
Net Neutrality will die, so let’s take the profit out of killing it - eaguyhn
https://www.cringely.com/2017/11/22/15471/
======
pySSK
I wish he had explored this concept more:

> The concept of Net Neutrality is bound in the idea that Internet Service
> Providers (ISPs) are common carriers like the phone company. Phone companies
> like to claim they have no knowledge of — and therefore no responsibility
> for — the words that are carried over their phone lines. They serve Ruth
> Bader Ginsburg and the Russian Embassy alike — just as long as both pay
> their phone bills. Tony Soprano and Tony Stark are the same in phone company
> eyes. And this is true of the Internet, too, at least for the next month or
> so, because the FCC under President Obama declared Internet Service to be a
> common carrier. That’s about to change, and with it the requirement that all
> Internet bits be treated equally. People who are willing to pay more will
> soon get measurably quicker Internet service. And big bandwidth users like
> Amazon and Netflix will have to pay more to avoid having their signals
> slowed down.

If the ISPs suddenly become not common carriers, do they then become
_responsible_ for all the content? If that is the case, then we can make non-
net neutrality really expensive for them.

~~~
mundo
> If the ISPs suddenly become not common carriers, do they then become
> responsible for all the content?

No, "common carrier" is an overloaded concept that implies some responsibility
for the thing being carried in other contexts (e.g. maritime shipping) but
does not imply what you're suggesting in this one. Remember, US ISPs were not
classified as common carriers until mid-2015.

~~~
amaranth
DSL started life considered a common carrier, it wasn't until 2005 it was
reclassified, to match a previous decision that cable internet wasn't a common
carrier.

------
tbrock
This argument doesn’t make any sense. The isps would just deprioritize the
zero tier traffic so you couldn’t use it effectively. It’s only faster because
of how things work today.

Nobody would care about being able to watch Netflix via zero tier if it’s
faster to watch without it (which the isps would most certainly ensure).

I also think it’s nieve to assume that large tech companies want neutrality.

Sure, companies publicly say that they are for it but if they could pay to
prevent new competitors (without the same capital resources) from challenging
them it’s my hunch that they’d gladly do so.

They aren’t on our side.

------
evo_9
This problem is never going to go away as long as ISP are private companies.

Think what would happen if your power/utility company was driven by profit and
not solely to provide a critical service.

Internet access should be de-privitized, the free market isn't going to fix
this ever and this battle is going to just going to repeat itself every 6-12
months until they win.

~~~
JoshTriplett
Because we should trust government to provide Internet access? That would
certainly make it far easier to monitor. And instead of fixing the problem
that not everyone has a choice of ISPs, that would ensure that _no one_ has a
choice of ISPs, so when the _one_ ISP that exists is terrible there's no
recourse.

I do think it might make sense to treat _fiber_ as infrastructure, so that we
could then have numerous competing ISPs _everywhere_ that just need to light
up the fiber that's already there. That seems like an improvement.

~~~
maxxxxx
I wonder how MVNOs for cell phone services came to be. There you have multiple
companies competing while using the bigger networks. I would like to see the
same for ISPs where Comcast would rent their infrastructure to other companies
that then can compete with different plans. 1

~~~
toast0
Be careful using mvno as the model. In the US, many of the mvnos have shaky
financials and often end up as a subsidiary of the carrier (Virgin Mobile USA,
Boost, Cricket)

~~~
maxxxxx
At least there is some competition and variation in plans. For example, I have
a 2GB plan with unlimited voice and text on T-Mobile. Not bad.

------
crabasa
This analysis collapses because the OP fails to realize that the big players
(FB, Google, Amazon, Netflix, etc) don't benefit from net neutrality nearly as
much as the long tail of sites and services. ISPs know that an internet
service without FB is worthless, so they're motivated to work out deals and
create bundles. It used to be ESPN and HBO, now it's Google and Netflix.

~~~
raverbashing
> realize that the big players don't benefit from net neutrality

Yeah, the big players don't realize this is stupid.

Who says they won't get fleeced by the ISPs?

Having your business rely on a monopolist that could antagonize you will most
likely backfire.

"Oh but they are the incumbents" who do you think is easier to extort, the
small startup or the bigger company? I hope Fb is charged for all their auto
play videos

------
gervase
The assumption that they won't simply block VPNs "because China does that"
seems naive. "VPNs are only used by {pirates|terrorists|pedophiles|etc}!"
could easily be deployed as a smokescreen for this change.

And, if you have a valid work use case, simply get the "Enterprise" package
for your home network, where the exorbitant cost is covered by your employer!

~~~
VectorLock
I think its more simply a matter of them everything everything
slow/inaccessible unless you buy the _advanced video_ package that includes
Netflix, Hulu, YouTube" Which service tier is going to include the ZT VPN
option?

And what if you're NOT a tech worker who has an employer to cover the
"Enterprise VPN" tier? Good luck with that.

------
mcv
I don't see how handing one company a monopoly over all internet traffic is
going to be better in the long run.

What the US needs, is competition. Monopolists can afford to screw their
customers, competitors in an open, transparent market can't. Let ISPs
advertise that their connection to Youtube/Netflix/etc is not throttled like
it is with Comcast/etc, and chances are many people will switch.

~~~
lordCarbonFiber
Except that isn't an option for the overwhelming majority of people. Odds are
you have one choice for broadband, maybe a choice for dsl, and that's about
it.

Competition _cannot_ occur without low (or ideally 0) entrance costs. The
investment required to lay cable, let along bother to run your ISP, is such
that there will never an open market.

~~~
TDL
Laying cable isn't the only way to deliver internet service. Wireless ISPs are
a thing.

~~~
himom
That isn’t realistic in this decade for rural/remote areas. Satellite internet
also failed because of the unusable latency incurred. The only way to
guarantee bandwidth is a physical connection because spectrum bandwidth is
finite, whereas point-to-point bandwidth scales nearly linearly with more
physical channels.

~~~
Panino
> That isn’t realistic in this decade for rural/remote areas.

Not OP, but I recently lived in a rural area and had 3 options for Internet:

    
    
      * Mediacom cable with permanent 20-50% (or more) packet loss
    
      * CenturyLink DSL at 1mbps (not a typo)
    
      * Local wireless company, 7mbps, no packet loss
    

About 2 decades ago I worked for a different wireless ISP (same rural area)
that delivered the best local service by FAR. (Cable wasn't yet an option, and
satellite had crazy latency.) So wireless was superior ~2 decades ago in that
rural area as well as recently, for many people. So I don't know what you mean
by wireless being "[unrealistic] in this decade for rural/remote areas."

My position is that municipal fiber is the way to go, but give wireless ISPs
credit because they're helping a lot of people get on the Internet who would
barely have connectivity otherwise.

------
AdmiralAsshat
This would be a better article if it didn't read like an advertisement for
ZeroTier. It could easily be replaced with a generic recommendation to use a
VPN at all times (which I already do), and the end-result would be the same.

~~~
api
I'm the founder of ZeroTier and just saw this article. I've spoken to Bob a
few times in the past and while we appreciate the mention there wasn't any
coordination. (We'd have timed it to not be right before a holiday. :)

I think what he's arguing is that fully encrypted p2p overlay networks would
be the next step beyond privacy VPNs, and would be more powerful. Basically if
we "encrypt all the things" then ISPs will only see opaque encrypted traffic
and will be unable to effectively implement really fine-grained traffic
prioritization/de-prioritization.

What he suggests would be possible. People and services could join public
ZeroTier networks and you'd have this flat "meta-Internet" where everything
was encrypted and all traffic looked the same.

I don't think this is a silver bullet. ISPs can still make deals with big
players like Netflix, Google, Facebook, etc. and offer them at a higher speed
on the "clearnet." Other traffic would be relegated to the "other" category
that would be slow-laned on non-premium plans. This applies to more
conventional privacy VPNs and anything else just as much as it applies to
ZeroTier.

~~~
pjc50
I think there's a fundamental technical problem here. ISPs theoretically
provide you with the shortest, least congested route. Overlay networks
_either_ go straight to the same destination (subject to the same throttling),
or bounce off some other host for privacy laundering. Then you're dependent on
that host to have a good connection to Netflix instead.

It's always going to be worse than going direct.

~~~
api
Mostly agreed. The only real hope is to more substantially disrupt the ISP
market.

------
mnw21cam
So, the problem I can see with this is that (by my understanding) ZeroTier
will naturally try to set up a direct connection between the two communicating
endpoints, encapsulated in whatever encryption. This means that all the
NetFlix traffic will _still_ be originating from NetFlix IP addresses.
Therefore, even though the content is encrypted and non-inspectable, it can
still be identified as NetFlix, and throttled.

~~~
rajadigopula
Makes sense. The only hope left is a "Hero ISP" who voluntarily decides to not
participate in the prioritization.

------
cmurf
ISPs want to turn the internet into TV. You tell us what sites you want to
visit and we'll tell you what that will cost.

How far can the ISPs go before Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook,
just offer an always on VPN service to get around the ISP's blacklisting of
sites you haven't paid to visit?

Android on Nexus and Pixel phones has a wifi assistant that secures the
connection when you're connected to public wifi; which kinda sounds like an
automatically initiated VPN.

------
agumonkey
Let's kill it by having semi local wireless mesh networks. That would be
enough for basic web (mail, irc, average website).

~~~
spilk
using whose spectrum?

------
jacknews
So the answer is to for everyone to use a VPN? That won't happen.

It seems to me that if the ISPs are no longer common carriers, then they are
able to choose what content they transmit.

That choice must surely come with responsibility, and they are therefore
responsible for the content they transmit.

I suggest another way to remove their profits; flood them with illegal content
and sue.

------
sanqui
I immediately thought of cjdns[1] being used to implement this idea. Dos
anybody know how ZeroTier compares to it?

[1] [https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns](https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns)

------
tengbretson
I'm still waiting for someone to come up with a compelling reason that it
should be _illegal_ for me to buy a "Facebook Only" internet service.

~~~
DubiousPusher
Yeah, cause that's what's going to happen. Remember the heydays of cable TV
when you could pay for just what you wanted!?

~~~
tengbretson
Yes. If only we'd made it illegal for cable companies to sell cable packages
back then.

~~~
DubiousPusher
If only we'd have required line owners to wholesale access to other service
providers. We wouldn't have had to made packages illegal because there'd have
been actual competition.

------
xj9
why ZT tho? like, you could accomplish the same type of overlay system using
i2p. there's performance issues to work out to be sure, but if its literally
impossible to tell who is talking to who it gets a lot harder for isps to
control anything.

------
devon_m
Write your representatives and ask them to repeal the FCC

------
LyndsySimon
For me, this article brings to mind a statement that Rand Paul maid several
years ago. I thought I'd reference it here for others to consider as well.

05/2011: "Paul: 'Right to health care' is slavery"
[https://www.politico.com/story/2011/05/paul-right-to-
health-...](https://www.politico.com/story/2011/05/paul-right-to-health-care-
is-slavery-054769)

> “With regard to the idea whether or not you have a right to health care you
> have to realize what that implies. I am a physician. You have a right to
> come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery. You are
> going to enslave not only me but the janitor at my hospital, the person who
> cleans my office, the assistants, the nurses. … You are basically saying you
> believe in slavery,” said Paul (R-Ky.), who is an ophthalmologist.

10/2017: "The Problem of Doctors' Salaries" \-
[https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/10/25/doctors-
sal...](https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/10/25/doctors-salaries-pay-
disparities-000557)

> Policymakers have a number of tools to use to introduce more competition,
> weaken the doctors’ cartel and get their pay more in line with counterparts
> elsewhere.

~~~
SteveNuts
Did you mean to comment on this post?

