_j
https://medium.com/@angel_j/net-neutrality-is-a-bad-strategy-ccc3c02dbc9f
======
btilly
I actually have a better idea.

Give ISPs a choice. They can choose to be blind to traffic. Or they can choose
to be liable for it. No in between.

You want to open the Pandora's box of inspecting the content of packets? OK,
you're now liable for malware probing your clients, and for malware probes
coming _from_ your clients! If your network is helping generate a DDoS attack,
you can be sued for it.

Or you can avoid liability by simply being the network equivalent of a common
carrier. You didn't generate or alter the packets, you're not responsible for
their content.

------
kazinator
The carriers shouldn't even have any visibility to what is being carried,
beyond what is necessary to route it to its destination.

Just like I don't want snail mail carriers opening my letters (even if it is
strictly for the purpose of deciding whether or not they are important for
speedy delivery).

There should be a protocol in which as much as possible is hidden. Even things
like port numbers. From the traffic pattern it will usually be obvious whether
it is bulk or interactive and such, and it has to be addressed, but beyond
that, what protocol it is using, what port number and all that should be
shrouded from prying eyes. If I have two connections going to the same host,
it should not be possible for a wiretapper to tell which packets belong to
which connection only "host A sent some blob to host B".

~~~
splintercell
> Just like I don't want snail mail carriers opening my letters (even if it is
> strictly for the purpose of deciding whether or not they are important for
> speedy delivery).

But you can pay for express delivery in which case your package is delivered
over the other packages. Isn't that a good analogy of non-NN world?

~~~
orev
No, the non-NN analogy would be if you wanted to send/receive packages with
Amazon it would be one price, and with someone else it would be another price.

~~~
splintercell
You do know that Amazon does that right? Some sellers offer free shipping, but
their price reflects the added shipping.

Before you say 'I meant UPS charging one price to one manufacturer, and
another to another', then UPS does that too. You can be very certain that UPS
charges Amazon much lower shipping fee (due to the bulk business) than an
independent seller on Amazon.

Vendors have been charging different fees to different businesses since
forever, and we never had a problem mostly because nobody ever finds it more
profitable to charge for printing Bible more than printing Sears catalog just
because they don't like Bible.

------
otakucode
I was curious about the idea of the Internet as a public utility several years
ago, so I did some research. Specifically I looked into just how something is
determined to be a "public utility" in the first place. Why is my water line
regulated and the price of the water pegged to the cost of providing the
service? Why do I get a letter explaining any proposed rate increase with a
(required) explanation of how it arises from an actual increase in the cost of
providing the service? Surely it wasn't always that way, not for water or
electricity or anything else. So how did they go from being private services
controlled by companies to public utilities generally either run by
municipalities or privately owned utility companies answerable to a public
utilities commission?

It turns out the answer is fairly simple. Although each utility followed its
own path historically, it all boiled down to one question: Is the benefit
society as a whole would derive from the cheap, ubiquitous availability of the
thing greater than the damage which would be done to society by the
elimination of competition and extraction of profit from the thing?

I think that question is a very easy one to answer for Internet access. The
benefit to society would be incalculably greater than the damage done by
eliminating the profit of Comcast and AT&T and Time Warner and whatnot. Just
for one, we could close every physical government office in the nation and
save billions by permitting the workers from there to work from home while
citizens access everything via the Internet. So long as Internet access is a
luxury, you can't do that. Then you have businesses. We don't charge
restaurants 100x as much for water because they make soup with it, and
"business connections" that transfer no more data than a home with a few
teenagers shouldn't cost any more either. And if the cost was based on the
cost of providing the service, then like everything in tech it would shrink
with amazing rapidity.

~~~
jbob2000
I don't disagree with you, but I want to play devil's advocate. Unlike water
and electricity, the internet is still kind of a luxury. If the electricity
cuts out for a couple of days, all of our food rots, and we starve and die. If
the water cuts out, we get dehydrated and die.

If the internet cuts out for a few days... well.. It'll suck. But nobody will
die. If I recall correctly, 60% of the internet's traffic is Netflix, with the
remaining diced up between Youtube, streaming, and social media. The internet,
as it stands right now, is a global entertainment system. I know we do
business on it, and it's a boon for communications, but it's not a life or
death thing.

Aside from that, I'm actually still on the fence philosophically on whether or
not the internet is "good" for humanity. It's allowed huge amounts of
misinformation to spread. I think you could pin the spread of anti-vax ideas
on the internet. We waste millions of hours playing video games and streaming
videos. I am currently bored at work browsing hacker news, so instead of
allowing that boredom to force me into improving our app, I'll just sit here
quietly until somebody adds a ticket into my queue.

------
PatientTrades
The term "Net Neutrality" was a very poor choice to describe the situation.
The majority of people have no idea what the term is referring to without
reading the details. In hindsight, something simpler like "Keep the internet
free" or "Fight for the internet" would have been much more effective to rally
up non tech individuals who have no idea what we are fighting for. Just my
0.02

~~~
oxide
I like internet freedom much better. So do the politicians looking to dress
wolves in sheep's clothing.

------
austincheney
The article makes some good points. The problem the article illustrates is
that the interconnection points that comprise the hardware of the internet are
commercial property that costs money by commercial companies who derive profit
from those piped.

A valid solution is to regulate both the network providers and the content
providers. The network providers should not be allowed to selectively throttle
connectivity to targeted sources. At the same time the content providers
should not be allowed to exploit their users with malicious script execution
pushed through online advertisements and excessive privacy violations.

If the online advertising industry weren't fixated upon stalking users and
harmful negligence perhaps there would be less incentive for the network
providers to throttle that content. There would certainly be a lot more
bandwidth. I will just leave these here:

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15703061](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15703061)

* [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/an-alarming-numb...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/an-alarming-number-of-sites-employ-privacy-invading-session-replay-scripts/)

* [https://www.engadget.com/2016/01/08/you-say-advertising-i-sa...](https://www.engadget.com/2016/01/08/you-say-advertising-i-say-block-that-malware/)

* [https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/news/cybercrime...](https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/news/cybercrime-and-digital-threats/malvertising-when-online-ads-attack)

------
danjoc
The interstate highway analogy isn't really excellent either. "Slow lanes." So
bandwidth = speed limit. Now instead of ISPs dictating your speed, it's the
government. The interstate has speed limits. Drat, foiled again!

The argument here is against capitalism. The owner of the network dictates
what happens on that network. To take a argument directly from HN, if you want
(Net Neutrality | free speech), go build your own (network | Facebook).

The author even makes that argument. "The clear solution is to appropriate the
means of distribution, the cables and airwaves, and develop mesh internets."

Guess what, now you're an "evil ISP" who is traffic shaping on your own
equipment.

Are we going to have Net Neutrality for Facebook and Twitter too? Do we limit
what they can do on their services? Classify them as a public utility?

~~~
orwin
Then, as it was said in another HN comment, make ISP liable like facebook and
twitter are. They have to detect and prevent DDoS from their customers, detect
and prevent malware, as well as child pornography and stuff. If they want to
look at what you're sending and receiving, they should be liable for it too.

If a law allowed all post office to take a look into your personnal mail, they
should at least uses this power to prevent criminal activities.

~~~
danjoc
>They have to detect and prevent DDoS from their customers, detect and prevent
malware, as well as child pornography and stuff.

What makes you think they don't do this already?

I can't run a mail server on port 25. I call my ISP and ask why. They tell me
they are combatting open relays, and I need to accept a business class
agreement with them to open the port.

ISPs have data retention policies to assist law enforcement with
investigations into criminal activity. They will terminate your account for
breaking the law as well.

[https://www.wired.com/2010/01/verizon-terminating-
internet-a...](https://www.wired.com/2010/01/verizon-terminating-internet-
accessinternet-access/)

It's their network. They are motivated to protect it.

------
unclesaamm
The article echoes something I've been thinking lately, which is we won't win
unless we go on the offensive. We need to rally around collectivizing the
entire infrastructure of the Internet as a public good. Clearly the corporate
interests are going for the kill. We can't be fighting every year just to
maintain the same ground - we need to tackle this problem at its root.

~~~
VintageCool
The way to win is to pass legislation through Congress that regulates Internet
Service Providers as public utilities.

