
We’re About to Lose Net Neutrality - joseflavio
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/11/so-the-internets-about-to-lose-its-net-neutrality
======
declan
Marvin, the author of the Wired.com opinion piece, is a smart fellow. But what
he ignores is that Congress never handed the FCC the authority to impose Net
neutrality regulations on the Internet. Such legislation actually came up for
a vote in Congress, and it came close to passage: it was reported favorably
out of a Senate committee but was defeated in a House floor vote in 2006:
[http://news.cnet.com/2100-1028_3-6081882.html](http://news.cnet.com/2100-1028_3-6081882.html)

Even if you _adore_ the principle of Net neutrality, it's reasonable to demand
that federal regulatory agencies stick to what Congress authorized them to do.
Otherwise you have illegal regulations and bureaucratic turf-grabbing that
will not treat the Internet well. Remember Hollywood's successful efforts to
lobby the FCC to impose "broadcast flags" on computers by bureaucratic fiat? A
federal appeals court correctly struck it down as exceeding the agency's legal
authority, as I wrote here in 2005:
[http://news.cnet.com/2100-1030_3-5697719.html](http://news.cnet.com/2100-1030_3-5697719.html)

That same appeals court is currently considering the FCC's Net neutrality
regulations. BTW, it's also the same court that slapped down the FCC's first
attempt to impose Net neutrality regulations without legal authority in 2010:
[http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20001825-38.html](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20001825-38.html)

If Net neutrality violations become an actual problem, there's no shortage of
publicity-hungry politicians in Congress (hi, Ed Markey!) who will hold
hearings and push legislation forward. Obama will happily sign it. Until then,
other government debacles including NSA domestic surveillance and Obamacare
should make us wary of federal agencies exceeding their legal authority --
especially after Congress considered and rejected a law that would have given
it to them in the first place.

~~~
amarv1n
There's a lot I disagree with in Declan's comment.

We disagree on what Congress gave the FCC authority to do. The 1996 Telecom
Act clearly classified DSL and dial-up as something called a
"telecommunications service" which was subject to a host of rules including
nondiscrimination rules. On the other hand, things like Yahoo.com would be
"information services," not subject to all those rules.

The FCC, adhering to a deregulatory philosophy, decided not to regulate cable
modem service by claiming it was an "information service" through some pretty
silly technical analysis. After this decision, the FCC decided that DSL and
wireless Internet were also "information services" not automatically subject
to the rules set out by Congress. (This is sort of like a financial regulator
deciding that mortgage-backed securities are not insurance, even though they
look like insurance, just to make sure all the laws applicable to insurance
don't apply.)

But... the FCC claimed it could impose net neutrality rules on ISPs even
though they were "information services" like Yahoo (or Hacker New or
Facebook). A court struck down that attempt and the FCC is on try number 2,
and before the same court.

The FCC can properly classify ISP service as a "telecommunications service."

The argument about Congress failing to pass a new statute authorizing net
neutrality in 2006 is flawed because courts draw no inference from failed
legislation. That's well-known statutory interpretation. Any member could
introduce any law and it likely won't get passed; that 1 member's view doesn't
have a legal impact.

Finally, the argument that Ed Markey can act whenever there's a NN violation
misses the point that _the FCC_ is the enforcement agency that should act. By
adopting a law, they are simply setting up that enforcement process for people
to file complaints, and the FCC can act. Markey on his own can't enforce
anything; he can call hearings, but that's not enforcing an order.

(Also, the commenter is Declan McCulloch of CNET, or his biggest fan, since he
links to Declan's articles and is named Declan... I'm Marvin, the author of
the Wired.com opinion article. Declan is also quite a "smart fellow" and we
get along swell, even if we disagree sometimes and are on opposite coasts.)

~~~
mathattack
Thanks for following up. For what it's worth, you have a flawed view of
Mortgage backed securities. By virtue of the mortgage behind it, it's a real
product like a bond. It is the Credit Default Swap betting on mortgage (or
corporate credit) performance that is insurance Against the mortgage backed
security.

This is just nitpicking and doesn't alter your argument.

------
pvnick
I consider everybody here very smart. In many cases smarter than myself.
Therefore, could somebody _please_ explain why we would give the government,
which has shown itself to be terribly incompetent with technology issues, the
ability to enforce net neutrality? Seriously, I can't get over the dissonance
here. If it's such a shitty idea, let consumers decide. Google Fiber et al
will just eat the major telecoms' lunch sooner or later anyway. It may just
take a little longer, but we'll avoid the possibility of letting the
government crush Internet innovation forever.

~~~
blhack
Because the telcos are currently enjoying a "natural monopoly". The cost of
entry to become a telco is so high, that normal competitive forces do not
apply.

In situations like this, one role of government is to regulate these natural
monopolies to protect citizens.

One such regulation, for instance, is that the power company cannot shut off
your power in the middle of winter in Minnesota without fulfilling some pretty
stringent criteria.

~~~
jimbokun
If by "natural monopoly" you are implying a monopoly arising without
government intervention, I'm pretty sure you are completely wrong on that
point.

Telecommunication companies need permission to rip up streets and run wires,
or run wires on poles, or exclusive rights over parts of the electromagnetic
spectrum, or put satellites into the right geosynchronous orbits to broadcast
signals to consumers.

(I'm curious to know if I'm wrong about any of these. For example, did
Dish/DirecTV require permission to put their satellites in place? Do they even
own the satellites.)

All of these things require specific government enforcement. So every
telecommunications company is pretty much created through government
regulation.

So the idea that backing the wishes of telecom executives is somehow pro-free-
market is completely farcical. Free market activity has had almost nothing to
do with the current U.S. telecommunications industry. This is just yet another
industry asking for a windfall through government acting in their favor,
similar in spirit to the financial industry bail out.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> If by "natural monopoly" you are implying a monopoly arising without
> government intervention, I'm pretty sure you are completely wrong on that
> point.

The reason telecommunications service is a natural monopoly is that the fixed
costs are extraordinarily high and the variable costs are trivial. In
consequence it is not profitable to build a competing network once one already
exists, because all you accomplish is to lay out an enormous capital
expenditure in order to enter into an aggressive price war with the incumbent,
since making $10/month from a customer that costs you less than that to
service once the network is already built is still more profitable than losing
that customer to the competitor and making $0. So the result will always be
the same: Either there will be a monopoly (or equivalently a cartel), or there
will be a price war until every competing provider either goes out of business
or joins the cartel and it reverts to a lack of competition. And prospective
market entrants understand this dynamic ahead of time and choose not to
participate. The only reason we even have the duopoly that exists today
instead of a straight monopoly is that the two networks were originally built
to provide different non-competing types of service, so now they effectively
act as a cartel with the knowledge that no one else is likely to enter the
market.

It is certainly true that government intervention has been involved in the
creation of that infrastructure -- it's plausible to say that it wouldn't have
been cost effective without it. But that only means that in the alternative
"free market" for telecommunications service, the infrastructure cost would
have been _even higher_ because the provider would have had no subsidies and
would have to buy all the land without eminent domain and pay off holdouts
etc.

~~~
jessaustin
Don't assume that the network must be entirely owned by one party. That is the
situation right now in the cell and broadcast markets, but it is caused by
regulation rather than anything "natural". It isn't the 1940s anymore;
wideband radio technology exists that would allow the sharing of all spectrum
rather than the single-use requirements we have. After that is adopted the
first-mile connection is to a WISP, which is connected by fiber to the rest of
the internet.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
Wireless is not a panacea even with spread spectrum. You still have a finite
amount of radio spectrum you have to share with everybody within range. The
amount of bandwidth you can serve to each customer with a fiber-terminating
central office every square mile is limited in practice by the cost of
installing fiber. The amount of bandwidth you can serve to each customer with
a WISP every square mile is limited in practice by the laws of physics -- the
only way to get more is to build a higher density of wireless base stations,
and in higher population density areas the cost of that is on the same order
as installing fiber to the customer premises. Moreover, the cost effectiveness
of using wireless for the last mile goes _down_ as the demand for bandwidth
per customer increases over time, because you have to increase the density of
wireless base stations and run new cable to each of them in order to expand
capacity rather than only replacing the terminating equipment at both ends of
an existing cable.

Wireless is a great solution to providing high bandwidth services in rural
areas where the cost of laying new cable is prohibitive. It's not a solution
for cities.

~~~
jessaustin
It's true that there is a rural/urban breakover point; I'd contend that is at
far greater densities than most people think, especially if we made use of the
entire spectrum rather than the drips and drabs meted out so far by the FCC.
The portion of the population getting shafted right now, all the "rural" (and
most suburban, and urban in Texas-style "sprawling" cities) folks, is
definitely a majority. "Laws of physics" arguments aren't convincing at this
point, since engineers have had their hands tied by FCC regs. Let a big market
for this type of radio tech exist for a decade, and _then_ we'll see what can
be done.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
You can't use the entire spectrum without addressing the sunk costs problem.
All the existing users of the spectrum would have to throw out their equipment
and replace it with spread spectrum equipment. Nobody wants to do that,
especially when the benefit of them doing it goes primarily to third parties.
You want to talk about phasing it out in favor of spread spectrum, fine, but
that's going to take years or decades. What do we do in the meantime?

The next piece of trouble is, if you really want high power unlicensed
spectrum, what do you do about contention? What happens when scientists start
setting up transmitters to continuously send 50Tbps of scientific data from
remote monitoring stations to the regional university's data center? Or people
set up a distributed mesh network of Tor nodes? Or someone decides to operate
a wireless "cable TV" franchise and starts transmitting 50,000 streams of 4K
HD?

Don't get me wrong, I think you have the right idea -- spread spectrum is the
way to go for wireless and there is room for a lot of innovation there if the
FCC would get out of the way. Especially in the way of short and medium range
mesh networks. It just isn't a replacement for fiber to the premises.

------
jarjoura
IMHO, this isn't about Netflix, YouTube, or even Amazon having to pay for
higher tiered access to customers. They have the deep pockets and smart
lawyers to construct contracts that work out for them in the end. So I see
that as the same grumpy story as California and New York forcing Amazon to
collect sales tax.

BUT, because this does force deals to be crafted behind closed doors, they
will turn out looking a lot like the deals that HBO/Shotime have with Comcast
and TWC. Plus, look at what's going on with Facebook already... phones in some
countries have "facebook data" only plans. Sure, this is great for emerging
markets to have access to family and friends for free, but at the loss of any
other social network upstart that wants in on it.

I don't see indie content ever being cut off, but I do see them becoming
"premium" subscription level services that require people to pay more to
access them. Want to play COD or GOW online? You will need this level access
to play with any reasonable speeds. It will happen slowly too, as people
become accustom to the idea that opening a Wikipedia page will take 1000 ms
then to 5000 ms to fully finish rendering. Someone at Comcast will nudge
slowly testing whether people notice or care.

If we don't fight the good fight and force internet providers to remain dumb
pipes, we are asking to have the most expensive internet on the planet. As
cable TV dies in favor of watching what you want, when you want, they will
naturally move to charge you for things you want to do on the internet
instead.

edit: autocorrect fail :-P

~~~
Houshalter
Is that necessarily a bad thing in all cases? I think it would be great if a
company offered, say, really cheap or free access to wikipedia and other basic
websites, but charged for actual service. Letting poor people access it or
making it available to host cheaper free wifi. I think what people are afraid
of is them throttling competitors, or charging more for normal service, but it
doesn't have to be that way.

~~~
bandushrew
why do that instead of just making it so that really poor people got internet
access, and then allowing them to decide how they use it?

as much as possible, we should avoid making decisions people can make for
themselves.

~~~
Houshalter
If they want normal internet access they can pay for it. The point is to allow
for a cheaper option if people want or need it.

~~~
jarjoura
Well right now people can buy super cheap $9 a month DSL service that provides
very basic speeds. The difference right now is that the user of that service
can decide where and how they use that bandwidth (assuming it's all legal).

So if all they need is IRC, Email, and Github, then that's perfect for them.
Why would I let them (ISPs) decide how to bill me for the places I want to go
on the internet?

~~~
Houshalter
I believe some places have much larger prices for businesses, and those that
want to offer free wifi. Getting internet through phones is also very
expensive. And not everyone has access to DSL.

So cheaper albeit restricted internet would be very welcomed by many. And if
you don't want it, then don't buy it. It's just another choice.

------
Patrick_Devine
This might not be very popular, but I'm going to say I'm in favour of the law
being struck down. I'm totally on board with ISPs _not_ throttling / extorting
money out of web 2.0 companies, however, I'm not sure that trying to enforce a
swiss-cheese law is the right way to do it.

That and I'm kind of biased, because I founded a company which is trying to
level the playing field and make net neutrality _de facto_ for internet
services instead of _de jure_. Information is like water. Put a barrier in
front of it and it will always try to find a way to flow through it.

~~~
dotori
>make net neutrality de facto

how so?

------
allochthon
I hate to say it, because I don't consider myself a radical, but the US
congress is in the pockets of big business, US law relating to technology is
broken, and US intelligence agencies have taken liberties beyond their
mandate. The consequences seem fairly straightforward. The Internet will route
around the damage to the system. The outcome is predictable and the
dysfunction that is leading up to it is regrettable. I don't know what this
bodes for US customers. Hopefully a coalition of forward-thinking companies
will provide a genuine alternative to the US telcos.

~~~
quadrangle
What you're saying is: you don't like admitting the truth if it makes you seem
radical. I don't respect that attitude, but thanks for doing the right thing
here anyway.

------
shawnee_
If net neutrality was truly working, nobody would need to renew their
contracts with Verizon or TMobile or anybody else. Contracts would be
deprecated and all the telecoms would be forced to compete on something other
than lock-in and "whatever the latest trendy device is" promotions. But that's
hard to do when you're selling what essentially amounts to a homogeneous
product like bandwidth. They don't wanna do that. They like _guaranteed_
income and they _especially_ like it when people go over their contract data
allocations.

In 2013 there is absolutely _zero_ rationale for contracts to play a part in
either the wireless or the pipeline infrastructure. Telecoms know this and are
doing everything they can to drag out the death sentence, making it as painful
and expensive as possible for everybody involved.

If we let the telecoms do with fiber what's been done with mobile networks not
only is the web going to be less neutral, the bias will naturally lead to the
dissemination of news and information as being more easily controlled and
piped to the masses in sinister ways.

------
pnut
The toothpaste is out of the tube already, people know what freedom online
tastes like.

Bad news for old money - the Internet has an appetite for rentier blood. This
will not be tolerated long term.

~~~
morgante
Likely nobody would even realize. It's not like the telcos would _block_
sites. Instead, suddenly Netflix loads a lot slower than Comcast. Blame
Netflix and move on.

~~~
waterlesscloud
That lasts right up until Netflix puts a big banner on their page for Comcast
customers that explains the situation.

~~~
morgante
Netflix might have the clout to do so, but a small startup which nobody has
heard of never would.

Ultimately, the consumer mindset is never to blame their provider. They blame
the website. If you come to my site and it's throttled, there's a high chance
you'll click away and never come back.

------
ryguytilidie
It really seems a lot like CISPA and the Patriot Act. A popular outcry from
the citizens of this country can stop it once, twice, three times, but how
long can they hold out? Can we spread outrage about CISPA when its being voted
on for the 500th time in lieu of any bill that might actually help this
country? The fact that the citizens of this country are constantly having to
fight their congressmen to actually do what they desire is the most clear
example that our country is completely broken.

------
alexeisadeski3
I find it amusing that those in favor of net neutrality consider themselves on
the side of freedom.

~~~
cheald
The sticking point for me is that the market is already regulated such that it
makes it very difficult for a competitor to challenge companies who engage in
exploitative practices (and for similar reasons, the incentive to collude is
extremely high). In a free market, net neutrality wouldn't need to be
regulated because companies who attempted to enact business plans like the
AT&T plan described in the article would rapidly find themselves losing
marketshare to competitors.

I'm not really okay with the idea of regulating net neutrality from an
ideological perspective, but from a practical one, we're kind of stuck with
the market we have - effective regional monopolies are granted to a very small
number of companies, and there is very little space for counterbalance from
competition (which is why Google Fiber is such a Huge Frickin' Deal!). Left
unfettered, the end result would likely be that the AT&Ts and Comcasts end up
leeching their customers dry on both ends of the pipe, because those customers
don't have any alternative.

In my ideal world, there would be no need to regulate net neutrality because I
could penalize bad companies by refusing to do business with them, and getting
my friends and family to do the same, but we don't have those options -
choosing an ISP is a lot like choosing which knee you want to be hit in. In a
market where companies have been granted regulatory monopolies, the invisible
hand is rather ineffective.

~~~
alexeisadeski3
They may have been monopolies once, but they're not anymore. At least in the
US. Most people already have two broadband subscriptions: home cable broadband
and HSPA+ or LTE. The home cable broadband is in competition with ADSL
throughout much of the nation, and the HSPA+/LTE providers are in fierce
competition everywhere.

Furthermore, what makes you say this:

>In a free market, net neutrality wouldn't need to be regulated because
companies who attempted to enact business plans like the AT&T plan described
in the article would rapidly find themselves losing marketshare to
competitors.

I certainly would not expect them to lose market share.

~~~
dkuntz2
Why wouldn't you expect them to lose market share? They're actively hindering
customers from their desired actions. Doesn't that typically mean customers
will look for alternatives?

~~~
alexeisadeski3
Most people prefer to buy cheap crap instead of quality.

~~~
dkuntz2
Even if cheap actively hinders them from doing something _they want to do_?

~~~
alexeisadeski3
You don't think YouTube & Facebook & iTunes would pony up?

~~~
dkuntz2
I don't think they'd always be given the choice to. Especially something like
Netflix, which directly competes with cable companies and their online
offerings.

~~~
alexeisadeski3
You're talking about a population which elected _both_ Bush II and Obama.

~~~
dkuntz2
The population _didn 't_ elect Bush II the first time [1]. The electoral
college did, making it the fourth time a candidate winning the popular vote
didn't win the electorate vote.

Would the alternatives of McCain or Romney have resulted in the current NSA
scandal not happening? No, it's silly to think that way, especially because it
was happening (on a slightly smaller scale) when Bush was president. How it's
being handled now might not be the best way to handle it, but would it have
been handled differently with McCain or Romney in the Oval Office?

And making a grand statement about how a vastly large group of people doing
something you perceive as not being in their best interest doesn't mean they
didn't believe it to be in their best interest.

1:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_elec...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2000)

~~~
alexeisadeski3
Whew.

1) Yes, the population _did_ elect Bush II. According to the rules of the
game, the population picked him. If you want to get all picky over it, you can
note that XX% of the population didn't even vote - so technically the
population didn't pick any of them! Har har.

2) The alternatives of McCain, Romney, and Gore were also chosen to be the
alternatives by the population.

3) I'm not sure what this all has to do with the NSA.

4) You seem to think that net neutrality would be in their interest. Yet they
seem to have selected politicians which oppose it. So that would be one
(possible) example of the population acting against their own interests (as
you see it).

------
Osiris
Some countries, like Japan, have addressed this issue by separating
infrastructure from service. One company owns the network, several other
companies provided the internet access.

This creates a competitive market between service provides (competing on
price, service quality, and customer service) while removing the high costs to
enter that market.

Infrastructure, as opposed to service, becomes the regulated market.

------
staticelf
The author seems to think the internet is all about America. We in Europe
doesn't give a shit whatever your court decides.

The best case scenario is if the US was disconnected from the rest of the
worlds connectivity. Almost all evils that has generated hate from the public
has been american corporations.

~~~
quadrangle
Well, for those of us in the US, that's not the best case! Sheesh! Leave us to
rot in our awful insular spoiled rotten hellhole? The best parts of the
internet in the US are that we can interact with and engage people and culture
from the rest of the world! Sorry about sending our garbage to you as a side-
effect…!

------
zmanian
Any thought on the effect increased programmability in telecom networks is
going to be on Network Neutrality? It seems likely to me that regular IP
routing is likely to become the "slow lane" on the Internet?

------
vardhanw
What about all the new technologies like DPI and data analytics coupled with
things like SDN and NFV which will easily technically enable any operator to
have a very high level of granularity (e.g. application, user, site, device
etc.) in controlling access to the network in the name of providing better
QOE/S to the customer? These technologies will easily enable operators to
enable complex policies which will be difficult to track and can be modified
in very flexible manner to adjust to the current workarounds around any NN
laws.

~~~
wmf
Those technologies are expensive and I would hope that it's cheaper for ISPs
to add capacity than to use that stuff. Unfortunately this thinking does not
apply if ISPs see neutrality as a strategic threat.

------
scoofy
I highly suggest "The Master Switch" by Tim Wu to this entire thread. There
seems to be a bunch of people here who don't understand common carrier
services and why they are important.

------
shmerl
Net neutrality should be extended to the mobile networks, not dropped for the
landline ones. ISPs should be regulated like essential dumb data pipes.

------
grizzles
We are doing a net neutrality IndieGogo campaign
[http://uplink.aero/project.html](http://uplink.aero/project.html)
[http://igg.me/at/aero](http://igg.me/at/aero)

But based on our conversion rate, I don't think there is a market for it. Feel
free to email us if you have any constructive criticism. contact@uplink.aero

~~~
dublinben
I'm not surprised that your campaign hasn't succeeded. You do a very poor job
of explaining how it works, or what the benefits are, and it largely
duplicates the efforts of other existing mesh networking projects, and free
software/hardware projects like FreedomBox.

------
alixaxel
I have a _feeling_ that I've read this before, why is it making it's way back
to the front page of HN?

Any new developments on this matter?

------
gtallen1187
While a well-intentioned article, i believe this author overlooks a few points
that should be pointed out.

As a consumer, i would obviously be a proponent of my current ISP giving non-
discriminatory access to all sites. However, aside from voicing my opinion in
the form of purchasing the services of a specific ISP, i do not believe we
should have the power to do much else in dictating how these companies should
run their business through the passing of laws. The author points out that the
loss of net neutrality would hurt small-scale ventures - yet ignores the fact
that these ISPs he wishes to regulate were once the same small start-ups that
he wants to protect. Was the success of these businesses the single factor
that moves them from protected status to regulatory target?

The size of these dominant ISPs means that a great deal of the population
relies on their services - but our "need" for these services does not give us
the right to dictate how they should run their business. If enough of us feel
that none of the dominant ISPs are adequate, then our need goes unserved, and
sooner or later another ISP will arrive to serve these customers.

Again - i am strongly in favor of net neutrality. But if we resort to
regulatory means to get what we want, it will lead to vastly negative
consequences down the road. Why start a business if this is the reward for
success?

------
gasull
Forget about Net Neutrality. What we need is Open Spectrum so everybody can
share the waves and we stop needing the telcos altogether.

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

As long as we have an oligopoly of telcos, they will lobby their way to
destroy Net Neutrality.

------
h1karu
Long ago the corporate oligarchy decided to let the Internet tech sector grow
to the extent that it has in order to externalize the cost of deploying
certain infrastructure and the cost of training the populous to become
dependent on that infrastructure. Now that these tasks are complete what
reason do they have to delay taking control of this particular DARPA project ?

You have to be willing to show them that reason in order to save your
business. You all have to innovate a solution. How are you going to join
together with the other businesses in your sector to PIVOT TOGETHER in order
to jolt ordinary people out of their careless stupor and educate them about
how to force the hand of those corporations who could easily solve the problem
?

Do you really think a black page background and a banner is anything more than
a sloppy haphazard attempt to save your industry ?

Aren't you risking shareholder value if your company is not engaging a
significant percentage of it's resources towards engineering a plan to resist
the takeover of the key infrastructure that your business needs in order to
survive ?

How can you justify that kind of risk taking to your board ?

VC's what percentage of your fund's budget is set aside for the task of
preserving the Internet that your portfolio will rely on ?

Ordinary people won't care if a page is black or not or if some banner is
present or not, but if twitter, instagram, and pintrest for example all go
offline at the same time that would send a message. Or what about if all the
major social startups started paying attention to HTTP referer headers and
they started redirecting inbound visitors to educational splash screens based
on their referred header? The splash screens would educate these people about
how they should really change their default search engine or delete their
Facebook account in order to help save the Internet.

I'm not saying we should pick on Google or Facebook specifically per say, but
I do think that if enough "social pressure" was applied Google alone could fix
the problem by helping the Internet route around the entities who are engaged
in a Denial Of Service attack on key Internet infrastructure. All Google has
to do is punish a few corporate websites like they did to rapgenius the other
day. That's a good start at least. Does your startup "scene" have a plan to
help force google's hand ? If not then why not ?

If all of the major web startups started doing this kind of thinking Google
would have to take this stuff more seriously REAL FAST. Think about it! That's
how you send a real "social signal".

Why is this industry not trying to defend itself ? Ask yourself this
question.. Who controls your company ? Who gets to decide how important
preserving a free Internet is to the long term viability of your business? Has
your company already sold out ?

Founders, where do you stand ? How willing are you to be public about where
you stand and how long are you going to wait ? How long can you afford to wait
before you take action with others in order to save your business ? Why aren't
you already more organized on this issue ? Why aren't you ready ? Why are you
not taking this threat to your business more seriously ? Why do you apparently
assume you are powerless ?

------
Lost_BiomedE
Still, this is all from the implications of messing with the 1996
telecommunications act, allowing duopoly, preventing cities from offering
broadband, and crushing the small guys. Too bad so few spoke up then; the
balance of power has been against us ever since.

------
bennyg
What prevents a proxy-net from starting up and flubbing the recipients/senders
of the data such that the ISP can't see what site/domain the traffic is coming
from and can't enforce their 1s page-load "tax" on them?

~~~
dragonwriter
Well, first that would itself impose a page-load tax.

Second, ISPs could just impose a page-load tax on data where it _couldn 't_
verify that the source was a one _not_ subject to the tax, instead of imposing
it on those that they could verify were subject.

------
excellence24
The best way we can get the attention of the companies is by causing them to
lose profits. This is best done by an organized boycott of their goods and
services. It will get their attention very quickly. But currently we don't
have a central website to browse and search boycotts and other forms of
protest.

In addition to protesting, we should also consider building a free open source
network thats protected and run by the community. (It could be run by the
government, but until the government is 'for and by the people', we'll
crowdsource the maintainance and seek to rapidly automate the work that nobody
would volunteer for) We can give ourselves the best, but lets start with free
gigabit internet wired and wireless for all of America! What would this 'cost'
in terms of money? millions or billions? But the resources are here; just
being hoarded until money is traded. Would AT&T build a free network for us?
Not if it meant losing money to Verizon. But what if it wasnt about money? The
value in having a fully connected country is priceless.

Thankfully we have the government to protect us against trusts and monopoly's.
But what if the trust or monopoly was a community one? If AT&T, Verizon,
Sprint, and T-Mobile colluded to give free gigabit internet to America, they
could combine their separately walled gardens and use those resources to
further the human race. But this would have to be a guaranttee so that once
everyone put all their time and resources into this, some CEO cant just flip a
switch and start charging. Once free, always free. So if they did this it
would probably mean giving up their pride and names. I mean, would this free
network be called Verizon? Why do they get their name on it? So we could
crowdsource a new name for our free network so no one can boast. US Telecom,
US Net, Free Net, the name can be anything, something we would all be proud to
get behind. the most important part is the 'us' and 'US'. All of us in the US
have the resources to take care of all of US(just focusing on America now, but
eventually we could help the world). These telecom companies will either
become part of the solution or they will precipitate out.

Again though, this would be a huge project and there's currently no website we
can go to in order to find and take part in these country and perhaps global
initiatives. Imagine a mix of Kickstarter and Change.org. First a project or
idea is petitioned to the community and if enough people like it and think it
would be the best solution, then its opened up to a crowdsourcing page to
collect funds and not just money but people can also donate the final
resources that are ultimately needed, which is what the money would eventually
be traded for anyways....more to come, working on this website...

------
ceph_
The freedom of the telcos to act as highwaymen? Consumer protections are
necessary for basic utilities. Especially either the numerous de facto
monopolies that exist in the consumer telco market.

------
kenster07
It would almost be comical if it weren't so sick: rent-seeking through a
government-granted monopoly, under the premise that the providers would serve
the public good.

------
wmf
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6669298](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6669298)

------
onedev
We are getting hustled[1].

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRNGCja9mRo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRNGCja9mRo)

------
dzhiurgis
How is this different from Google charging bit guys for blackhat SEO, while
those who don't pay - are penalised?

~~~
orthecreedence
Because Google doesn't have a monopoly on search. If you don't like the
results, don't use Google. However, if you don't like your ISP, generally your
only option is to move to a different city/state.

~~~
dzhiurgis
It's not a monopoly for me, but it is a monopoly for those who want to appear
in search.

It's not a monopoly for products, it's a monopoly for clients.

------
joncp
What's to stop everyone from setting up VPNs en masse? The difficulty alone?

~~~
amarv1n
From what I understand, ISPs might be able to win the cat and mouse game, and
uncover at least the type of traffic, whether p2p, streaming video etc. Not
sure where the cat and mouse are with today's technology.

------
Aloha
The solution in the end is to turn internet access into common carrier
services.

------
mars
this article is from april?!

~~~
amarv1n
it's from nov.

------
lowglow
It's time for a new net then.

------
itistoday2
This article is over a month old. I'm interested in the current status of NN.
Could someone informed fill us in on the latest?

~~~
amarv1n
yeah, we're still waiting for the ruling. the only other thing that happened
is that the current FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler made a comment that suggested he
opposed net neutrality--arguing that Netflix should be allowed to pay carriers
for better service. This framing (assuming companies want to pay, not that
telcos are angling to get paid) is the framing placed by telcos, etc. Wheeler
was once the head lobbyist for the cable industry, then the wireless telco
industry, so there's been some concerns, particularly with those comments.
some fear he'll do nothing meaningful if/when we lose the court case. See this
ars technica article: [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/fcc-chair-
isps-sh...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/fcc-chair-isps-should-
be-able-to-charge-netflix-for-internet-fast-lane/)

------
fuckpig
After basically 20 years of commerce dictating the needs of the net, I'd think
we've already lost it.

The internet model worked when subsidized by a military and academic community
supported by a massive industry.

Now that it's trying to pay for itself, it's looking a lot more like
television or those free newspapers that are more ads than articles.

------
elefantindaroom
Is anybody noticing a pattern here. Every god damn 4 months.. They wont give
up.

