
July 12th: Internet-Wide Day of Action to Save Net Neutrality - btrask
https://www.battleforthenet.com/july12/
======
cddotdotslash
Putting banners on the site or small statements at the top urging users to
call their representatives is helpful, but if they really wanted to get the
point across, Google, Amazon, etc could intentionally slow the traffic of
representatives from DC involved in this bill. Better yet, Google should push
their pages to the fifth page of search results or just delist them all
together. Imagine the outcry if all the sudden, the Facebook and Twitter pages
for these reps got "deprioritized." Tech companies have the ability to make an
impactful statement like that, but instead we'll get a little blurb at the top
of the site and business as usual.

~~~
pvnick
Something about large corporations bullying government officials into enacting
their preferred legislation doesn't sit right with me.

~~~
coolgeek
Not disagreeing with you, but something about large corporations buying
government officials to enact their preferred legislation doesn't sit right
with me.

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protomyth
Is there an actual technical definition of what Net Neutrality means with some
document a Representative or Senator could put in a bill and a network
engineer could look at the network setup and say if it conforms or doesn't?

I've heard some definitions that don't square with what I believe the
statement means.

~~~
erentz
I'd define _true_ net neutrality quite simply as delivering the same
performance to all traffic regardless of source or content of that traffic.

That said QoS and other more complicated traffic engineering mechanisms are
widely implemented and seems kind of hard to get rid of. Google for example
makes use of egress peer engineering techniques to ensure certain applications
of theirs will take lower latency paths to customers, while they may shed
other traffic from customer VMs in Google cloud to higher latency paths. Or we
might move Skype traffic onto low latency backbone paths and give it lower
latency over some other traffic that we can't identify. Does this count as
non-neutral? If so, that's a really-really big deal for all the cloud
providers, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google who do this.

~~~
bogomipz
Net Neutrality is related to ISP networks and the idea of of "common
carriage." The word Net in the phrase does not apply to any and all networks.

Cloud providers are not carriers. Traffic engineering and Net Neutrality are
orthogonal concepts.

~~~
erentz
Cloud providers are carriers. Their backbones are larger and growing faster
than the ISPs you refer to. And they are hosting a lot of content and services
from multiple providers. If they provide preferential treatment to their own
products over products they host then this situation is no different to the
one you're thinking of.

~~~
bogomipz
No, you are completely wrong. Cloud providers are not carriers, they are
service providers(PaaS, IaaS.)

"Carrier" in this context(Net Neutrality) is short for telecommunications
carrier, which are regulated by the FCC in the United States[1].

The classification is a legal one. It was refined by the Telecommunications
Act of 1996[2]

AWS/Azure/GCE are neither regulated by the FCC nor classified as
telecommunications carriers as they do not sell broadband access.

Simply owning you own "backbone" does not make you a carrier either. There are
plenty of large corporations that own their own backbones that are not
carriers. Being a carrier has nothing to do with hosting content either.

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

[2[
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996)

~~~
erentz
In this scenario (where we are exploring the issue of Net Neutrality) they
perform the same function as carriers for _a lot_ of the services you utilize
on the internet. Legal distinctions are pointless to this discussion, because
this discussion is about the appropriateness of those legal distinctions and
regulations in the first place.

~~~
bogomipz
>In this scenario (where we are exploring the issue of Net Neutrality) they
perform the same function as carriers for a lot of the services you utilize on
the internet. "

No, fundamentally they(cloud providers) do not perform the same service as
carriers. If I had Comcast as my ISP I could not call them up and cancel my
service and then call up Amazon and say I would like to buy internet access.

Honestly, it doesn't seem like you understand how the different segments of
the internet fit together - Tier 1 ISPs, last mile networks, transit, peering
and service providers networks.

I need to pay the ISP or else I can not get to the services I am paying a
cloud provider for. This is the whole issue. I am basically a captive
consumer.

The debate has never been about classifying "cloud providers" as
telecommunication carriers.

>"Legal distinctions are pointless to this discussion, because this discussion
is about the appropriateness of those legal distinctions and regulations in
the first place."

Legal distinctions are "pointless" in a discussion about federal oversight and
regulatory jurisdiction? That is completely absurd.

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skrebbel
Maybe I'm stupid, but what's the point of internet-wide action for a national
bill? I'm not represented in any US politician. I'm not entirely sure what I'm
supposed to do here..

~~~
clishem
It's not internet-wide.

They mention the FCC as if non-US citizens are supposed to know what that is.
They ask for a zip code, without asking for a country. The phone number they
listed will not work anywhere but in the US. The address listed in their
privacy policy does not name a country.

All this leads me to believe that the people behind this think the Internet
only exists in the US, or that they are not even aware there are other
countries besides the US. Don't worry, you're not the one that's stupid here.

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umatrixvictim
It's frustrating I have to enable umpteen domains in UMatrix to even attempt
to sign up.

Why did you need JavaScript for a basic form submission?

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danjoc
Am I the only one who has started to feel like a useful idiot defending the
big 5's riches? What we have now isn't a neutral net. We're complaining about
traffic shaping by ISPs, while big 5 are shaping it already, deciding what we
read, what we can download, and who we mingle with.

~~~
bogomipz
The "neutral" part of Net Neutrality refers to the delivery of the bits by the
ISPs not the sender of those bits.

If Net Neutrality goes away wouldn't it actually strengthen the position of
the current dominant players?

They are the ones who can more easily afford to pay for preferred delivery no?

~~~
danjoc
>If Net Neutrality goes away wouldn't it actually strengthen the position of
the current dominant players?

Would it? I'm under the impression, many of the companies big enough to muster
some form of competition against the Big 5 are the ISPs who would be
negatively impacted by Title 2 rules.

>They are the ones who can more easily afford to pay for preferred delivery
no?

I suppose the ISP could cut them off and offer their own versions of the
services. It wouldn't be very much different than how Apple dictates what you
can and can't do on their mobile devices.

~~~
bogomipz
>"I'm under the impression, many of the companies big enough to muster some
form of competition against the Big 5 are the ISPs"

So you believe that those ISPs that are mostly local monopolies(maybe part of
a duopoly at best)are going to provide competition? How as has that been
working out so far?

The average American now pays $103.00 a month for crap cable service and crap
equipment[1]. And that price is only increasing[2]. In fact cable TV price
increases have outpaced inflation every year for the last 20 years[3].

Also it's not just video and music streaming bits that could be de-prioritized
in the absence of Net Neutrality, its all bits.

The last time I checked none of these ISPs operated all the other things I use
the internet for like reading news, shopping, checking email and making travel
arrangements. Do you imagine they will offer competition there too as soon as
they aren't bound by Title II?

Look at any Cable provider's on-screen interface for the channel guide or the
plastic remote that hasn't changed in 20 years that you need to use to
navigate it. Do these give you the impression these are innovative companies
capable of building good software and competing?

Lastly there are other ISPs besides the eye ball/last mile
networks(Comcast/Time Warner/Charter etc.) There are also the Tier 1 ISPs[4]
that internet companies buy transit from in order to deliver their service to
end users.

If Net Neutrality goes away those Tier 1 ISPs that own national backbones and
are upstream from all the eye ball/last mile networks are free to "play games"
with delivering bits as well.

[1]
[http://www.leichtmanresearch.com/press/092316release.html](http://www.leichtmanresearch.com/press/092316release.html)

[2] [http://www.consumerreports.org/tv-services/your-cable-
bill-i...](http://www.consumerreports.org/tv-services/your-cable-bill-is-
going-up-more-than-you-think-this-year/)

[3] [http://www.businessinsider.com/cable-tv-prices-inflation-
cha...](http://www.businessinsider.com/cable-tv-prices-inflation-
chart-2016-10)

[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network)

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clishem
It asks for my ZIP so this action is not Internet-wide.

~~~
bogomipz
The zip code field is optional as is phone number. Note the absence of
asterisks.

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austincheney
They are equating this with SOPA... I just lost interest.

~~~
mekarpeles
Why did you lose interest? Both SOPA and Docket 17-108 fundamentally address
freedom of speech on the Internet.

The outcome of the SOPA fight was the 2015 Open Internet Order (which
ostensibly treats the Internet as a public utility and protects against both
government and corporate attempts at censorship). Docket 17-108 (what this is
about) reverses the 2015 outcome and gives ISPs discretion to regulate the web
and slow down or block companies with competing services, which is what they
did in 2011 and a reason why the Open Internet Order was crafted[1].

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/verizon-blocking-google-
walle...](http://www.businessinsider.com/verizon-blocking-google-
wallet-2011-12?IR=T)

~~~
austincheney
Neither issue is directly related to freedom of speech. Net Neutrality is
indirectly (extremely indirectly) due to throttling based upon bandwidth and
content factors that could influence the types of content a user prefers to
receive.

SOPA had absolutely no bearing on freedom of speech. SOPA would have made
internet publishers liable for the content they publish via user submission.
The result is that a content owner could then sue the publisher, who currently
hides behind DMCA, instead of needing to perform the more extensive discovery
to sue to violating user who submitted the work. Internet publishers are still
liable, even without SOPA, if they fail to respond and take necessary action
against a violating user in response to a DCMA take down notice.

By equating net neutrality, an almost absolute good, with SOPA this looks much
more like an excuse to protest something instead of actual substance.

