
GOP lawmakers shamed on billboards for trying to repeal net neutrality rules - endswapper
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/pro-net-neutrality-billboards-shame-lawmakers-who-want-to-repeal-rules
======
Balvarez
I'm not bothered by this at all Marsha blackburn's district is a gerrymandered
mess. She supports some of the worst policies consistently. Repealing net
neutrality will just allow ISP's to double dip when charging. First they
charge you their customer, for the pipe, then they will charge someone like
netflix for faster data, forcing netflix to pass those charges on to you. The
ability of an ISP to downgrade services they don't like or that competes with
them is too much. There is no discussion to have.

I feel like net neutrality should be fought for at almost all cost. Marsha
Blackburn doesn't care what her constituents believe...she got payed and her
district is mostly safe.

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benlorenzetti
These sort of things always bother me when I am on the other side. They are
just for galvanizing those who already agree. This is the biggest problem in
our political discourse, no one ever attempt to have a discussion that changes
minds.

In this case I am opposed to net neutrality and things like this, the fcc bot
comments, and a "study" showing 75% of the electorate "doesn't understand" do
nothing but make me want to entrench my beliefs further.

~~~
hellogoodbyeeee
How are you opposed to net neutrality? All it does is aim to keep anyone from
controlling the pipes that connect the internet. My favorite way of thinking
about NN is to compare it to toll roads. Without NN, you could end up with a
situation where Honda buys a toll road and then charges more for people to
drive Toyotas on their road. Or they could reserve the left hand "passing"
lane for only people in Hondas. In the same way, Comcast could slow down your
connection speeds when you try to connect to Netflix or charge you
additionally to connect to Netflix's domain.

~~~
benlorenzetti
Good analogy; I think I can work within it.

It is entirely appropriate to limit the speed and size of large trucks (high
bandwidth users) on roadways or charge them more. The ISPs need to be able to
do this sort of economizing to help maintain everybody's min service
guarantees and to a apply market force to the bloating of popular websites.

With regard to the censorship argument (only allowing Honda cars), I agree
that a democratic government entity needs to have power here as roadways and
the fiber under them are natural monopolies (why dig up a street twice?). But
it seems fairly clear that the appropriate regulating body is at the size of
the city which administers the land on which the distribution network is built
--NOT the Feds. No city would allow something like that (only X brand cars
allowed) to stand, the FCC is overkill.

I think there is a real economic and business case for ISPs discriminating
based on bandwidth requirements. You have to throttle streaming and prioritize
phone packets because they need stronger latency guarantees. Basically its a
market, which suggest the ISPs are going to be doing this, whether its against
the rules or not. If you make something so logical against the rules, it
basically becomes another "look the other way" law; providing the federal
government with a legal club with which to beat companies it is not pleased
with, perhaps when an ISP refuses to comply with an inappropriate information
request.

I am concerned about censorship mostly by the Feds, less so by private
utilities, and less still by city halls.

~~~
argv_empty
_It is entirely appropriate to limit the speed and size of large trucks (high
bandwidth users) on roadways or charge them more._

This has nothing to do with net neutrality. ISPs already get to sell their
users as much or as little bandwidth as they choose to. If the ISP's users are
sending a lot of traffic to one web site, that's only possible _because the
ISP 's users are sending a lot of traffic_. They can't stream movies unless
they're already paying for a connection fast enough to stream movies. Which
web site streams those movies doesn't matter.

~~~
benlorenzetti
By high bandwidth users I am referring more to companies like Netflix or a
bloated news site than to end users. It would be easier for everyone if ISP
and Netflix negotiated ``oversize'' rates than having individual consumer
throttling. It doesn't have to be discriminatory, oversize rates could be
triggered when traffic from a corporate entity exceeded some threshold rate.

~~~
FireBeyond
Eh.

As an ISP you can't give your customers (the very vast majority, I realize
that a small minority have symmetric connections) vastly asymmetric pipes
(usually in the order of 10:1, if not 20:1), and then "complain" about how
your inbound upstream traffic is asymmetric and thus "unfair" to the peering
arrangements.

It is as it was designed.

Give users symmetric pipes and they'll use them differently. Far more uptake
of offsite backup, other services from users with a lot of outbound bandwidth.

Will ISPs scream about how unfair it is if Dropbox, Crashplan, BackBlaze,
Carbonite and the like start charging THEM more because "oh gosh, look, your
users are sending far more data to us than we are to them, so you're abusing
our peering relationship"?

It's a bunch of willfully ignorant BS. Design a traffic model and then
complain that the usage pattern dictated by the traffic model is unfair to
you, and therefore you need to double dip your billing.

~~~
benlorenzetti
Exactly, let the ISPs design their traffic and billing model. The market has
effects.

Now, you probably want the ISPs to be operated or regulated by your local
government so that the marketplace they encourage is favorable to the
citizens. But please no more federal regulations on the pipes of communication
between citizens.

~~~
StavrosK
But Netflix _already_ pays for their bandwidth! Everybody _already_ has
incentives to minimize it!

~~~
benlorenzetti
I love Netflix. Back when they paid for their bandwidth via the postal
service, they paid for distribution and I paid them correspondingly. Then they
switched to streaming and it was good for all, despite the immediate purchaser
of distribution changing.

My point is that the cost of distribution is going to be paid one way or the
other. I don't see why we should make federal rules about it. You really want
a society where the national government is not in charge of communications.

~~~
StavrosK
The government is not in charge of communications anyway. It's just saying
"treat everyone equally" and leaves it at that.

Net neutrality (or the lack thereof) isn't about paying for what you use (your
argument about trucks is incorrect because of this). It's about paying based
on who you are, so your ISP can discriminate based on who the data is coming
from.

The original analogy was correct, it's about toll roads where cars of the same
size and build pay different prices depending on their brand. "You have a BMW,
so you must have more money, so pay more, even though you use the same as a
Toyota."

~~~
benlorenzetti
With the truck argument I was just flushing out the analogy, which is a good
one. Then, addressing the net neutrality part of the analogy and stating why I
opposed the FCC's net neutrality rules: I disagree that it should be regulated
at the federal level. It does not take a genius mayor or governor to say that
a toll road should not be restricted to one brand of car.

~~~
justanothernoob
>It does not take a genius mayor or governor to say that a toll road should
not be restricted to one brand of car.

But it does take a genius mayor to also be fully aware of the more technical
arguments thrown around by ISPs to fight regulation such as NN. We are not
discussing roads. As much as the analogy helps, someone might not be there
(who isn't working for ISPs) to tell the mayor or governor about it. A small
town mayor might not have any idea what impacts a decision like that could
have on the local area, and if they make the wrong choice, an entire town is
basically held back from an open internet, and therefore communication, point
of view.

As an aside, "flushing out the analogy" in this case would mean you were
holding the trucks as high-bandwith users, like you've stated previously. I'm
not sure if you were admitting a mistake with your comment or not, but I'd
like to support the other comments arguments against this.

~~~
benlorenzetti
I wouldn't have federal ISP regulations, nor would we tolerate large scale ISP
monopolies like Comcast. The Mayor is not getting hoodwinked by some out of
state conglomerate, the largest ISPs around would be the size of the city or a
regional body.

I also am not sure I understand the point of nitpicking the analogy. A roadway
is like a cable. Sort of. A truck would be like a superposition of a large
content provider, the upstream ISPs, and all the customers requesting data
from that domain. The point I am trying to make is that when you try to charge
this ``truck'' for its use of the cable, well its like taxing economic
activity between all these entities and we should be careful when making rules
about this: we may lock ourselves into the current model of ISPs without
realizing it.

This does pertain to Net Neutrality because how else is NN assessed than by
getting into these details?

------
MichaelBurge
One advantage of repealing all net neutrality and letting Comcast milk the
Netflixes of the world is that it'll encourage big population centers like San
Francisco or New York to seize the fiber with eminent domain and give it to
e.g. the local electric company to run. Or at least apply their own local net
neutrality standards to the regional Comcast branch.

I've always thought that was a better solution than involving the feds
anyways. Why do people from California need to beg senators from Alabama to
stop Comcast from screwing with their local fiber?

The last mile connection seems to be the only important one anyways: It would
be feasible for someone like Netflix to hook together all the big cities
themselves, but they can't dig up all the streets to lay their own fiber.

~~~
rayiner
What makes you think California would do better on its own? California is an
infrastructure backwater, due to anti-development policies. If you live in the
shadow of Comcast Center in Philly, you've probably got two fiber providers to
chose from. If you live in San Francisco you probably don't have fiber at all.
(Philadelphians also have pretty decent public transit, while San Franciscans
have ... BART. I posit that those things are not unrelated.)

~~~
MichaelBurge
I don't think California specifically would be better off, for the reasons you
describe. It was mostly intended to raise the question: "If nobody around the
companies and people advocating for Net Neutrality actually wants it, why
should a higher power intervene on their behalf?" The headline seems to give
the impression that it's only federal Republicans blocking them, which if true
would make you think they would prefer to have more local control.

I haven't heard any net neutrality advocates give a good argument for that
yet. I could imagine "It's easier to have one standard than 50, for each
state", but we don't seem to currently have too many disparate Net Neutrality
laws that need to be unified. Or "Even unenlightened rural areas deserve open
internet" \- but that's not convincing if the big tech cities don't even have
it yet.

I suppose there's, "It's easier to organize a nationwide campaign than to
organize hundreds of local ones", but that makes it a matter of logistics not
principle. Is that all there is to it?

Are they currently forbidden by e.g. the FCC from passing local net neutrality
laws?

~~~
rayiner
> Are they currently forbidden by e.g. the FCC from passing local net
> neutrality laws?

Not directly, but it would be problematic. The "channels" of interstate
commerce are an area in which the Federal government has primacy. States can
regulate them to some degree ( _e.g._ prescribing speed limits on the portions
of interstate highways passing through their jurisdiction). But they can't
regulate them in a way that conflicts with how the federal government
regulates them.

------
jjazwiecki
If we have learned literally nothing else over the past 20 years it is that
incoming shame bounces off like 99.95% of these people

~~~
heymijo
You may have been misled by the title. This is effective marketing to us, the
constituents, not the lawmaker.

There was a big thread yesterday based on a survey that most people don't even
know what net-neutrality is. This is a net neutrality billboard that anyone
can understand.

------
ouid
If net neutrality goes away, the burden of prosecuting anti-competitive
behavior lies with the FTC.

God help us.

------
nitrogen
It's interesting that NN opponents seem to have more long-lasting motivation
than NN advocates, judging from top level comments here vs. a year or two ago.

~~~
acdha
That comes back to money. Billion dollar companies have people on salary
pushing opposition directly, astroturfing editorials and think-tank pieces,
etc. and one of the big things they've been pushing are alternate definitions
of what network neutrality means.

A key part of this is the GOP's big shift towards ideological purity tests
over the last 20 years. Party line messaging obedience is expected to a much
higher degree now and since network neutrality was successfully politicized
many people go along with the statements even though it's bad for them
personally and violates the principles they believe in.

------
maxxxxx
While I agree that these people are idiots (especially Paul Ryan) I am
starting to get a bad feeling about public shaming. It seems a very non-
constructive way of political discourse.

~~~
innocentoldguy
Paul Ryan is an idiot, but so is every other member of Congress, on both sides
of the fence.

~~~
maxxxxx
Sorry, he is in the 1% of idiots. Even in Congress.

~~~
innocentoldguy
I don't recall stacking them up by percentage, ranking them from dumb to
dumbest, or inferring any such ranking.

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dovdovdov
omg, that disclosure. I felt like I'm in high school math class again. :)

------
dominotw
how is not having net neutrality different from google and co censoring the
internet on whim.

Seems like the same set of people cheering google for censorship are afraid of
censorship form ISPs.

~~~
db48x
If your message doesn't show up on one webpage, you can always publish it on
another, or on a webpage of your own. If your ISP decides what webpages you
are allowed to visit, that's basically it. If they don't want to let you
contact any competing domain registrars, you won't be able to.

I suppose technically that'll never happen; you could fall back to a dial-up
ISP. After all, the phone company is not allowed to decide that you can't call
their competitors. One tiny part of the Title 2 regulations that cover
telecommunications forces them to allow all telephone subscribers to call all
other telephone subscribers. It's telephone neutrality. Look up the whole MCI
thing from a few decades ago.

~~~
dominotw
> If your message doesn't show up on one webpage, you can always publish it on
> another, or on a webpage of your own.

Can I just say this then,

If you can't access your website on ISP choose another ISP.

Whats different about this argument? Also, thank you for answering instead of
downvoting.

~~~
rayuela
ISPs are natural monopolies [1]. In the US we're seeing increasing market
share concentration by some pretty big juggernauts in the space (Comcast,
Verizon). So what you're seeing is a lack of ISP choices for consumers and in
many instances only 1 choice and that in my opinion is far more problematic
than what Google and FB are doing. I'm not defending censorship by any party
here really, but I definitely think censorship at the ISP level is a much
bigger problem.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly)

~~~
dominotw
I read that wikipedia page. I'd say I have more choice with ISPs than with
search engines. Won't you say 'natural monopoly' applies to google too at this
point?

~~~
yflu
It takes me all of 10 seconds to type duckduckgo.com, and maybe 30 to switch
default search engines for the browser.

I don't think I could switch an ISP in 10 days, let alone seconds.

~~~
dmoy
I can get 50-100++Mbps from Comcast, or 1Mbps (maybe) from CenturyLink, and
then... no actually that's it. And 1Mbps would not let me do a lot of stuff
online anymore.

So effectively I have no choice, unless I want to stop all video watching,
downloading games regularly (not gonna soak 18 hours of 100% of my bandwidth
to download a new title), etc.

