
GOP net neutrality bill would allow paid fast lanes and preempt state laws - mido22
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/gop-net-neutrality-bill-would-allow-paid-fast-lanes-and-preempt-state-laws/
======
24gttghh
Here [0] is the actual text (i.e. hosted directly by congress.gov) which
arstechnica was so thoughtful to not link to.

>“(2) may not impair or degrade lawful internet traffic on the basis of
internet content, application, or service, or use of a non-harmful device,
subject to reasonable network management.

Seems like what NN proponents want, isn't it?

>“(1) IN GENERAL.—Except as provided in paragraph (2), nothing in this section
shall be construed to limit the ability of broadband internet access service
providers to offer specialized services.

>“(2) PROHIBITION ON CERTAIN PRACTICES.—Specialized services may not be
offered or provided in ways that threaten the meaningful availability of
broadband internet access service or that have been devised or promoted in a
manner designed to evade the purposes of this section.

Ah those might be a problem...

[0] [https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-
bill/4682...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-
bill/4682/text?r=1)

~~~
ensignavenger
I was going to ask if anyone had actually read the proposed bill. It isn't
very long, and I didn't see anything about "paid" prioritization, though that
might be considered a "specialized" service. From what I can tell, this bill
puts give a lot of power to the FCC to determine what types of specialized
services would "offered or provided in ways that threaten the meaningful
availability of broadband internet access service or that have been devised or
promoted in a manner designed to evade the purposes of this section".

So the FCC could still potentially prevent prioritization that would degrade
broadband internet service.

Of course, I am not a lawyer.

~~~
24gttghh
And neither am I, but I could see how the paid prioritization may be
considered a "specialized" service. I am leaning towards reading it as double-
speak.

~~~
ensignavenger
But even if it does end up being a paid service, the FCC still, potentially,
has the power to determine that it either A) "offered or provided in ways that
threaten the meaningful availability of broadband internet access service", or
B) has "been devised or promoted in a manner designed to evade the purposes of
this section"

So, the devil is in the details, and the FCC seems to have the power to write
those details, if I understand correctly. Even if the present FCC writes sub
standard details, a future FCC could re-write them.

~~~
dragonwriter
> the devil is in the details, and the FCC seems to have the power to write
> those details

The bill _explicitly_ prohibits the FCC from writing rules fleshing out the
details, and restricts the FCC to adjudicating specific cases (such
adjudications are subject individually to review by the courts, so inasmuch as
someone is empowered to define general standards, it's the course through case
law, not the FCC, whose adjudications do not create binding precedent.)

The FCC is that of essentially a trial court, not a rulemakers, under this
bill.

~~~
ensignavenger
The bill only explicitly forbids them from expanding the obligations. It does
specify that the FCC has authority to adjudicate complaints. I don't know if
that prevents them from publishing guidelines ahead of time, or if that will
evolve from adjudication. And, as you point out, the courts will ultimately
have oversight over the adjudication- so I suppose in the end, the Supreme
Court may end up writing the rules... Of course, this is an early proposal,
maybe the final bill will provide the FCC/courts with more guidance.

Why don't we provide feedback to our representatives and work with them on how
the Bill can be improved by providing more guidance on rules and penalties?

~~~
dragonwriter
> The bill only explicitly forbids them from expanding the obligations

Any rule which restricted anything not restricted by the bare law would expand
obligations, and is thereby prohibited.

------
1024core
> and prohibit state governments from enacting their own net neutrality laws.

So much for "States' rights", huh? Fucking hypocrites.

A man is known by the company he keeps, as the old adage goes. Anyone who
supports Republicans in any shape and form is also a fucking hypocrite and a
liar.

~~~
meri_dian
Take a deep breath, you're being extreme.

Just because the Republican party is traditionally associated with states'
rights doesn't mean they should always have to give precedence to states.

Allowing states to enact their own regulations in this case would be
incredibly burdensome to internet businesses, there's a good reason for net
neutrality laws to be uniform across the whole country.

~~~
haZard_OS
Take a deep breath, you're rationalizing away hypocrisy.

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coldcode
If it allows paid fast lanes, then clearly it allows degradation.

~~~
rhino369
Priorization and throtting aren’t exactly the same. Throttling implies rate
limiting even if there is surplus bandwidth. Prioritization would only occur
when bandwidth was limited.

Think of it as QoS based on a list of sites provided by the ISP.

~~~
sametmax
But throttling is really hard to prove. They can always downsize some hardware
to "prioritize" and "retarget their budget", but effectively they just
throttle. Basically they can do whatever they want with the proper wording
now.

~~~
rhino369
Sabotaging their network just to throttle just doesn't make sense. Nobody is
going to pay for a white-list only internet. That is fear mongering by the
pro-NN side.

~~~
haZard_OS
You call it "sabotaging", I call it "enhancing monetization powers". Either
way, it's sabotaging the public's access.

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ep103
From now, until the day I die, I will never vote or donate to the republican
party again. This last year was the straw that broke the camel's back.

This isn't the party of small businesses and tax cuts any more. This bill is a
handout to large ISPs at the expense of the economy, and the tax bill last
night raises my taxes so people making 100k+ more than me can see a tax cut.
I'm done with them.

~~~
prklmn
“We’re the party of small businesses” has been a guise for decades.

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mancerayder
Isn't one of the issues the increasingly close relationship between ISPs and
media owners? I mean they are literally the same in some cases.

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maxxxxx
It's funny how they always vehemently advocate for states rights unless these
states rights get in the way of their agenda.

~~~
e40
Came here to say this. It shows the GOP doesn't really stand for anything.
They just say what they need to say, in the moment, to get what they want.

If Clinton were POTUS and Russian ties like had been found to the Trump
administration, she would have been impeached already. But it's their man, so
let's look the other way. Same with State's rights.

~~~
ictoan
This! "They just say what they need to say, in the moment, to get what they
want"

And Trump is the magnification of the GOP.

We need to hold them accountable!!!

~~~
jessaustin
OMG you're serious. Partisans are so cute.

~~~
ictoan
Yes I am serious. And how is this partisanship when pointing out the need to
hold politicians accountable for what they say vs what they do? Care to
explain your comment? Why is accountability a sign of partisanship?

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throw7
As far I'm concerned, I've never had "net neutrality"...

If I wanted to run a server (web/smtp/etc.) on my consumer level broadband
account, I was not allowed to per TOS. For me, real "net neutrality" would've
let me do this, but it's never been the case. I have to jump up to "Business"
level account.

This situation is what ISP and corporates want... to get you to pay more for a
problem you don't have. And them the power to shut you down and force you to
higher tier level of "support".

Comcast pushed one step too far against Bittorrent (and was caught), but this
is exactly the power that the big boys want and Title II weakens their
argument that what they provide is a managed service not a pipe.

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pawy
Truely I don't understand why the biggest aspect of this problem is not talked
out.

They are basically tempering with everyone's liberty to start a business on
internet. Damaging US citizen capacity to create new internet opportunities
and be able to compete with their favorites pets.

Why the f* are you talking about slow and fast lanes ? It is true, but most
importantly is this passes on. Any service that would like to be taken
seriously would have to pay his way in.

Why everybody has so gentle titles ? Fast / Slow lanes is very abstract.

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tmaly
In regards to preempting state laws, did Congress forget about the 10th
Amendment? I know they tend to skirt around it in law school according to my
colleagues who are all attorneys.

~~~
wtallis
Regulating Internet Service Providers ranks pretty low on the list of ways in
which the Commerce Clause has been stretched.

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djschnei
_Breaking news_ Law proposed which would allow EvilCorp to charge more money
for the services which cost more to provide.

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natch
GOP (“Grand Old Party”) == US Republican Party in case it wasn’t obvious from
the apparent shortsightedness of the proposed law.

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meddlepal
It'll just be rewritten in five or ten years or whenever the other team is in
power. I'm not sure why anyone gets worked up about this stuff anymore.

~~~
wtallis
Because it's not a pendulum.

Net neutrality was how the internet worked _de facto_ from its inception
through approximately the end of the dial-up days. It wasn't necessary to
impose net neutrality _de jure_ until home broadband was widespread and
capable of eating into traditional cable TV revenue. It wasn't necessary to
regulate net neutrality for DSL carriers back when local loop unbundling
applied to them. But between 2000 and 2010, the net neutrality situation got
worse than it ever had been, the regulatory efforts from 2010 to 2015 were
half-assed at best, and the 2015 regulations weren't in place long enough to
even establish enough judicial precedent to tell whether they could work long-
term.

Partisan control of Congress definitely swings back and forth semi-regularly,
but that's not what the history of net neutrality looks like.

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gravy
How is this different from me paying for more for faster internet?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Because the last mile is (sometimes) truly bandwidth limited. But the trunk
lines aren't. Now they just get to extort money from us _or artificially
throttle us_. Worse, they'll likely (as they have everywhere else) extort
money for websites they have no connection to (like Facebook or Twitter) just
because they can. Like an entrepreneurial thug standing outside a club and
extracting an extra fee to let folks in. Or paying protection money to the
mob. Like that.

~~~
notyourday
Exactly opposite. Last line is not bandwidth limited - FTTH exists. FIOS and
even comcast do that.

100 people at 1Gbit/sec to the edge are 100Gbit/sec in the core to content
providers.

[Edit: Downvoting 2+2 being 4 is stupid]

1 Gbit/sec is easily deliverable at the edge, even if it costs 5 thousand
dollars to get it connected. 1 Gbit/sec of non-oversubscribed IP transit is at
least $500/mo. A building with 100 apartments would require $50,000 a month in
IP transit costs. This does not include costs of the long distance fiber,
locations for PNI and gear that can do 48x 100Gbit/sec ports. So your
Interwebz is going to cost you either > $600 a month _or_ you get congestion
and that congestion would be coming from the core, not from the edge

~~~
wtallis
You're replying to a comment about the current state of existing
infrastructure by talking about the theoretical possibility of new
infrastructure that could be deployed with today's technology, but largely
_isn 't_ being deployed.

~~~
notyourday
That's something that you should bring up with your _local government_. It is
your local government that is blocking roll outs of FTTH.

Even at 10Mbit/sec congestion will be at the core. Comcast currently claims to
have 22.3 million internet customers. At 10 Mbit/sec it means 223.3 MILLION
megabit per second that needed to be handed off to transit. It is not
possible.

~~~
wtallis
> That's something that you should bring up with your local government. It is
> your local government that is blocking roll outs of FTTH.

That's definitely not true in my specific case, and probably isn't true all
that often in the general case. Deploying FTTH to existing paying customers
who already have halfway decent infrastructure doesn't have a very compelling
short-term return on investment even when the local government is doing
everything they can to encourage it.

~~~
notyourday
They are blocking competitors from installing fiber via franchise agreements
or requirement that entire municipality is wired.

By doing that your municipality is preventing price competition on the
physical last mile which means that Comcast has no need to upgrade service.

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neo4sure
This is all I need to here. "SpaceX plans worldwide satellite Internet with
low latency, gigabit speed.". We have to just bid our time and wipe out an
entire class of cockroach enter prices.

~~~
jessaustin
That sounds great, but one expects FCC will be deployed to quash that as well.
After all SpaceX would still use some portion of the over-regulated spectrum,
and at those distances probably not wifi band.

If we had reasonable spectrum regulation, various terrestrial WISPs would have
replaced all of these horrible companies a long time ago.

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notyourday
Yes, those fast lanes are called PNIs between content providers and eyeball
networks. They have been in existence since the time Excite@Home went to the
exchanges.

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ryanlol
Correct me if I’m wrong, but haven’t we _always_ had paid fast lanes
available? At least for VOIP this stuff hasn’t seemed very uncommon.

~~~
Brockenstein
Not in the sense of:

Dear Netflix, if you want to service our customers you need to pay us a $10
million dollars a year.

Dear Customer with 30mbps service, Netflix takes a lot of bandwidth and we're
just a poor multi-billion dollar ISP and can't afford to shoulder the burden.
But if you pay an additional $9.99 a month we can probably scrape up the
bandwidth to let you watch Netflix in HD ($29.99 for 4k)

Also see our other premium options. Have the freedom to pick which services
are right for you! Hulu: $9.99 Amazon Video: $9.99 Apple Music: $5.99 YouTube:
$7.99

~~~
ryanlol
How would this actually work in the somewhat competitive and very low-margin
ISP market?

What you’re describing just sounds like suicide.

~~~
fzeroracer
Same reason why ISPs pushed out data caps despite it being a 'somewhat
competitive' market and people coming out hard against it.

Because it's not competitive at all.

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djschnei
Can someone explain to me how it's evil for them to charge more money for a
"bigger pipe"? Their networks can only service so much traffic; not sure why
supply and demand are seen as evil in this case.

~~~
scoon1329
The issue is more complex than just a bigger pipe.

As a site owner, you pay a service provider (or cloud hosting service or
whatever) to offer you a certain amount of bandwidth to host your site.

The problem comes when other ISP's implement their fast lanes and traffic from
your site doesn't get equal priority to traffic from another site who has paid
that specific ISP to prioritise their traffic when serving their customers.

So you end up having to pay multiple ISP's to prioritise your traffic on their
networks. Your site could appear slow even if you've paid your own service
provider for a high bandwidth.

~~~
notyourday
That's also not correct. If you, as the site owner, are still talking about
ISPs or cloud hosting you are someone who is riding a bicycle on a shoulder of
I-95 next to semis doing 80mph in 65 zones. You are, frankly, irrelevant. Also
you do want to make sure that those semis use <blah>-bypass instead of
clogging your highway.

The real issue is that we allow those ISPs to determine _which semis_ are
allowed to use a bypass. Public's ( even technologically advanced public's )
mixing of the two issues is why NN fight would continue to be lost.

~~~
djschnei
So, I guess, my question still stands, right? I'm assuming this bypass costs
money for the ISPs to provide. Why is it evil for them to charge people to use
it?

~~~
notyourday
I was responding to my parent, not your comment.

To address your point, I do not see an issue for ISPs charging for PNIs as
long as those charges are _uniform_. If I, JoesFlix, have 100Gbit/sec traffic
to Comcast and Comcast says "In order to access EP-Bypass, traffic has to come
from AS that has more than 90Gbit/sec traffic to us" then Comcast should not
be allowed to prevent me from accessing EP-Bypass. Congestion is bad for
business. Sane PNI rules are easy:

0\. there's some access fee ( typically it is actually - you must show up in X
places - how you get there is your cost )

1\. we get even number of PNIs.

2\. i order and pay for half

3\. you order and pay for half

