
Democrats Unveil New Bill to Fully Restore Net Neutrality - turtlegrids
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/d3mk5w/democrats-unveil-new-bill-to-fully-restore-net-neutrality
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cjslep
Instead we should revisit the Communications Act of 1934 and rethink the
classification structure in the digital age. 1996 didn't do enough, in my
opinion.

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andrewla
Disappointing -- the text of the legislation is just "hey, take it back! Also,
no double-backsies".

Having a comprehensive revisiting that directly addresses the needs and
requirements for large-scale packet-switched networks rather than bolting it
on to legislation aimed at switched networks would make it a lot clearer. The
original rule that the FCC removed had a ton of exceptions, "ignore this
because it doesn't apply" and had to shoehorn a lot of other definitions.

It would be good for Congress to explicitly lay out what the FCC's
responsibilities in this area are (or to allow the FTC to enforce instead,
since that was largely okay except for the regulatory scope problems).

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apple4ever
While I'm opposed to "Net Neutrality" (partially due its shifting
definitions), I'd much rather this be debated in Congress properly than the
FCC.

And as both of you stated, its shouldn't just be "Do this from the 1934 Act!"
but a complete review and a proper implementation.

This biggest problem I saw with the 2015 FCC order is it just said "while we
could have this power over the internet, we promise we will never use it!" for
a couple different things. If we are going to do something about "Net
Neutrality", I'd much rather Congress just remove that power completely and
permanently than letting it up to an administration who decides they no longer
want to keep that promise.

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hnruss
Given that a large majority of the public supports this, why is it the
responsibility of Democrats to advance this bill?

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rc_kas
This and Global Warming alone are enough to keep me voting Democrat for years
and years to come.

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paulddraper
Meanwhile abortion and second amendment enforcement are enough to keep me
voting Republican for years and years to come (and the occasional
Libertarian).

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rc_kas
The interesting thing is, fewer abortions happen under Democrat presidents
than under Republican presidents. Something about pushing sex education and
birth control that reduces abortions.

I don't exactly understand why you would vote Republican if you did not like
abortions.

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asark
Typically, they want them to be illegal because they consider them morally
close or identical to murder. One might not vote for the legalize-murder party
just because the stats say fewer murder happen when they're in power,
preferring to vote for make-murder-illegal party that'll try to outlaw it
entirely.

That my fellow Dems so often paint this position as plainly stupid or
obviously wrong is a frequent source of frustration for me, and why I usually
just avoid engaging in discussion of the topic (whoops). Not accusing you of
having done that, mind you, I just see it a lot.

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rc_kas
Fair point.

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Cicada2026
I think treating the internet connection as a casual "product" is
irresponsible and outright wrong. It provides access to education, news,
communication, and entertainment. I mean when Russia blocked LinkedIn the
response was that authoritarian government is limiting its citizens freedom
but when American businesses are throttling firefighters connection it's a
healthy competition... "Verizon admitted that the throttling of first
responders was in violation of Verizon’s own policies, but in a statement to
Motherboard denied that the fracas had anything to do with net neutrality. "
Yes it does.

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freeone3000
No, it doesn't. Net neutrality is the idea that all content should be treated
identically. The idea that you should have unlimited data, or that data should
be billed monthly, or any of these other things that are nice are not the
same.

An easy way to picture it is common carrier. The postal service does not ask
what you are sending. It asks you how big it is. It charges you based on when
it needs to arrive. There is no mention of the _contents_ \- a dimensional
pound of feathers and a dimensional pound of lead cost the same to ship
Express Post. Net Neutrality is the expansion of the same idea to the internet
- that Spotify, Netflix, my cat blog, and Hacker News cost the same, and are
charged the same, per "standard reliability" kilobyte.

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wool_gather
Another good analogy, I think, is to electricity. Should your electric usage
be differentiated between your alarm clock and your toaster?

[https://github.com/ryanpcmcquen/ryanpcmcquen.github.io/blob/...](https://github.com/ryanpcmcquen/ryanpcmcquen.github.io/blob/master/assets/a_net_neutrality_analogy.png)

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Junk_Collector
Both of these analogies are against net neutrality though. The postal service
has special requirements and costs for shipping packages that could impact
it's services or employees such as Ord-D and Hazmat. Electrical services
differentiate between loads that have an impact on the service in the form of
power factor correction fees. You just don't see these as a typical homeowner
because nothing you run has enough impact to warrant it.

There are two major parts/ideologies in Net Neutrality centered around the
idea that traffic should be treated equal no matter what it is, and that
traffic should be treated equal no matter where it is from or two. Both of
these stances lead to interesting and nuanced technical discussion or at least
used to before they became a broader public platform.

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hannasanarion
But a package is still a package, and electricity is still electricity.
Neither the post nor the power company care what you're using your electricity
for or what you're sending in your packages as long as you pay an appropriate
cost for your usage.

A byte from Netflix takes exactly the same number of packets on the wire as a
byte from Hulu or a byte from fcc.gov. Charging more for transferring one of
these over the others is pure rent seeking.

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tengbretson
> A byte from Netflix takes exactly the same number of packets on the wire as
> a byte from Hulu or a byte from fcc.gov.

This may be true, but its irrelevant unless the COGs for an ISP is measured in
packets. It's almost certainly not.

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hannasanarion
It pretty much is. That's what customers pay for: how many bytes they can get
per unit time. How much the ISP needs to spend on infrastructure is exactly
proportional to the total bandwidth customers in an area are using at peak.
More usage means they need to install more switches. What label is on the
return address of the traffic makes no difference to the expense on the ISP.

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tengbretson
It absolutely makes a difference. My neighbor on the same ISP as me pulling
down a file from my FTP server does not have the same cost to my ISP as both
of us streaming Netflix.

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hannasanarion
Yeah, and they charge you for your bandwidth to the internet, not your
bandwidth to your neighbor. What travels along that bandwidth that you've
already paid for is irrelevant. It costs the ISP the same amount whether they
are sending you Netflix, or Youtube, or Hulu, or their own digital TV.

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psychometry
Good. It'll pass the House and then the Senate is forced to vote on it. It's
necessary to get Republicans' positions on issues on the record so that voters
can see just how reprehensible they are.

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Spivak
I don't really see this affecting much in the way of reputation. NN stopped
being about the actual policy once it went mainstream and is now entirely
tribal signaling. Nobody outside of a tiny tiny group of policymakers and a
few ISP level network engineers can claim to _really_ actually understand
RIFA.

Anyone who is arguing that eliminating NN is reprehensible and not "I
understand the positions of the stakeholders and the current FCC
administration's policy goals but disagree that the bill will have the desired
effect because..." isn't really helping anything.

Please, we can do better than this. Read the actual text and disagree with it
on its merit, not because the people involved are evil.

[https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-347927A1.pdf](https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-347927A1.pdf)

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blotter_paper
>Anyone who is arguing that eliminating NN is reprehensible and not "I
understand the positions of the stakeholders and the current FCC
administration's policy goals but disagree that the bill will have the desired
effect because..." isn't really helping anything.

Strongly disagree; people can also disagree with the desirability of the
effect, not just whether the bill will have the effect that the stakeholders
and FCC administration desire. Note that I have not stated any opinion on NN
in this comment, just the meta-discussion on what is an acceptable point of
disagreement

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ewzimm
I strongly agree that there's nothing essentially sacred about the concept of
net neutrality. If it can be proven that certain aspects of net neutrality
coded into law are a net benefit for society, I'm for it, but I don't think
this has necessarily happened yet, and the justification for it gets lots in
tribal signaling.

For example, as much as I've read, I'm not sure exactly what part of net
neutrality has overwhelming public support. Among people willing to comment on
the matter, they seem to stand with the organizations that support it, but the
public also doesn't seem to want their network to be neutral.

Outside the specific laws implemented, the general principle of net neutrality
is that all data should be treated equally in transit, but all data is not
equally prioritized by people. T-Mobile's plan to throttle online video in
exchange for unlimited streaming was so popular that everyone else copied it.
People are excited for unlimited Netflix, and don't mind 480p on a tiny
screen. If most people were given a choice, they would want their most used
services to have a fast lane with unlimited data caps and wouldn't mind if the
website they check once every few months was a little slower or their video
was compressed to fit their device.

Of course, people don't want the nightmare situation presented where they need
to pay their ISP a subscription fee for access to each siloed section of the
Internet, but so far nobody has proposed that outside of plans like Facebook
had in India where base access was free. I would even guess that if people
were offered a free unlimited data plan with access to services owned only by
Facebook, Google, and Netflix and the option to buy unilmited web access, it
would be extremely popular.

So I think we have to acknowledge that many of the things that net neutrality
is meant to prevent are actually very popular with many people, while also
examining the negative consequences.

