
Tim Berners Lee slams Internet fast lanes: ‘It’s bribery.’ - esolyt
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/09/19/world-wide-web-inventor-lashes-out-at-internet-fast-lanes-its-bribery/?tid=rssfeed
======
josteink
So the man who decided that DRM in HTML5 was a good thing has an opinion on
the well-being of the world wide web, eh?

Sorry if this sounds bitter. I'm just posting from a browser unable to access
HTML5 content at a regular interval. It's an open source browser, and the
suggested "fix" is always using a closed-source browser, OS or both.

I thought this web-thing was supposed to be open and cross platform?

~~~
dasil003
It's not a fair comparison at all. The internet is infrastructure for _all
globalized network applications_. DRM is just software implemented by
individual applications that you can take or leave. Whether it exists in a
standard is utterly irrelevant to the copyright holders who are DRM's raison
d'etre, and keeping it out of standards is an idealogical stance that has no
practical benefit. All that would do is make sure that Netflix et al continue
to use Flash/Silverlight or whatever proprietary plugin meets the Studios
ever-more-stringent DRM requirements. If you think standards bodies can do
_anything_ that places even the slightest bit of pressure on content rights
holders to abandon DRM you are comically delusional. Studios have the content,
they dictate the terms (why do you think Netflix got into the production
business?).

------
7952
I am in favour of net neutrality but worry that everyone is defending a status
quo that is still bad. For most consumers and buisness access to the net is
hardly free in a financial sense. Entry level bandwidth on AWS/Azure/App
engine is still very expensive and seems completely overpriced compared to
storage.

For the consumer lack of last mile competition and monthly contracts make
competition almost impossible on a day to day basis. An entrepreneur could
setup a WiFi hotspot in an area with poor coverage but no one would use it
because we are all trying to do everything on a 3g data plan.

I want competition for last mile access that allows the consumer to connect
based on the best connection available regarldess of who has provided it.
Companies should be paid for providing bandwidth and it makes sense to ask
large players like Facebook and Nextflix to pay the bill ($0.2 per GB to
guarantee a fast connection to the user should be reasonable). The only way to
break the telcos is to fund open compeition.

~~~
mhurron
> Entry level bandwidth on AWS/Azure/App engine is still very expensive

How is that a net neutrality issue?

> Companies should be paid for providing bandwidth

They are, that's what you pay your ISP for and that's what Facebook pays their
ISP for. However why should your ISP be able to demand money from Facebook?

What you are proposing is exactly what the cable companies are proposing.
Guess what, it doesn't fund competition because if, say Netflix, doesn't pay
the protection money, they get throttled to hell where the cable companies
service obviously doesn't. Now, Netflix might be large enough now to pay it so
you say we have 'competition.' What about the next startup? The company that
isn't large yet? That is where competition dies and that is what the cable
companies plans are protecting.

~~~
7952
>> Now, Netflix might be large enough now to pay it so you say we have
'competition.' What about the next startup? The company that isn't large yet?
That is where competition dies and that is what the cable companies plans are
protecting.

That is why I mentioned AWS bandwidth pricing. Because bandwidth is usually
much more expensive for a low usage startup than a big established. How is
that not already a constraint to growth?

Also, I am absolutely not in favour of throtteling connections based on
payment. We need a fair system that can be applied with the same terms to
everyone. If bandwidth is the big technical constraint why not regulate that
instead of protecting shadowy peering agreements that only benefit large
players.

~~~
nitrogen
_How is that not already a constraint to growth?_

It makes growth easy; the more you grow, the cheaper your bandwidth.

Hosting bandwidth is already significantly cheaper than consumer bandwidth,
and nobody is forcing you to use AWS. Bandwidth is not the "big technical
constraint" as Level3 and Netflix have shown in various blog posts.

------
jbza
I can't help but wonder if the fate of Internet infrastructure will follow
that of transport infrastructure (Build-operate-transfer :
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Build-operate-
transfer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Build-operate-transfer))

Based off history, it seems that private ownership of common property is
doomed to fail.

~~~
zo1
" _Based off history_ " Haven't read/heard much on this... Curious of
examples?

" _private ownership of common property_ " Bit of an oxymoron you got going
there. If something is privately owned, it can't be common(public) property by
definition. Even so, we have yet to establish that internet infrastructure is
somehow "common/public property". I'm curious how you think that's the case
(that internet infrastructure is public property)?

~~~
smsm42
I think it gets to the fact that if enough people need to use private
property, it is started to be considered as "common" and private property
rights get eroded to the point that it can not be considered private anymore.
Like "too big to fail", "too big to be controlled by anybody but the
government" is a popular thing. Now, the nominal ownership may be or not be
private, but with enough regulation the difference would be only in profit
sharing arrangements and not in actual control over the property.

So when the parent post says "doomed to fail", it's not because there's
something inherently faulty in private property. It's because people can't
tolerate the perceived absence of control over such big things.

------
twirlip
See, telling Congress that something is "bribery" and expecting Congress to
think that's something bad is just wishful thinking on TBL's part, bless his
heart.

------
linguafranca
How does this ISP issue affect the internet outside the US? I'm guessing it's
not really going to change "The Internet" as a whole, just us in the US.

~~~
smutticus
That's a good question. Ultimately the FCC only has jurisdiction over American
operators. However, net neutrality as a concept is also being debated in other
countries. When someone like TBL is commenting on net neutrality I'm never
quite sure if he is referring to net neutrality in the USA, or to the wider
concept.

Precedentially net neutrality derives from the English common law's notion of
common carrier. What you should expect this to mean is that the concept of net
neutrality should be similar in all English common law countries. In practice
I'm not always sure this is the case.

------
teddyh
More like a protection racket, really.

------
rayiner
M-W defines "bribery" in relevant part as: "money or favor given or promised
in order to influence the judgment or conduct of a person in a position of
trust."

It's only "bribery" if the recipient is in a position of trust. The ISP's are
not. They are just businesses operating their wholly private networks. Paying
someone to use their private property for your benefit isn't "bribery." It's a
basic commercial transaction. E.g. it's not "bribery" for me to pay an Uber
Black driver more than an Uber X driver to take me somewhere.

~~~
Riesling
I find it interesting how public discussions in the U.S. often are centered
around the semantics of single words instead of focusing on the larger
picture, which is often connected to morality (entitlement vs. priviledge
comes to mind).

The real questions are never even asked. Would a society accept that only rich
people would be provided with water in the case of a water shortage? Should
one of your children receive more food becuase it scores better grades at
school? How important is the delivery of opinions and information compared to
water and food? I am not saying that those things can be compared, but these
are the things that need to be discussed in public.

~~~
revelation
Don't worry, this is just because you are reading from rayiner. Lawyers have
this tendency to fall into a rabbit hole of explaining things in some legal
category, where everyone else naturally operates on morality and expects the
law to reflect that.

(Not a personal attack, it's just different.)

~~~
rayiner
I don't see where morality comes into play when talking about weighing the
interests of different for profit corporations. I realize that people here
tend to sympathize with internet companies over telecommunications companies,
but that's precisely why we don't just base the law on peoples' conceptions of
"morality."

In any case, a debate over words is rarely just a debate over words. Words
delineate the scope of expectations and obligations. Which category you fit
into dramatically affects what's expected of you and what you're entitled to.
Imprecision as to categories on the basis of vague moral arguments makes it
easy to ignore the bargain achieved within each category balancing obligations
with entitlements.

~~~
smutticus
> I don't see where morality comes into play when talking about weighing the
> interests of different for profit corporations.

I think you just summarized in one sentence why many people hate lawyers. It's
not just that lawyers are dispassionate, doctors are also dispassionate, and
people don't hate doctors nearly as much as lawyers. It's that you miss the
forest for the trees.

Categories are inherently imprecise, and focusing on them exclusively leads
one to focus on delineation of experience as the ultimate arbiter. Categories
cannot prefectly map reality, normal people know this, while lawyers ignore
this. Those vague moral arguments are what matters to moral people, not some
outdated belief that Aristotelian categorization somehow can properly capture
reality.

Lawyers categorize circumstance and then map the law onto those categories.
When the law doesn't map well to circumstance, or when we cannot properly
categorize the facts, we have questions of interpretation.

"When does a change in degree become a change in kind?", or "Do we need a law
of the horse?" Both questions assume categorization as the problem. But our
minds don't work like that. Everything that we're learning through cognitive
science tells us differently.

For some takes on this that tell it better than I, here are some book links:
[http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-The-Flesh-George-Lakoff-
ebo...](http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-The-Flesh-George-Lakoff-
ebook/dp/B001FSJAWK/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8)

[http://www.amazon.com/Clearing-Forest-Law-Life-
Mind/dp/02269...](http://www.amazon.com/Clearing-Forest-Law-Life-
Mind/dp/0226902226/ref=la_B001HD3EAW_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411324841&sr=1-2)

~~~
rayiner
People hate lawyers because they don't like applying the same rules to people
they don't like as to people they like. That's why lawyers fixate on
categories. Those abstract definitions force people to take personal
prejudices and interests out of the calculation.

------
McCoy_Pauley
What ISP's say to companies who want to use the internet, "Either you pay us
to access your customers, or we break your kneecaps." This is about both
monopolies and mafia business tactics.

------
vrama
Internet has long provided the opportunity for a new comer to challenge the
status quo because of net neutrality. Now we are creating a barrier of entry
and it is going to be hard for new startups. American dream is correlated to
equal opportunity for everybody irrespective of the background. That's what is
stake at here.

~~~
jacquesm
What does your 'American dream' have to do with net neutrality? It's not about
America, it is about ISPs amassing power all over the world.

~~~
vrama
Elected representatives in America often portray themselves to uphold American
dream
([http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Dream](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Dream))
ethos. But in practice they support policies that go exactly against that
ethos and support gatekeeper policies like net neutrality. Yes it is a global
issue. I am putting forth an argument in an American context.

------
yarrel
Simply use DRM. Some media can be marked as "slow download" and the web
browser has to respect this.

Write it into the HTML spec et voila! One happy Tim Berners-Lee.

------
porqupine
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Modern_Colossus_of_Rail_Ro...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Modern_Colossus_of_Rail_Roads_-
_Keppler_1879.jpg)

------
3327
Not to be feared. Let it pass. Please let it pass. This is all that is needed
for a company like google or someone else to disrupt the system. This is the
final chess piece for Verizon and similar scum to finally get run over.

------
RA_Fisher
If we don't allow ISPs to throttle things like Netflix, isn't the impact that
all other packets might suffer latency? In that case, is NN a subsidy to large
content producers?

~~~
Vendan
It's more like the ISP's oversold bandwidth and now they are being dinged for
it.

------
zwieback
Did Tim envision internet bandwidth consumed by Netflix? Is the current mix of
content we consume something he approves of?

Instead of staking out absolutist positions it would be helpful to come up
practical solutions now. Some form of fast lanes is inevitable over time and
just maybe it could improve the situation of people like me who would likely
remain on the "normal speed" lanes.

~~~
sergiotapia
I pay X/s, I want X/s.

I don't understand how in Bolivia I can pay that, and have exactly that with
minimal fuss. Meanwhile I hear absolutely insane stuff coming from my friends
ISPs in the US. I pay $90/month for a 2MB connection, and get precisely that,
either for torrents, Netflix, PS4 online or plain old http downloads.

I can even call tech support here and have a live-person helping me figure out
why my internet is not working immediately. No robots, no telephone-software
redirects.

You guys don't have that level of quality because Comcast is bribing all of
your appointed officials. There is no competition! My father in Boston just
got internet and had to sign up with Comcast because there was literally no
other choice where he lived. He paid for the service, and guess what 5 hours
after the installation technician left the internet didn't work. He called
them up, which was a 3 hour hold, and they wanted to charge him $80 for a
technician visit. $80 FOR A TECHNICIAN VISIT, they didn't even want to check
his internet remotely, like they do here in Bolivia. It's all nickle and
diming, and you can't do shit about it.

The FCC is working for Comcast, not for the people. Don't you get that?

~~~
whoopdedo
> I pay X/s, I want X/s.

If you don't have a SLA, you're not paying for X/s. The cheap consumer plans
only advertise the speed as a potential maximum with no guarantee. Moreover,
they explicitly state that overuse will result in slower speeds.

So if you want X/s, then you'll need a stricter contract, and will have to pay
a lot more than what you're doing now. Or, the ISP can request that upstream
services subsidize the bandwidth for downstream customers and that way you
won't have to pay more.

~~~
sergiotapia
>If you don't have a SLA, you're not paying for X/s. The cheap consumer plans
only advertise the speed as a potential maximum with no guarantee.

In the backwards-as-fuck US maybe - here they advertise that speed for at
least 90% of the time of your monthly contract. Any time under in credited
towards you with no fuss. One time I had a week of crap service, and they
acknowledged it and gave me two weeks of free internet with no problems. So
yes, we do get a SLA.

~~~
thomaskcr
That's basically the same situation in the USA -- the only time the internet
in a lot of places is really congested is during peak hours. Around 6 or 7 I
notice a slowdown and then by 10 everything is fine again. Unless you have a
business plan or a leased line I highly doubt you have an SLA, probably just
good customer service and one of those "guarantees".

I think consumers that want that are being stupid, I'd much rather be able to
work at higher speeds at night than have a network wide SLA that says we all
get 5 M/s. I'd also much rather pay 20-30/mo for my internet than 60. Think
about the ridiculous expense if they needed to engineer highways just to avoid
the 2 hours of traffic every day. Would you really be rallying for a 12 lane
highway that sits essentially empty most of the day? You're basically paying
for a massive amount of stuff that goes unused 90+% of the time.

------
nickik
I think that offering a range of diffrent models of threwput and latancy can
only be good for the internet as a hole.

What I am conserned with is this, I want to tell the ISP what packets should
run with what characterisitcs. I am completly against the ISP making deep
packet inspection and deciding the selfs what packets to drop or dely.

I think like in everything else, when you have a finite resources you need a
market. Having every packet be the same and then just randomly drop them, is
just bad for the internet as a hole. We need QoS we need to be able for some
services to run with priority.

When I play video games or skype I dont wanne wait, if I torrent every episode
from a podcast the latency does not intrest me so much.

So Im am PRO net neutrality in this sence, the ISP is not allowed to look into
my packets and change there priority.

~~~
jacquesm
It's 'throughput', not 'threwput'.

That aside, it's not about what you tell the ISP, it's what the ISP tells the
company you're trying to connect to or that tries to connect to you. We need
QoS but on the core of the net to _avoid_ congestion, _not_ on the edges to
artificially induce congestion! You paid for flat-rate X bits per second
up/down internet service then _that is what you should get_! So DPI and QoS
have a spot but only where they are used to improve the service.

The ISPs are now essentially trying to sell their bandwidth twice, once to you
- the subscriber - and then again to the companies that those subscribers wish
to communicate with. If they didn't want us to communicate then they should
get out of the ISP business. What I pay for I should be able to use.

~~~
nickik
Like I said, they should not be allowed to make choices about my packeges this
includeds looking at where Im sending them and slowing it down or speeding it
up based on destination. Maybe I defined it to narrowly when I said deep
packege inspection, I really meant any choices about my packeges speed should
be based on what terms I sent it out.

I think a good buissness model would sell me a standard flat rate and some low
latancy GBs.

If a ISP does not improve there network, then I can switch to another one.

