
FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see - rbanffy
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/11/21/the-fcc-has-unveiled-its-plan-to-rollback-its-net-neutrality-rules/?utm_term=.dd07b903b6a7
======
ghewgill
For those who don't understand why net neutrality is important, it is
worthwhile to read about the history of communications (telephone, radio, TV).
There is an excellent book by Tim Wu called The Master Switch [0] which
investigates the history of communications (with an American focus), describes
how each industry start out open to all (farmers using fences for telephone,
independent radio broadcasters), and each one collapsed into monopolies with a
near-impossible barrier to entry for anybody else who wanted to do the same
thing.

Parallels are then drawn to the Internet, where if we're not paying attention
to what is happening now, then the free and open nature of the Internet today
will slowly vanish and be replaced by only the big sites who can afford to be
on the Internet.

[0]: [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/apr/02/master-
switch-...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/apr/02/master-switch-tim-
wu-review) (book review, you can find the actual book on Amazon or wherever)

~~~
wang_li
The problem with the current net neutrality debate is that it seems to stop at
layer 3 of the ISO stack. There's no reason why we should have dozens of
incompatible video calling apps, why media streaming only works with a
particular vendor's application.

Not to mention that many of the big players in silicon valley like to jump
back and forth over the line of "is a provider" / "is not a provider". Twitter
and Google and Facebook like to police the content on their systems, which is
their right, but at the same time they like to hold up the DMCA safe harbor
provision anytime someone finds copyrighted material on their networks. They
have no problem banning unpopular parties from their networks while
simultaneously profiting from clear copyright violations.

We should insist that net neutrality extend all the way to layer 7.

~~~
smnrchrds
I remember having to explain to my younger sibling that "yes, you can send an
email to a Yahoo address from your Gmail account. No, seriously, try it, I am
not kidding." They are much younger than I am and they grew up in a world of
walled gardens. To them, that's just the way things are and have always been.
It's a shame.

~~~
isostatic
When I was a kid, compuserve, aol, even msn later were all walled gardens. It
was shocking when compuserve opened up gateways to the fledging web.

The open network existed as "normal" for maybe a decade.

------
niftich
Repealing net neutrality would only make sense if the layer underneath (the
PHY consisting of fiber/copper/coax/wireless/whatever infrastucture including
last-mile connections between every node) were subject to net neutrality
instead [1], such that "anyone" could start an ISP that offers differentiated
services on top of the same infra. Of course, today the last-mile infra and
the ISP on top are tightly coupled, and many states have enacted laws and
regulations that restrict or forbid municipalities' efforts to build out a
neutral infra [2].

I find it absurd that some politicians support both the repeal of net
neutrality and the restricting of willing communities to build out their own
infra at the same time. I could intellectually entertain either option but
never both simultaneously. For a political cohort whose brand has long
included local self-determination and rural self-reliance, it's bizarre to me
to see them take positions that don't even appear to be logically consistent.
It's difficult to accept that they truly have the best interest of their
constituents in mind.

[1]
[https://muninetworks.org/content/competition](https://muninetworks.org/content/competition)
[2].
[https://muninetworks.org/communitymap](https://muninetworks.org/communitymap)

~~~
IronWolve
True. Access (services) vs. censorship, you want to avoid the monopolies from
restricting new access providers, but also don't want access providers from
censoring the access.

The right wants isp/telcos to be able to bundle and offer more
speeds/services. Assuming it won't censor.

The left assumes isp/telcos will offer services/bundles (tiers) but will
censor its services/bundles. (Like it did with netflix.)

As most places have a monopolistic type access (or worse, no access) thats the
primary cause for concern. Nobody loves their cableco. If we had a plethora of
choices for internet access, that would be the cure for censorship.

But we don't. We are stuck at fighting censorship due to lack of access.

~~~
so33
In Canada, the CRTC requires the big internet providers to resell their
broadband to smaller ISPs. Even then it took a decade for big ISPs like Rogers
to give up on onerous bandwidth caps (which would be about 100GB a month, and,
usually, worse).

Even with some competition and access, it can take a while for unfavorable
conditions to resolve, partially because consumers don’t really care about
things like censorship, lack of access, (or in my example) bandwidth limits.

Markets are eventually consistent, but in terms of net neutrality I really
don’t think we can afford to wait.

~~~
stult
It's not that customers don't care, but rather the transaction costs of
switching (breaking contracts, dealing with CSRs, taking the time to shop
around) slow the market response to competition.

------
ChicagoDave
It's unlikely popular and profitable services will be hindered by the lack of
net neutrality.

But any new services that threaten existing ones will be hard-pressed to
compete.

Imagine I start a new streaming service. In order for my service to reach
people, ISP's will charge me a higher price than Netflix, probably a
_significantly_ higher rate. This will make it extremely difficult for my new
service to reach enough people to make it an ongoing concern.

This is just another nail in the oligarchy coffin we are actively sealing
ourselves in.

It will also allow ISP's to control and block content if someone pays them to
do so. There are still anti-competitive laws on the books, but are any of them
even being enforced anymore. We allowed the banks to become monopolies, we've
allowed the AT&T fox back in the hen house.

If we don't fight back, we're going to become slaves to the digital age.

~~~
imglorp
> It's unlikely popular and profitable services will be hindered by the lack
> of net neutrality.

Huh? Did you forget already that both Verizon and Comcast throttled services
like Netflix? They both argued they should get a cut if they were going to
carry the traffic to their customers. Now they're getting exactly what they
wanted.

1\. [https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2017/07/veriz...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2017/07/verizon-wireless-apparently-throttles-streaming-video-
to-10mbps)

2\. [https://consumerist.com/2014/02/23/netflix-agrees-to-pay-
com...](https://consumerist.com/2014/02/23/netflix-agrees-to-pay-comcast-to-
end-slowdown/)

~~~
mediocrejoker
What is the actual reason they shouldn't?

This is a highly politicized topic but it's hard to find rational discussion.

If I built a network I would expect to be able to charge whatever I wanted to
whomever I wanted in exchange for the use of my network.

Is the answer that taxpayers helped fund the network so now feel they deserve
not to pay twice? How much of the current internet infrastructure is paid for
by taxpayers vs private corporations?

Any good sources you'd suggest reading on the pros and cons of each side of
the argument?

~~~
opportune
These ISP companies use legal shenanigans, coupled with the unavoidably large
startup costs of creating a new/competing ISP, to effectively run regional
monopolies. Google kind of gave up their master plan for Fiber after they were
litigated in multiple jurisdictions essentially over bullshit that they were
legally within their right to do, such as use shared lines - and that was
Google, which had a ton of cash to throw at the problem.

These monopolies aren't so bad by themselves; we have similar monopolies with
power and water. But those are regulated so that their monopolies can't be
blatantly abused. ISPs are trying to roll back regulations that, in the minds
of pro-NN people, will allow them to abuse consumers using their monopolies.

The problem with what these network providers are doing is that they own both
the lines and the content. For example, if your ISP is a shareholder in Hulu,
they're going to charge way more for Netflix to stream than Hulu, so they can
essentially use this new ruling in an anti-competitive manner.

I'm not sure what most of the anti-net neutrality side's supporting arguments
are aside from the fact that the regulations are unfairly limiting ISP's
abilities to make money. They will mention that these regulations are
affecting the free market, but in my opinion _other_ existing regulations are
much worse about limiting the effects of the free market, except those would
make it _easier_ for ISPs to be competed against, not harder.

~~~
jedberg
> I'm not sure what most of the anti-net neutrality side's supporting
> arguments are

My friend was a lawyer for an ISP and now works for the FCC (I promise she's a
good person otherwise).

The main argument is that small ISPs can't compete if Net Neutrality exists,
because they can't build a network big enough for every customer to stream
Netflix and YouTube. If they could have most of their customers blocked from
those services, they could afford to offer it to the few that want to pay
extra for it.

The other main argument against it is that it's not fair that Grandma, who
only wants to read email once a day and look at the kids on Facebook, pays the
same as the kid next door who is watching Netflix while playing an RTS while
torrenting three movies.

They're both decent arguments, and would totally make sense in a world where
multiple ISPs could reach everyone's home.

~~~
jacques_chester
> _The main argument is that small ISPs can 't compete if Net Neutrality
> exists, because they can't build a network big enough for every customer to
> stream Netflix and YouTube. If they could have most of their customers
> blocked from those services, they could afford to offer it to the few that
> want to pay extra for it._

Hypotheticals can be checked by referring to other countries with different
market structures.

Australia has a broader mix of ISPs and Telcos than the US, despite until the
90s being under the control of a single public system (Telecom), with a
plurality of the current infrastructure owned by its privatised successor
(Telstra).

They seem to do fine with net neutrality. Regular competition.

> _The other main argument against it is that it 's not fair that Grandma, who
> only wants to read email once a day and look at the kids on Facebook, pays
> the same as the kid next door who is watching Netflix while playing an RTS
> while torrenting three movies._

Charging by bandwidth and usage is well settled.

The point is that the ISPs don't want to segment the _consumer_ market. Too
hard: there's _competition_ , which as we know is unamerican because it makes
business haaaard.

Instead they want to segment the _provider_ market. Far fewer of them to
negotiate and there's zero competition. You, the ISP, have at any point in
time monopoly control over the consumer who is using your infrastructure.
Providers have no other way to route traffic over the last mile.

Nobody mounts this kind of lobbying effort from the goodness of their hearts.
They see a gigabuck in it.

------
fokinsean
Tweet in article:

>On December 14, the FCC will vote on Chairman Pai's plan to repeal President
Obama's heavy-handed Internet regulations and restore Internet freedom.

I love how these laws are veiled with patriotic sentiments, e.g. "Internet
Freedom". Just like the "Patriot Act", it is reasonable to assume anything
with these sort of labels will likely be an encroachment on your freedoms.

Also

>"The job of the FCC is to represent the consumer," he said in an interview.
"If you like your cable company, you'll love what this does for the Internet,
because it gives Internet service providers the same kind of control over
content and price as cable operators have today."

I am confident there is not a single person who "likes their cable company".
Who in their right mind would want their internet controlled like their cable
is controlled? This image[0] is exactly what we get to look forward to.

I have called my reps, sent emails, faxes, and just feel so helpless about all
of this.

[0]: [https://cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4252153/wh...](https://cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4252153/what-is-net-neutrality-isp-package-
diagram.0.jpg)

edit: It appears the article altered the above quote, and the second half is
no longer the same.

~~~
ams6110
People are dropping cable due to the heavy-handed control and lack of choice.
Why would ISPs want emulate that failing model?

If Comcast is going to try to charge me more to be able to access Netflix, I'm
gone.

~~~
dzdt
How about if Comcast charges Netflix more to be able to access you?

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2010/12/comcastlevel3/](https://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2010/12/comcastlevel3/)

~~~
nathan_long
The argument that Netflix needs to pay Comcast is absurd.

Why are people buying high-bandwidth plans from ISPs? _Because they want to
use services like Netflix_. Netflix is not costing ISPs money, it's _giving
them something to sell_.

Imagine that taxi drivers want to charge the airport for overwhelming them
with passengers and you'll see the absurdity.

~~~
barrkel
Comcast is like the road, not taxis; the last mile is where all the expense is
in consumer internet. And congestion charging is a legitimate thing.

Why should Granny have to pay more on her internet connection to subsidize
your Netflix addiction? Because equal pay for equal access is that: a subsidy
from light users to heavy users.

~~~
vaishaksuresh
I don't get what you're saying. How am I making Granny pay more? There are
bandwidth caps and data usage caps, I pay for what I use. If I'm paying less
than the cost of the resources I'm using, charge me more. Why does Granny or
Netflix have to pay comcast for what I do on the internet?

My electricity provider does not charge differently for setting up and
maintaining the connection based on what I do with the electricity, they just
charge me for what I use. Why should an ISP be treated differently?

~~~
jimktrains2
> There are bandwidth caps and data usage caps, Actually, commercial ISPs
> don't really do bandwidth caps and datacaps are simply laughable as a means
> of controlling congestion. (Honestly, they're literally not a means of
> controlling congestion.)

I really just want my ISP to be like my datacenter: 95%ile bandwidth billing.
Nothing else. No services. No filtering. No "speed boosts." Just a connection
to other networks.

> I pay for what I use.

Unless you have a metered services, you are not paying for what you use in
that sense. You pay for access, sure, but not for what you use.

> My electricity provider does not charge differently for setting up and
> maintaining the connection based on what I do with the electricity, they
> just charge me for what I use. Why should an ISP be treated differently?

The issue is not metered billing. I think most people would be OK with it;
it'll suck for some but an honest effort to keep the 95% of usage at normal
would go a long way, I thinks.

The issue is when you're being billed differently for what you consume, not
how much. Would you be OK with electricity used by an LED bulb from company X
was metered at 2 times that of company Y which is 2 times that of an
incandescent? _That's_ the issue, not metered billing.

~~~
vaishaksuresh
I get what you're saying and that is my point.

------
tbabb
Picture this: The "Google Search" package with Comcast is $8/month. Or, you
can get "Comcast Search" for free! Comcast search is shitty and conveniently
doesn't "find" results that conflict with Comcast's business or political
interests.

But hey! The free market and invisible hand will sort everything out! /s

~~~
wils1245
This is an extremely ironic example. Google controls what content you see more
than any ISP ever will, with or without net neutrality.

If anything, this FCC change will cement Google's dominance. They'll pay some
rent to ISPs to maintain their priority lane, something an incumbent won't be
able to do.

------
bluetidepro
What I don't fully understand is why isn't larger tech companies like
Facebook, Netflix, Google, Twitter, Amazon, etc. making a big fuss about this
on their sites to warn their users and help fight against it? Are they not as
worried about this? Does it actual benefit them in some ways cause they can
box out smaller competition since they can afford to pay ISP's or something?

For example, if Facebook saw this as a real threat, even a basic banner at the
top of their site could help warn and give action to those people who don't
understand this or are not sure how to help?

I just don't fully understand why I'm only seeing people post about this on
social media, but the companies used in majority of the examples of what it
will effect are so quiet about it? Can anyone explain this further on why they
are not making a big deal and informing their users to help fight this?

~~~
Brotkrumen
Iirc the netflix CEO himself said in the beginning of this that net neutrality
is good for small to medium upstarts and bad for incumbents. Netflix now is an
incumbent with enough bargaining power to get a good price for that access and
fastlane. Netflix future competitor won't have that bargaining power and will
be forced to offer their product more expensively.

Same with all the big e-businesses

~~~
bluetidepro
So are you implying that the tech giants used in all the examples of why we
should be saving this are the ones that don't actually even care, because this
would help them stay giants and hurt new competition from rising to compete
with them? ...If that's the case, I feel like the media should change their
prospective in promoting awareness to fight for the companies that this is
ACTUALLY going to effect more so then the ones it won't (the tech giants most
have used in their examples).

~~~
Brotkrumen
Those companies don't exist yet. What sounds better "If you don't save net
neutrality, you will pay extra for Facebook!"

or

"Without net neutrality you might have to pay for a service that doesnt exist
yet!"

~~~
thirdsun
How about something along the lines of “Without net neutrality the next
Netflix, Google or Facebook won’t happen.”

------
michaelbuckbee
I feel like the making the examples about Netflix/Google misses the point.
This is way more dangerous than that - without Net Neutrality rules there's
nothing to legally stop an ISP from "prioritizing" and "deprioritizing" any
number of political and social sites.

Digital fundraising for politicians is a very real and active thing. Would
they be upset with if their side was suddenly hit with a 30s / page load
penalty? DNS blackholed?

The deeply cynical part of me thinks that's exactly what they want.

~~~
api
A good way to get the right wingers might be to ask them what happens when
their ISP blocks "hate speech" (as they or someone else defines it) or
political speech that falls far outside well established political views.

This is actually pretty likely to happen.

Of course I suppose it'll be kind of funny to see God Emperor Trump usher in
policies that make things like Gab and Voat unreachable. Top Kek!

~~~
m00g00
Problem is the blocking of politically unpopular speech is already happening,
just by the major gatekeepers of social media, Facebook, Google, Twitter etc.
instead of ISP's. In fact many of the same people advocating for NN are also
cheering on major tech companies censorship policies (while the tech companies
still insist that they are Common Carriers and thus not liable for user posted
content).

So why would right wingers or anyone else with politically unpopular opinions
want to train their ire at ISP's who have no history of political censorship,
when censorship is happening right now, under everyone's nose. Where are all
the articles demanding Google et al become neutral carriers of information or
lose their Common Carrier status? In fact, we are getting the exact opposite,
with article after article posted here and elsewhere basically demanding that
big tech companies censor Fake News, i.e. propaganda you don't agree with.

~~~
IronWolve
The right sees an unregulated approach and naive of the censorship aspects.

But Net Neutrality doesn't fix the censorship of companies refusing services
to people it doesn't like. In fact many people praise such censorship.

The proposed Net Neutrality argument is just consumer access to the net, not
the person wanting to be a host on the Net. That aspect, it doesn't go far
enough to provide an unregulated and uncensored free speech.

------
busterarm
Used to work for a local ISP (ILEC). "Deregulation" isn't a real thing until
they remove the incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC) and competitive local
exchange carrier (CLEC) regional monopolies enforced by law.

Until that happens, all this does is screw consumers. Honestly, internet
service needs to be declared a public utility.

~~~
rhino369
Why? The biggest ISPs in most markets aren't ILECs or CLECs right?

~~~
busterarm
Untrue. In any US market, for each class of service (copper, coax and now
fiber) there's rarely ever more than one of each because the big ISPs do not
compete with each other in such fashion.

Muni service is a huge threat to them for this reason.

~~~
rhino369
The Coax providers (i.e., cable company) aren't ILECs though.

~~~
busterarm
But the coax providers still make deals between each other where they
effectively follow the same rules leaving almost every market having one
incumbent provider and one other competitor.

There are tiny competitors that work in this space ( _cough_ RCN, Charter) but
they are functionally irrelevant (except for a few big markets for Charter)
and most of them have gone out of business and consolidated to larger
providers anyway.

------
colemannugent
Is it time to go full decentralized peer-to-peer wireless mesh yet? I know it
would be slow, but that's par for the course in most of the US anyway.

Routing would be painful, but something like IPFS would encourage peers to
cache content in order to ensure faster access to the content they want.

It could be done if only the barrier to entry for normal folks was lower. I'm
thinking a dedicated piece of hardware in a form-factor like the Google Home
where the setup would be as simple as plugging it in to the wall.

Servers would still be in datacenters, but the ISPs don't get to play price
and speed games with their connections.

~~~
orthecreedence
There's a step in between Comcast's stranglehold and full mesh nets: municipal
broadband/fiber.

The more towns get municipal fiber, the more Comcast's grip loosens, until
they're forced to compete at a local level with local ISPs run by people you
know and trust who support Net Neutrality.

If a local ISP doesn't support Net Neutrality, drop their ass and use one of
the 20 other ISPs that rent the infrastructure from the city.

This is the real shift we need. Net Neutrality regulation will be ping-ponging
in various parts of the government for the rest of time...which is a symptom
of a much larger problem: the public currently doesn't own the infrastructure,
and we need to.

~~~
CodeWriter23
I am a fan of muni broadband as a competitive alternative to the incumbents.
But wouldn’t that enable a demagogue mayor to issue censorship directives via
Executive Order?

~~~
acdha
They could theoretically but there's a big difference because that's in the
public sphere and subject to much higher scrutiny. A major making that
decision would have to answer about their legal authority to do so; public
records laws would apply to anything used in that process; the local council
and prosecutors, etc. would have an easier time getting information and acting
on it, and the local citizens would be able to vote them out in the next
election.

That's not to say that this works perfectly everywhere but the framework is
setup to be a lot more open than the workings of a private company.

------
40acres
My half glass full nature tells me that we will be alright. The internet was
born and thrived w/o explicit net neutrality laws for a long time (~20+
years). We have seen major technology players come out in support of net
neutrality, and I believe that if any funny buisness is uncovered we will see
a huge backlash vs. the companies that are playing favorites.

All and all it says one major thing to me. We cannot rely on executive orders
and pseudo-legislation to drive change. The reason why Trump has been able to
roll back so many of Obama's legacy is that so much of it was executed via
E.O; the one thing he cannot seem to roll back is Obamacare which was
delivered via Congress. If we want net neutrality to become law we have to
push for Congress to deliver it.

~~~
acdha
> The internet was born and thrived w/o explicit net neutrality laws for a
> long time (~20+ years).

On the other hand, while the internet is approaching its 50th birthday for
most of that time there was far less money involved and fewer players with
monopoly status over it.

In the 90s, we had dialup and DSL from hundreds of service providers because
DSL was subject to a similar neutrality provision which meant that the phone
company had to resell access to copper at cost. That's a pretty huge
difference: had, say, PacBell tried to steer pets.com traffic to a partner,
every single one of their customers had the option to switch ISPs immediately
without any loss of service quality.

Unfortunately that wasn't preserved for fiber and there has been massive
consolidation in the industry, so most people have a choice between — if
they're lucky — a massive cable company and a massive phone company. Many
people live in buildings with exclusive contracts for only one company. In
that environment, your choices are basically falling back to DSL if it's still
available (increasingly not) or going without an increasingly vital utility.

I would be very hesitant to say our past experience is a good source of
prediction for the modern market.

------
marsrover
The other day I was sitting at home with my family. My parents, two siblings
and my grandma, who moved from Germany after WW2.

My parents and siblings are sitting around talking about how Trump is going to
save America. My brother mentions how a guy in town (also a Trump supporter)
said he's a fascist. I'm sitting on the other side of the table and my grandma
is looking down at her plate not saying anything. She's about 80 years old at
this point.

I can't help but think she knows we're about to go through it all over again.

Edit: I don't think Trump is Hitler but I do think we are losing freedoms. I'm
also not trying to even argue that it's Trumps fault. This was just an
observation about my surroundings. I felt it relevant due to the seeming
zealotry of my family and their lack of questioning certain decisions and
outcomes coupled with the fact that today it looks like we lost more freedom
due to that mindset.

~~~
vim_wannabe
So a lad knows a guy who says he is a fascist and also a Trump supporter,
which means Trump is a fascist.

But what does that have to do with the FCC saying they will not use their
authority on Internet service providers?

------
Dangeranger
Note that there is a discussion about how to fight this plan here:

“Ask HN: How can we stop the plan to end net neutrality?”
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15745057](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15745057)

~~~
orthecreedence
I'm going to sound like a broken record in these comments, but the most
permanent way to save Net Neutrality is if the public owns the infrastructure,
not the telecoms.

We need grassroots municipal fiber campaigns across the country until Comcast
et al are forced to compete with local ISPs on public infrastructure.

Then Net Neutrality won't be an issue anymore: the market actually _will_
solve it. No need to regulate. You'll have 20 local ISPs to choose from, and
chances are they will all support Net Neutrality because it'd be suicide not
to.

This isn't an issue in places with real market competition. The best path to
that is publicly-owned infrastructure.

------
adrr
Google, Facebook, Netflix and Amazon should just start charging ISPs a per
user fee to similar to how cable channels work. If ISPs don't pay, they should
display ISP's phone number and ask the customer to call their local ISP and
demand access. Content is king even in you have a monopoly on distribution .

~~~
rsynnott
In practice, it's not, primarily, these companies (with the possible exception
of Netflix) who are going to be hurt by this. They're too important; if ISPs
try to traffic-shape Facebook noticeably their users will revolt. It'll be
smaller companies and startups.

~~~
ams6110
Small companies and startups will not be big enough to have any impact. It
will be more expensive to keep track of them than they are worth. And most
startups are cloud-based now. They will just pay Amazon or Google for whatever
bandwidth they need.

------
jrs235
Wow. If my cable company (who I use only for internet access) decides to
change pricing and it ends up costing me more to watch netflix (this includes
if netflix increases its prices due to the cable company pushing back and
charging netflix) then I will cancel both. I'll save more money and be free
from the internet at home. I suppose that really is truly "Internet Freedom"!

~~~
dmix
> then I will cancel both.

Which is exactly why it won't happen even if they were given the option...
Everyone would flock to the ISPs who didn't do this. Or to technology options
such as encryption and VPNs to circumvent it, while still using the cheaper
packages.

Selective internet packages has been an incredibly unpopular idea among the
public and has been for over a decade.

I'm not sure why people think the only thing that has held ISPs back from
doing this is a 3yr old FTC regulation. Not to mention no ISP in any other
country has tried it either in the ~2+ decades broadband has been available.

~~~
skywhopper
You have a choice of ISPs?

~~~
dmix
Yes, and if you are in the minority of people who don't this will incentivize
every nerd in your area to create an ISP to offer unfiltered internet. But
more importantly this doesn't depend on competition to make ISPs realize it's
a bad idea either.

The technical hurdles and push back from the tech companies, media, and public
are being extremely underrated. This whole scenario is far more complicated
than the ISPs making a greedy choice one day.

Regardless I'd rather we regulate actual threats rather than hand-wavy
hypothetical ones.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
> this will incentivize every nerd in your area to create an ISP to offer
> unfiltered internet

Uh, how do you think these "nerds" are going to provide broadband? It's highly
capital intensive to lay cabling so you're either going to piggyback off of
someone like Comcast (who is going to charge you a lot) or you're going to
piggyback off of someone's wireless which is also very expensive.

~~~
dmix
> you're either going to piggyback off of someone like Comcast

That was the solution in Canada to generate competition, as the laying of
cables was subsidized already, it was never a free market, as I'm sure the
telecom industry in the US was hardly a free market... not sure why it's such
a crazy idea.

Why not focus on creating the basis for competition instead of centrally
managing the intricacies of business... which has historically further limited
competition.

And if two companies engage in monopolistic practices, such as colluding to
offer the same packages, that should be the domain of antitrust courts.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
> not sure why it's such a crazy idea.

It's not a _crazy_ idea (many have proposed such an idea) it's just not
_possible_ in the United States in most areas.

------
XeO3
There was an article on techdirt which outlined the aftermath of killing NN in
Portugal. The ISP started splitting net into several packages.

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DNGlrABUIAAr9RO.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DNGlrABUIAAr9RO.jpg:large)

~~~
artursapek
[https://twitter.com/Sinius1/status/923982728424513536](https://twitter.com/Sinius1/status/923982728424513536)

~~~
Dirlewanger
That guy is getting too worked up over a small misattribution. Does he think
the world works in a vacuum and other companies aren't taking note? Doesn't
matter if it's phone or residential service, the fact that it's been enacted
is absolutely egregious.

~~~
artursapek
It's a pretty big misattribution. Throttling traffic makes a lot more sense on
a cellular network.

------
zackmorris
What's the endgame to this? If we assume that corporate lobbyists eventually
manage to buy enough entertainment industry democrats and cult of free market
republicans to end net neutrality, then we'll switch from public internet
highways to toll roads.

Except we’re already using toll roads. Instead of having free-ish municipal
wifi, we’re already paying upwards of $100 per month to one of the cable/DSL
duopolies in each city.

The question we should be asking ourselves is, does it have to be this way?
What are the alternatives? I see two possible futures:

1) Work towards keeping the internet free and open through civil discourse,
working at city, state and national levels to keep our elected officials
honest in how they represent our interests.

2) Roll out the darknet - use onion routing, mesh nets, blockchains and other
p2p technologies to effectively circumvent the internet, under the assumption
that it’s been compromised.

There is a third option, which I think is the least likely but is all anyone
seems to talk about. That’s the status quo option - the loss of net neutrality
leading to a doubling or tripling of prices every decade or so, poorer a la
carte service like with cable TV, maintaining the illusion of second class
netizens as only consumers, and so on. But I think it’s not going to happen
because technology doesn’t stand still. Look at what smartphones do today
compared to even a decade ago. Technology will always.. find a way as they
say.

So I don’t know about you, but I am deeply concerned that the loss of net
neutrality will lead to option 2. I don’t think that corporations have the
foresight to know the lengths that technology will go to to give people what
they want. And I think we in the tech community only barely graze the surface
of how far the intelligence community will go to track everyone as more and
more people go dark. So what we are really talking about here is dystopia.

Maybe we need a new phrase for net neutrality. Net freedom? Net survival? I
don’t know.

------
indubitable
One of the positives I see here is that if the doomsday scenarios come to
pass, it might actually enable competition to emerge.

There's certainly lots of artificial barriers to entry to competition, but
Google managed to overcome these in a number of regions. Yet somehow Google
Fiber was ultimately a failure. It's already been downsizing and put all
further expansion plans on hold. So what happened? You could write a novel
there, but the most basic point is that not enough people signed up. After 5
years of operation Google managed a whopping 68,715 television subscribers and
453,000 broadband subscribers. They found that in poorer neighborhoods people
would, inexplicably, not even sign up for the free option! That factoid alone,
which is really hard to even conceive of, I think emphasizes how much of a
bubble we all, including Google, live in. They responded by sending out grants
to digital literacy groups.

Nobody seems to really like Comcast/Time Warner, yet people apparently are not
sufficiently incentivized to swap carriers when the possibility arises. If the
doomsday scenarios do come to pass, this could hopefully change. Ultimately
the power is with the people, but most are not yet willing to speak with their
wallet. The time when things will finally change is when this happens, or when
a new competitor (perhaps satellite/balloon internet) enters the picture.

------
jfaucett
As someone who is not in the US and will not suffer any negative consequences
of this, I'm interested to see what will happen. We know the catastrophe
hypothesis - ISPs will throttle content, customers will lose badly, innovation
will plummet, etc. We also know people outside the tech field disagree with
that and some seem to think the opposite could happen [1].

Honestly, I wish our societies would do way more experimental policy i.e. do
away with policy like Net Neutrality on a smaller scale for instance, for some
cities, counties or states and analyze, evaluate, and iterate. Test it, have
the states and/or cities cooperate. Why not? Its like taking a step in
gradient descent you're trying to find a local minimum and you have to try
things to know what direction to move in.

Why does it seem almost all major policy in the US (and the world for that
matter) is either let's force it down on everyone from a federal level or just
let states decide but have no strategic plan for evaluation, test, and
iteration going forward?

[1].
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/washingtonbytes/2017/07/12/brin...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/washingtonbytes/2017/07/12/bringing-
economics-back-into-the-net-neutrality-debate/#f57e69369da1)

~~~
the_cat_kittles
are you a paid troll? what good comes from selective throttling?

~~~
Spivak
Just as an example, not getting shit internet speeds around 7:30 when everyone
turns on Netflix.

~~~
jquery
I remember my former large apartment building’s internet slowing to a crawl
everyday around this time.

------
riantogo
It seems that most folks are objecting on the lines of, “imagine you being
charged more to access Netflix/FB/Steam”. But that is not how it is going to
play out.

ISPs will start charging content providers to be on the fast lane. Now if you
are a big co this both good and bad. Bad because you have an additional fee to
reach your users. Good because it is a small fee to block out the small guys
still in garages who could completely take you out.

This is not about increase in monthly internet bill. It is about kissing
goodbye to the kind of innovations we have seen with neutral internet.

~~~
dragonwriter
> ISPs will start charging content providers to be on the fast lane. Now if
> you are a big co this both good and bad. Bad because you have an additional
> fee to reach your users. Good because it is a small fee to block out the
> small guys still in garages who could completely take you out.

But also bad because the ISPs are also your competitors, and not only will you
need to pass the additional costs on to your customers (making your service
less competitive), but they'll also.b able to use the money to subsidize their
competing service.

It does Google no good if startups that _might_ compete against YouTube have a
harder time, but Google is forced to subsidize competing ISP-operated
streaming video services that already exist.

------
SimonPStevens
Question for HN...

As a non-american, what can I do to help you?

I'm from the UK, and I'm fairly worried that if this happens in the US, we'll
be next.

I obviously don't have a US representative to call. Is there anything I can do
to support the net neutrality fight?

(Will donate to EFF if I can think of nothing better)

~~~
orthecreedence
Net Neutrality being repealed is a symptom of the telecoms owning all the
infrastructure.

I'm not sure how things work in the UK, but if you guys have publicly-
owned/municipal internet infrastructure, then I wouldn't worry about Net
Neutrality.

If your infrastructure is owned by a few big companies like in the US, then my
recommendation would be to start fighting for public control.

As far as helping people in the US...Net Neutrality is a loaded term now. We
need to stop convincing people why Net Neutrality is a good idea and start
convincing them why municipal broadband is a good idea. Maybe approach it from
that angle.

~~~
Samis2001
It's not publicly owned but the market is way less dysfunctional than in the
US - aside from the few fiber & cable ISPs, a single phone line allows you to
choose from a reasonably broad selection of ISPs.

~~~
cat199
the business culture also doesn't treat 'society itself' as some form of
economic externality to be factored out of any potential equation..

------
zpallin
Ajit Pai and his cronies are an affront to humanity.

------
martin_
Disclaimer: Resistbot engineer

For the past 7 months a group of volunteers has been building and scaling out
Resistbot. Almost 5 million faxes and 1 million e-mails have been sent on
behalf more than 1.4 million citizens. Super easy and low friction to have
your voice heard - simply text RESIST to 50409, or Resistbot on Messenger,
Viber, Telegram, we will find your officials, and help you craft your letter.
It's important to note that the more personalized your letter the more
effective it'll become, so avoid using templatized letters.

~~~
kilroy123
I think at this point that isn't enough though. We need people writing
handwritten letters. People actually showing up to their representative's
offices and talking to them directly. People showing up to where their
representatives are and protesting against those who are for this.

Then, more importantly, actually voting people out of office who support this.

~~~
martin_
You're absolutely not wrong. Resistbot has a team of volunteers who will write
out, and deliver your letters. Of course, this is hard for us to scale to all
of our almost 1.5 million users, but as we speak volunteers are targeting
states and districts producing thousands of handwritten letters.

We're actively trying to drive for better engagement through targetted alerts
regarding town halls in your area or helping you with voting (
[https://resistbot.news/find-your-polling-
place-620d1ea5faf7](https://resistbot.news/find-your-polling-
place-620d1ea5faf7) ). Resistbot is more about helping get people engaged
through low friction than be the alternative to showing up and having a face
to face conversation with your officials.

------
coldcode
The ISPs are promising to honor net neutrality anyway. Yeah, right.

------
agotterer
While this is disappointing news and I think it will take years before it gets
better. My prediction is that this won't last.

When the mobile internet was first getting it's roots most of the American
mobile providers offered unlimited bandwidth. Once the network become
constrained and consumers started overloading the networks with streaming
content the industry moved to tiered bandwidth plans. Years later a few
companies (possibly t-mobile leading the charge?) saw this as an opportunity
to win customers and started offering all you could eat again. In order to
compete it seems most if not all of the providers have an unlimited plan now.

I think the same thing will happen with internet providers. At first you might
think that it won't be possible because there are locations with zero provider
competition. But I don't think competition is all that far away. Mobile
internet is starting to get fast enough for many use cases and there's all
kinds of innovation in internet delivery (balloons, planes, sat, etc.)
Eventually someone is going to use unfiltered access as a competitive
advantage and an opportunity to win customers. The industry will have to
follow to compete.

Sadly this is going to get much worse before it gets better. But here's
hoping!

~~~
reefoctopus
I can change my cellphone provider, but there is only one ISP in my area.
Competition doesn’t bring down prices when there is none.

~~~
agensaequivocum
So you need to work on removing local and possibly state regulations/codes to
make it cheaper for startup ISPs to build infrastructure.

~~~
Goronmon
You are assuming that regulations exist that have a noticeable impact on
infrastructure cost, and that, if these regulations exist, removing them would
actually be a good thing.

Hypothetically speaking, there is a "regulation" that prevents me from killing
my neighbor and taking their home/land. And removing that regulation would
technically make it cheaper for me to purchase said land. But I doubt many
people would be on board with those sorts of changes to solve a cost problem.

------
Dangeranger
Note that there is a discussion about how to fight this plan here:

“Ask HN: How can we stop the plan to end net neutrality?”
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15745057](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15745057)

------
stanmancan
I feel so helpless as a Canadian. Is there anything I can do to help? As a web
developer, this type of thing scares me to no end. We run a few SAAS products,
have a site that makes pretty decent ad revenue, and host sites for customers.
A large number of the website visitors for all services are from the USA. If
that traffic disappears...

Is there anything meaningful a non-american can do to help?

~~~
ihsw2
They will probably water it down to fast-lane/slow-lane where SaaS providers
-- ie: you -- have the option to buy into the fast-lane.

As for affecting policy, that is a more interesting challenge.

------
cwyers
I don't know, the Internet got on fine without those rules for a lot longer
than we've had those rules, I feel like the gloom-and-doom over this is highly
overstated.

~~~
mtgx
It's not overrated. Comcast and Verizon were already caught drastically
slowing down Netflix and Youtube the last time around, before the net
neutrality rules passed, until those companies "paid up".

Netflix and Youtube are _probably_ safe from such actions now, but what about
the much smaller services that try to compete with Youtube or Netflix, or
podcast platforms, and so on?

Also this recently happened in Portugal, where technically there are some net
neutrality rules now, but the current Commission canceled the previous
Commission/Neelie Kroes' proposal to ban zero-rating. And since that meant
they were allowed to do this sort of stuff, they went right ahead and did it:

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DNGlrABUIAAr9RO.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DNGlrABUIAAr9RO.jpg:large)

This is way more likely to happen in the U.S., where internet companies have
local monopolies.

~~~
Pilfer
>Comcast and Verizon were already caught drastically slowing down Netflix and
Youtube

Actually no, all three incidents you mentioned (Netflix being slow on Comcast,
Netflix being slow on Verizon, Youtube being slow on Comcast) were caused by
peering issues. These are not net neutrality issues, contrary to Netflix's
massive PR campaign to convince you otherwise.

The actual issue was Netflix opted not to peer with Comcast/Verizon, and
instead funneled all their traffic through Cogent and Level 3.

~~~
cwyers
And Netflix refused to do peering the way everyone else has done peering on
the Internet because they wanted to pressure ISPs into installing and
maintaining OpenConnect boxes on their own dime. Netflix has been an
incredibly poor actor in this whole saga.

------
wybiral
This may be an unpopular opinion around here, but...

When do we get to the point where we recognize that the internet is officially
holding up massive portions of industry, commerce, education, and
communication. And that it should _maybe_ not be in the hands of a few
conglomerates?

------
himom
Fuck Ajit Pai. Internet access (and healthcare) is like universal education, a
basic human right. I hope a news organization finds some resignation- or
imprisonment-worthy dirt on him... bribery, corruption or other such
revolving-door impropriety.

------
jermaustin1
The worst part of this is that the major ISPs are also cable companies, and
every cable company is anti cord-cutting. With this, they can now shape your
bandwidth to degrade netflix and hulu and slingbox to the point that cord
cutting is impossible.

~~~
threeseed
Or more likely they charge Netflix, Hulu etc exorbitant rates to peer with
them or even carry their traffic.

This means Netflix has less money for content investment which helps their
competition i.e. the same ISPs.

------
gfodor
Would it be possible to counteract net neutrality opposition by writing
requirements into software licenses? For example "this program is only
licensed to be used on neutral network providers as designated by the EFF"?

------
socrates1998
And this is how the American tech boom dies.

I blame the tech giants: Google, Apple, Amazon, Neflix, they should have done
more to prevent this.

Looks like they don't care about it anymore now that they are the winners.

------
Taniwha
The way I see it if you edit some of the content passing though your service
you're responsible for all of it.

If companies want to do away with net neutrality they also have to lose the
legal protections that being a common carrier give you .... just wait until
the family of someone who died in a terrorist act sues you because the
terrorists used your ISP .... because you're responsible for ALL the content
on your wires

~~~
gfodor
This is an interesting point. I hope the EFF et al are on standby to start
filing lawsuits once this starts happening to see if it's actually legally
sound.

------
paul7986
Where is the same uproar that happened in 2013 and stopped this B.S.?

Is it because net neutrality is now a good thing for the big tech encumbents?
I mean this stifles innovation aka the little guys who’d they have to buy or
compete with. Though overall it stifles innovation period!

Stupid Trump.. the worst..a baby ..an egomaniac ..an embarrassment.. I could
go on and on...

~~~
dragonwriter
> Where is the same uproar that happened in 2013 and stopped this B.S.?

The 2013 uproar was with a pro-neutrality majority on the FCC, and was a
reaction to what critics perceived as a too-weak implementation of neutrality.
While certain people (John Oliver, notably) acted like the FCC majority was
anti-neutrality, this was basically a disagreement between the loud public
critics and the FCC over methods where the goals were shared.

The scenario is very different now.

------
macinjosh
This whole "net neutrality" thing is overblown and sadly the future of the
Internet, a technical endeavor, has been swept up in the idiotic partisanship
of the existing two party system. A system that instead of calm reasoning and
logic employs slanted and selective "points" to further agendas.

The rules that are being repealed actually enshrined into case law a loophole
that allows ISPs to edit which sites are visible as long as they inform
customers they are doing so. This case law is now forever on the books even
though the rules were temporary. [0]

This is really a battle between tech giants and telecommunication giants.
Neither care about you.

[0]: [http://reason.com/archives/2017/07/18/net-neutrality-
support...](http://reason.com/archives/2017/07/18/net-neutrality-supporters-
should-actuall)

------
graycat
Yes, but what the FCC declines to regulate the FTC might decide to regulate.
Indeed, it sometimes has appeared that this division, reallocation,
reassignment, of regulation has been a goal of the administration. That is,
FTC type stuff belongs in the FTC, not the FCC. Maybe that will happen in this
case.

~~~
exabrial
I absolutely keep advocating for this, but that headline doesn't get as many
clicks as "Trump is destroying the internet" unfortunately.

The FTC can regulate all areas business, the FCC can only regulate
communication. If people stop turning this into a red vs blue issue we could
actually get somewhere.

------
robotbikes
The scary thing will be when internet providers use the same tactics as free
to play click games where they will ramp up your speed to a certain site if
you pay extra for a temporary speed boost. These sort of pay per view tactics
and extortion over something that we all take for granted now is what I'm
afraid of. If not outright blocking of traffic for certain protocols such as
bit-torrent or VPN access. Not that this is simple from a network management
standpoint but with no restrictions in place one can only imagine the sort of
devious tactics ISPs will use to extract extra revenue from their vassals.

~~~
redler
Given the freedom to do so, some ISP is almost certain to try something along
these lines. This gutting of regulations will open up a vast world of new
monetization strategies, from selling speed packs, to "earning" speed by
watching certain TV channels or even shows, to DNS monkey business, to
"shoshkeles", to video pre-rolls, to "quick start" that throttles after a few
minutes of high speed for a service like Netflix or MLB -- then prompts for an
upgrade...each approach to be precisely wrought in the forge of the outrage
marketplace (such outrage itself often mitigated by these same measures, and
by coordinated control of national and local broadcast news and newspapers).
An actual market response to customer-hostile strategies is of lesser concern
since churn is not a risk in many areas.

I wrote the following comment on a net neutrality thread here about nine
months ago, and some of the feedback was that it's unlikely, dystopian, a
little hyperbolic:

 _" The ISP then starts selling premium bundles on the customer side --
Platinum Service will include Youtube, Netflix, Amazon, Apple (and get our
bonus in-house streaming service at no extra charge!). Platinum-Plus, for
another $14.95 per month plus fees, adds priority streams from your choice of
up to three major sports content sources. And Platinum-Pro adds non-degraded
VPN so you can work from home. Choice!"_

This _is_ going to happen.

------
Spivak
So um... where is the link to the actual plan?

~~~
nigelg
The FCC is waiting to release it Wednesday or Friday of this week, when a
majority of Americans are busy on Holidays or shopping.

~~~
pejrich
Correct, because as everyone knows, when Americans aren't busy shopping or on
holiday, they are busy reading new FCC proposals.

~~~
lurker456
regardless, releasing it at that time will reduce the news coverage.

~~~
Spivak
Sure, but they're not listening to public comments anyway so it really doesn't
matter.

------
coloneltcb
I love how political posts (particularly about this corrupt, incompetent
administration) get flagged on HN because they're not "on topic"

Well here you go, turns out politics affects real life, and even the tech
industry.

~~~
tashmat
And when they don't, a lukewarm middle-of-the-road comment will inevitably
rise to the top, contributing nothing to the discussion other than perhaps a
milquetoast industry anecdote.

~~~
everyone
Has the word 'milquetoast' recently increased in usage by several orders of
magnitude? I seem to be seeing it a lot. I suppose words go viral like any
other meme.

~~~
52-6F-62
I've noted a few trends in namely in article headlines, and subsequently in
commenters: foment being the most notable. It was like the word of the summer,
replacing every instance where a more a familiar and easily parsable word
would do. Now it's dissipated.

That's just a weak observation, though. It might be interesting to seek data
points for the subject.

------
komali2
Here's a free tool to make it easier to contact your reps about this, made by
the EFF I think:

[https://democracy.io/#!/](https://democracy.io/#!/)

------
LocalH
I find it funny how they have completely shed the notion that the Internet is
an "information superhighway". What they wish to do is akin to having a
middleman that charges you a different toll _to use the same piece of road_
depending on your destination. Going to Walmart? That'll be $5. Going to the
bar? That'll be $50. Going to the strip bar? That'll be $500.

~~~
Coincoin
...going to that political rally? I'm afraid you can't pass sir.

------
jfoucher
I'd like to read your opinions on what this means for the evolution of the
internet outside the US. Will the US internet become somehow separate from the
world wide web ? Will it be harder or easier for international companies to
have access to the US market ? and conversely will it be harder or easier for
US based companies to have access to international customers?

Thank you for your insights.

~~~
madamelic
If a service's servers are run in the US, "ISPs" could charge more to that
service to pipe that data out of the country using their lines.

It would only affect international people if a company's servers only existed
inside of the US, which exempts all large startups that have co-located
servers.

It would affect all traffic of people in the US though since the ISP can
charge services to pipe in to their lines and charge consumers to pipe out of
their lines.

------
ghrifter
page 29 -
[https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-17-60A1_Rc...](https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-17-60A1_Rcd.pdf)

85\. Need for the No Paid Prioritization Rule. The Commission concluded in the
Title II Order that “fast lanes” or “paid prioritization” practices “harm
consumers, competition, and innovation, as well as create disincentives to
promote broadband deployment.”189 The Commission adopted this ex ante flat ban
on individual negotiations to address an apparently nonexistent problem. The
ban on paid prioritization did not exist prior to the Title II Order and even
then the record evidence confirmed that no such rule was needed since several
large Internet service providers made it clear that that they did not engage
in paid prioritization190 and had no plans to do so.191 We seek comment on the
continued need for such a rule and our authority to retain it.

ex ante: based on forecasts rather than actual results.

------
ape4
Sadly, the bad effect of this won't be obvious to your average person. They'll
still be able to access google, facebook etc...

------
bitL
Kickstarter for an independent balloon Internet over major cities next? Or for
launching 100s of "cubes" into space?

~~~
jf
OneWeb and SpaceX are actively working on making the latter option a reality.

------
DenisM
My T-Mobile LTE connection has twice the bandwidth of Comcast, and decent
ping. I can add uncapped tethering for $25. I’m honestly tempted to do just
that.

And that’s just LTE, 5g will increase the speeds and capacity another order of
magnitude. I think the whole cable monopoly will come to an end rather
quickly.

------
agumonkey
I'm poking around the web about the feasibility of local wireless networks.

mesh networks or any kind of connectivity, enough to have basic web (mail,
chat, irc, hn class websites).

anybody with knowledge is welcomed

ps: some articles recently popped up about Detroit hackerspaces doing just
that. So far 3 small areas were built.

------
einrealist
There would be no discussion about this if there were enough providers in the
market, that would provide neutral access and market it as competitive
advantage.

If net neutrality rules are thrown out, there should be more stimulus for
small local ISPs - private or non-profit / municipal.

~~~
dragonwriter
> If net neutrality rules are thrown out, there should be more stimulus for
> small local ISPs - private or non-profit / municipal.

If government bends to the telco desire on this, it's not going turn around
and go against them by sponsoring competition for them.

------
greymeister
News like this makes me think back to this[0] statement by jwz from the
Netscape/Mozilla documentary "Code Rush"

[0]:[https://youtu.be/4Q7FTjhvZ7Y?t=53m35s](https://youtu.be/4Q7FTjhvZ7Y?t=53m35s)

------
tmaly
If the ISPs go that route, they are creating a massive amount of regulatory
debt in the same sense as programmers create technical debt. When a different
party takes over the Whitehouse, they will be scrambling to manage all this
regulatory debt.

------
vowelless
Is there a link to the plan ?

~~~
mtgx
Here:

[https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-347868A1.p...](https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-347868A1.pdf)

------
Sir_Cmpwn
[https://www.battleforthenet.com/](https://www.battleforthenet.com/)

This is a simple tool that calls you and puts you through to your legislators,
one after another.

------
rajadigopula
Can someone educate me why someone is proposing such laws in the first place?
What's the motive? What are they going to gain by bringing the proposed
changes?

~~~
15charlimit
Because they have been bought and paid for by the existing ISP monopolies, who
stand to gain enormously from the loss of net neutrality, at little to no
extra effort on their part.

~~~
rajadigopula
I see lot of downsides to that like for example in long run ISPs might end up
offering their connection for free as Google/FB etc. are already providing
their own ISP services (may be they started so because of this law!) => every
large corporation move into ISP business offering their service for free
instead of paying someone else!

------
pandemicsyn
I know Google/Facebook/etc would never do it, but it would be great if just
for a day or two the big 3 would null route any traffic coming from D.C. in
protest.

------
himom
US voters need to have the option of calling a snap no-confidence referendum
on all elected and appointed officials, such as Ajit Pai, Trump, William
Jefferson, etc.

------
Steeeve
I wonder how many shares of Verizon Pai is sitting on.

------
febeling
Suppose the majority of ISPs was to move to a direction were some significant
portion of internet services was "shaped" or throttled in some way that was
imposing real disadvantages or inconveniences for the user: wouldn't that open
a seizable opportunity for a new player to offer "real" unrestricted
connectivity?

I believe it if someone walks us through the incentive structure here step by
step, or explains the natural-monopoly nature of this market or something. But
just by implying it or pretending this to obvious I'm not convinced.

~~~
ufo
In the US at least, the ISP owns the infrastructure. Many ISPs also have
monopolies over "last mile" copper and fiber connections because regulations
were originally written assuming that different modes (off the air radio,
cellular, etc) would be enough to allow competition.

------
aerovistae
i've been calling senators' offices from republican states left and right. the
office worker for the senator in kansas informed me that repealing net
neutrality "levels the playing field." i didn't understand his argument well
enough to counter it, unfortunately...it just didn't make sense and I thought
perhaps I was missing something.

~~~
ep103
You're not missing anything. It literally doesn't make any sense.

Its a talking point the ISPs have been using for the last few years, that
they're "Pro-Net Neutrality, but want it enforced differently, legally." Its a
propaganda tactic in that it is both factually incorrect, misleading, and is a
response created to make the public lose interest in what sounds like a
nuanced debate. ISPs arguments against net neutrality have all, repeatedly,
fallen apart every time this has come to the political forefront; they simply
do not have a leg to stand on in the US.

The only reason we're going through this again, is because Trump and the
Republican Party put a stooge in charge of the FCC. This has, incredibly,
somehow become a partisan issue with each political party taking explicit
stances for or against NN.

------
lerie82
Wasn't this the reason we started the net neutrality bill in the first place,
I thought this was pretty old news.

------
Blazespinnaker
Doesn’t matter. The age of the internet boom is over anyways. It’s all about
AI and robotics.

------
fredgrott
somehow I doubt that..it did not happen in these years...1991,1992, 1993,
1994, 1995, 1996...notice that there is in fact a pattern...what will happen
is that high speed bandwidth content might find other routes to our
consumption

------
jokoon
Well, maybe it will give more meaning to p2p techs.

------
ryanmarsh
This fight will not end until we enact legislation codifying net neutrality
into law. This issue is to important for a notice to simply be overlooked in
the federal register before a ruling is made.

~~~
EnderMB
I'm not American, so I don't know how this works, but would it not be a good
idea to fight lobbying with lobbying?

Create a lobbying group, funded by a mix of regular people and businesses that
push towards the ultimate aim of net neutrality being a part of national and
international law.

I think a lot of people are sick of having to contact their representatives,
or don't do it because it's a burden. I imagine many more people would happily
throw a few dollars for someone to do that on their behalf, even if it was a
recurring thing ($5 a month).

~~~
falcolas
To just equal Comcast's estimated lobbying budget of $20 million, it would
require somewhere north of 300,000 people all contributing $5 a month. Given
you'd also be fighting against Verizon, Google, Netflix, and any number of
other companies, you'd probably need a member count close to a million to make
anything resembling headway.

A million members making reoccurring contributions is beyond what is
realistic, IMO.

~~~
dragonwriter
Google and Netflix are both pro-neutrality, not anti-; you'd be lobbying
_with_ rather than _against_ them on this issue.

~~~
rsynnott
They are currently, but there's an argument that incumbent giants would
actually benefit from the end of net neutrality, as it would
disproportionately disadvantage startups. So in the long term, don't bet on
them staying on the same side.

~~~
dragonwriter
Neutrality advantages incumbents compared to startups on the content side, but
not as much as it advantages ISPs over incumbent non-ISP content providers.

There is not much that has driven Google over the past decade as much as
preventing market power at other levels of the stack squeezing them out (it's
why they've invested heavily in preventing anyone else from controlling either
mobile OS or desktop browser market, and even taken on Windows in the consumer
space with ChromeOS.)

------
SN76477
Are there any benefits to ending net neutrality?

------
agumonkey
Thanks for giving a push to alternate networks.

------
SamReidHughes
I hope those of you against this are also against Google and Apple being
allowed to ban apps like Gab from their store.

------
donohoe
I'd love to know what the Trump supporters on Reddit and 4Chan think of this
move under the Trump administration?

------
oh-kumudo
So long Free Speech.

------
bluetwo
We screwed up by not making this a campaign issue.

~~~
timemct
That would imply that we had a choice in what would be campaign issues. I'd
like to think that we do, but my cynicism grows stronger everyday.

~~~
bluetwo
We did. And we lost it. It was obvious this would come under attack but we
didn't mobilize when it mattered.

Yes, you could argue that one candidate didn't know how to use email and the
other couldn't operate her printer, but it was us who failed to make it an
issue.

------
just2n
But does it though? I don't recall this being a common occurrence before NN.
In reality this sounds more like FUD. It's literally a hypothetical.

"Internet providers will be able to do X!"

Okay, so who can already choose what sites you see? Well there's your browser,
Google could (and does) block sites, so could (and does) Microsoft. How do you
find out about content on the internet? ISPs? No you probably find a link on
Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, or by searching. Well those are all censored, they
can literally decide what you do and don't see. Google's own CEO has even been
quoted in video saying they're fine doing that.

What about at the infrastructure level? There are in reality two vectors to
getting software on the most popular devices on the planet: phones. You've got
to deal with Apple's store or Google's store. There're plenty of examples of
apps being blocked for political reasons from both of these. They can
literally choose what you're allowed to see, what software you're allowed to
install ON A COMPUTER THAT YOU OWN. Google just killed a website, The Daily
Stormer, by seizing the DNS, and any registrar can do this. Whatever you think
about that website, we do have a fundamental freedom of speech in the US,
where this site and Google operates, but that doesn't stop Google from just
arbitrarily killing a site they disagree with. How about payment processors?
There aren't many, they're mostly big companies, and they forbid you from
using their systems to do certain things, most of which aren't criminal. They
literally decide what you can and can't do at a business level, which
indirectly impacts customers.

I could go with hundreds more examples just like this.

These things exist, they're abused, these aren't FUD, and the tech media turns
a blind eye to much of it. Every single day.

This regulation is absurdly dubious in its value. The most common FUD are "but
your ISP will be able to block what you see!" Maybe I want them to. Some
person gets infected with malware, maybe I want that person's access to be
restricted. Maybe I don't want to even be able to visit a machine known to be
compromised. Google already does this in Chrome, to the benefit of most users.

How about "but they can shut down a competing service." No, no they can't. The
citations where this has happened can mostly be explained by QoS, which is
necessary to keep a network functioning properly, and is effectively illegal
by NN. We have laws against anti-competitive behavior like this. Why do we
need yet another? Those laws work. And if they are insufficient, maybe
Congress should do something about it, and while they're at it deal with all
those other examples of companies doing much worse.

At the end of the day, I'm so unconvinced that this is actually a concern,
that I've started totally ignoring discussions about Net Neutrality. Is HN
really so devoid of people who have ever operated a large network or dealt
with issues of scale? I would expect that not to be the case, but requiring
ISPs to overprovision and to bear the burden of infrastructural growth at
whatever demand their customers make seems unreasonable at the very best.
Don't cite AT&T and Comcast at me, fuck them, I don't care if they are shady
shitty companies. What about new ISPs? What about the hundreds of small ISPs
destroyed by NN, the ones you don't hear non-stop complaining about? What
about the ISPs that can't exist because without hundreds of millions of
dollars they can't afford to achieve a level of quality customers expect from
hundred billion dollar ISP monopolies.

I want competition. I don't want my world to be ruled forever by Google,
Apple, Comcast, and AT&T. I sure as hell don't want shitty rules in place that
effectively ensure these largely unethical borderline sociopathic companies
remain in their positions. I really don't want Net Neutrality, because it
doesn't do what it says and fundamentally harms the internet in a way only
hypothetically compared to the real evils these companies impart on us EVERY
SINGLE DAY.

When you end all the abusive bullshit already happening on the internet, end
the censorship, and break up these monopolies, when you put your effort into
fixing problems we actually have rather than fighting fictional dragons, then
and only then will I be again open to discussions about this topic.

------
dinoleif
"Net neutrality" is one of the most Orwellian terms in modern usage.

It's a corporate welfare play by large tech companies to "solve" a "problem"
that nobody can identify. It's pre-emptive, busy-body regulation at its worst.

Who was being harmed in the first 20 years of the internet without these
regulations? Whose lives have been made better? Compared to what?

Net neutrality advocates are utterly unable to give convincing answers to
these questions.

~~~
vorpalhex
Does your ISP have the ability to censor the internet for you?

Do you watch Netflix? If you don't, that's ok, because most consumers do use
it or a competing service. Internet Companies absolutely did try to charge
Netflix extra, and in some cases throttled them. This was well documented.

I don't know if you're a corporate shill or just genuinely lack the ability to
comprehend how bad this is. Spectrum, Verizon and their ilk have absolutely
shown zero regard for consumers and there is no reason to believe that pattern
of behavior is going to change anytime soon. If they can screw over their
consumers for a dollar, they will, just like they have continually done so in
the past.

~~~
arcbyte
Are you referring to the topic in this 2014 article refuting your claim about
"internet companies" trying to charge Netflix extra? When in fact Netflix's
own ISP, who Netflix rightly pays, was actually doing critically important
network management.

I am attentive to Net Neutrality arguments because I care about an open
internet, but I have yet to hear one that doesn't betray a total lack of
understanding of how the internet actually works; i.e., peering. Perhaps
counterintuitively, the FCC is right on the money about rolling back Obama's
populist regulations.

~~~
vorpalhex
Net Neutrality doesn't prevent QoS related management, but it does prevent per
site throttling.

My ISP doesn't have a right to throttle streaming video content because they
want to sell me a $90 cable package.

~~~
arcbyte
Throttling is or can be indistinguishable from QoS management.

------
Chiba-City
I don't watch TV, cable or NFLX. I read newspapers, nerd papers, old Project
Gutenberg philosophy books and watch YouTube lectures or instrumental music.
Amazon is great for my never shopping habit. Hobbyist sites are better than
magazines used to be for user product reviews.

But I never enjoyed speaking with people who watch TV. That's why I found the
Ultrix and the Net in the 1980's back at Harvard. I live in DC and like cities
for policed walkable streets (I don't drive), live jazz, museums, book clubs
and small ethnic restaurant venues.

But our consumer Net has been been a waste of time just like roadside American
life has always been.

This is like the film "China Town" with cable utilities filling in for water
utilities. I know I'm an old man, but nothing has changed much despite our SFX
propaganda fictions.

~~~
_justinfunk
Why did you type this?

~~~
Chiba-City
I typed this to let younger folks know that plenty of older Netizens do not
care one little bit about any consumers or programmers making money off
consumers. I wrote the late 80's Harvard Ultrix manual and worked with Steve
Crocker, Brad Cox, Mark Pincus (pre-Zynga) and many others. None of us let our
kids near the consumer Web (or TV's). The faster our consumer Net dies on the
vine the better. Wield code to automate solutions or feed better decision
support. Folks coding to sell pizza, porn and distractions need better careers
and motivations.

~~~
_justinfunk
While I respect your opinion, it seems to me that your use of the internet is
just as vulnerable to the net-neutrality doomsday scenario as everyone else's.

Your basic internet is only $50/mo, but you'll need to purchase the "hacker"
package for an additional $25/mo to get access to the Ultrix forums.

------
pneill
Maybe I'm lone dissenter, but I don't understand the push back on this. People
who read hacker news should be among the elite technologist, do we really all
believe that every packet should be treated the same?

Should an E911 call or tele-surgery packets really be treated the same as
Netflix? Net neutrality forces the ISP to do that and that seems like madness
to me.

~~~
CodeCube
It shouldn't be up to the individual and profit-seeking ISPs to decide that
E911 and tele-surgery packets get priority. If there's a QoS concern for
something, and it's deemed important enough, this is a perfectly rational
place for regulation to step in and mandate it from every ISP equally.

~~~
pneill
How would you propose that packets be prioritized? I don't like the idea of
the government telling me what packets should be prioritized. And saying that
they all need to be treated the same is equally as bad.

But the real issue here is that the need for net neutrality is a symptom and
not the root disease.

The disease that needs to be solved is a complete lack of competition in the
ISP market. Service providers could differentiate themselves by QoS.

You wouldn't need a net neutrality law if you had competition.

~~~
so33
>You wouldn't need a net neutrality law if you had competition

I don’t buy this argument because you not only need competition, you need a
market with perfect information. Net neutrality buzzes on in the sidelines. I
would wager that the majority of customers would not care if their ISP limited
certain types of packets and would not attempt to switch ISPs (that is, if
they even can switch).

~~~
_justinfunk
If a majority of customers wouldn't even care if this happened, then why is it
the internet doomsday? Seems like you can't have both sides of the argument.
Unless I'm missing your point.

~~~
lovehashbrowns
This isn't something as basic as "the right to bear arms." There's a lot of
information and this is a fairly dull subject, so the ISPs rely on that to
gain support for this.

So you can have net neutrality be removed, and nobody care that it was
removed, but still be in a much worse position than before.

Similarly, the PATRIOT act was passed, and "nobody" cared. That doesn't mean
that nothing changed.

