
Behind Closed Doors, Ford, UPS, and Visa Push for Net Neutrality - us0r
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-11-14/net-neutrality-ford-ups-visa-and-bofa-lobby-fcc-in-secret
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smutticus
If they want Title II they should promise Wheeler a job that pays more than
head Comcast lobbyist. That's the cheapest and easiest way to get net
neutrality.

~~~
forrestthewoods
If only politicians were as easy and cheap to buy as the Internet thinks.

~~~
electromagnetic
I think that's why the Mafia used to just threaten them. When you've got
pictures of a guy sleeping with prostitutes and they got elected on "family
focus" and do photo ops outside church with their wife of 14 years and fives
kids, it suddenly becomes easy to "buy" politicians. Or, the old balls and the
literal vice.

~~~
simplemath
Xkcd - wrench vs encryption

~~~
wolf550e
[http://xkcd.com/538/](http://xkcd.com/538/)

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jobu
It's surprising that these companies aren't openly supporting net neutrality
(instead of "behind closed doors"). It seems like the only companies openly
against it are telecoms and cable companies - generally the most hated
companies in the country.

~~~
dsl
I have been working with my employer to use our lobbying resources to push net
neutrality. It took me months of work to even get it started. Getting the
company to take a stance publicly would be years of work.

What they are doing right now is nothing short of monumental in a large
corporate environment where the same telecoms you are opposing may be your
customers, suppliers, or partners.

~~~
droopybuns
Why are you all in on this?

The problem w/ all of the proposals from Obama is that when you get into the
details, they hinge around traffic that is "illegal". No Snowden disclosures,
no wikileaks. If you distill the proposal to it's basics, it has very little
to do with the kinds of functionality that people think they are fighting for.

~~~
Retric
There is nothing sinister about allowing illegal traffic to be blocked.
Currently ISP routers often block massive DDoS attacks and without that
exclusion they would have to let them through. Realistically, routers are the
best place to deal with such attacks and not carving out that exclusion would
open up a lot of valid criticism.

~~~
johndevor
>There is nothing sinister about allowing illegal traffic to be blocked.

Isn't this what China says?

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shkkmo
“Every retailer with an online catalogue, every manufacturer with online
product specifications, every insurance company with online claims processing,
every bank offering online account management, every company with a
website–every business in America interacting with its customers online is
dependent upon an open Internet.”

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sschueller
I am worried that the net neutrality rules the president is now pushing will
eventually kill the free and open internet.

ISPs will be required to not block traffic that is lawful but what is the
definition of lawful? Would wikileaks be considered lawful? What about the
Snowden documents? What about encryption?

This is a dangerous road we are going down.

~~~
tzs
What rules would you suggest?

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revelation
Let's start with _ISPs can 't manipulate any data in layers over IP_. Seems
like the majority already fails that very, very simple requirement to a
_communications provider_.

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tptacek
ISPs do extensive "manipulation" at layers above IP for operational reasons
that have nothing at all to do with favoring particular content providers.

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atmosx
I'm missing something. The author writes: _and all four deny advocating for
net neutrality behind closed doors with the FCC._ Okay, so does the author
know about this?!

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apayan
The article points outs that the FCC is required to disclose what was
discussed at those meetings, and even has links to the slides of the
presentation that the representatives made to the FCC while they were there.
If you click on those links, you can view the PDFs that were presented, and
they clearly outline strong support for net neutrality.

[http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=60000979857](http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=60000979857)

edit: added a link to the PDF of slides

~~~
atmosx
k thanks!

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31reasons
Businesses will push for anything that can make them profit. For these
companies Net Neutrality happen to fall into their profit domain so they push
for it. But fundamental rights and values should not be up for anyone to
debate or lobby. Net Neutrality should be part of the constitution.

~~~
gumby
> Net Neutrality should be part of the constitution.

I think comcast and verizon are villainous scum that should be crushed like
bugs, and still I am uncomfortable with legislating for net neutrality at this
point, and especially uncomfortable with the idea of putting it in the
constitution (even presuming that that's a bit of hyperbole on your part).

My problem is that NN is a "I know it when I see it" issue. But do I? When I
first saw bitterness I thought it was a bad actor at the TCP/IP level (it
isn't!). Streaming live events over the network? Madness -- my first
impression was that we have several other broadcast media for that already!
(now I realize: "so what?"). My understanding evolves over time.

Consider: differentiated carriage is clearly of interest to me -- I'd be happy
to pay (as long as it's me making the decision, not my carrier) for
differentiated QoS to make sure my call or game traffic were isochronous, that
that big file I want now came quickly, but that my background app & OS
updates, or disk pickup transmissions, were deprioritized, or even especially
scheduled for periods of low contention. I'm delighted if my ISP has a cache
so that common pages many people in my topological area may preload pages I
want to see two, improving my access. Oh and I do with that that DDOS attack
aimed at you doesn't catch me in the crossfire.

Finally, we know that when legislation is made, especially by people who lack
the domain knowledge, all sorts of corner cases get screwed up both
maliciously or though ignorance. What's network management vs rentier
opportunism vs disadvantaging the poor vs a mistake can be twisted by someone
with a buck to make, and the old carriers are past masters at such games. And
they will surely swap the right to stop spam and layer 3 attacks for the right
to monitor and censor.

If you do want a constitutional amendment, make it a general one about right
of carriage and passage. I.e. it should apply equally to trucks driving down
the road (which still have to meet some technical constraints for safety) to
sending parcels, transmitting bits and the like. So that it can still be
applicable when we consider packet switching as obsolete as the carrier
pigeon.

~~~
splitrocket
Thing about QOS is that if I buy a level of service from my ISP and you buy an
equivalent or greater level of service from your ISP, you and I should be able
to communicate at that level of service. The which bits we decide to send to
each other should be completely up to us.

QOS should happen at the edges of the network, certainly not in the middle
because the middle has no clue what bits count to me.

Common Carrier law is exactly what Title II is, and what currently applies to
trucks driving down the roads (can't buy a faster speed limit), electricity,
shipping, oil pipelines, landline telephony, postage, etc.

~~~
gumby
Oh I completely agree in regards to QoS! That was not my point.

My point is that the technology is still immature. We haven't really
considered what our true criteria are, what layer they live at etc. There are
still many innovations ahead. And don't think the carriers aren't well versed
in how to game the system!

You say, correctly, that Title II is common carriage. But consider what came
along with that. Note that I think CC has mostly worked with busses (you can't
discriminate by race, at least) and the roads. It's worked well with trains.
In other areas it hasn't got such a good record (and my politics are what is
called in America "liberal").

In the case of telephony, title II unarguably held back technological
development. All the development was done at the center. AT&T and Bell Labs
did a really astounding job of development in the core (FDM in the 1930's for
chrissake, and direct dialing with routing tables on punched metal cards in
the 1940s). Not to mention SS7, the transistor and fibre optics. But all that
came at a huge cost: phone calls were expensive, long distance was a limited
service, and all innovation at the edge was explicitly, and by legal force,
suppressed. You probably don't remember how horrible it was to use a Bell 103
modem, or the crappy approved phones. Mobile telephony was expensive and
essentially useless. The communication infrastructure of today would be
unrecognizable to a telephone engineer of 1990, while the communication
infrastructure of 1990 would have been be easily comprehensible to a telephone
engineer of 1925.

My point is: that it worked at all was because we had a useful metric: 99% of
all calls had to be completed, even if it meant overbuilding to guarantee that
on Mother's day. On the other hand we don't even have an equivalent of an
Erlang [1] in the internet domain. I don't believe NN can legitimately be
legislated in 2014, and any attempt will screw us at LEAST as much as
ATT/comcast/verizon etc al are screwing us today.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlang_(unit)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlang_\(unit\))

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userisme
[https://www.torproject.org/about/sponsors.html.en](https://www.torproject.org/about/sponsors.html.en)
the ford foundation sponsors tor

~~~
GabrielF00
I don't think the Ford Foundation has had much affiliation with Ford Motor
Company for decades.

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kchoudhu
Bank of America couldn't even be bothered to send an MD to present its case?

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jaekwon
What worries me is, how do you define what the internet is? If I fork the IP
stack and call it IP2, and it is different in some significant way, does that
still fall under Title II?

~~~
splitrocket
It's quite simple: If you sell carriage of data between two parties, are
responsible for the loss of said data, and sell to the general public, then
yes, you should be considered a common carrier of data.

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

