Wow.. This thread has turned into an astro-turfing campaign for the anti-NN advocates. The main gist of the the new regulations is the classify broadband access as a utility under Title II of Communications act. This has long been generally agreed upon by reasonable people as a good thing... and a necessary thing seeing how there's virtually no competition in broadband access for most people in the US.
Reading comment threads, a person new to the issue might get the impression as if the US government just nationalized comcast. I'm finding it hard to believe that the regular HN crowd has suddenly turned virulently anti Title II. This definitely smells like a coordinated campaign to spread FUD.
> Wow.. This thread has turned into an astro-turfing campaign
HN users need to stop accusing their opponents in arguments of being astroturfers. Astroturfing may or may not exist, but sincere disagreement is common. It degrades the discourse badly when sincere disagreers are accused of being shills.
It's not that astroturfing isn't a problem. It's that the collateral damage of firing off such accusations indiscriminately is too great for that to be ok without evidence. People disagreeing with you isn't evidence.
If you suspect astroturfing in an HN thread, please email us at hn@ycombinator.com. Cracking down on that is part of our job. We will take your suspicions seriously. But we will do so by looking at actual data—something that isn't an option in the HN threads themselves and would mostly be off-topic there.
Within the threads, the HN guidelines and Principle of Charity [1] require you to assume that disagreers are arguing in good faith, and to deal with them not by calling names but by making better arguments.
> This has long been generally agreed upon by reasonable people as a good thing.
This is revisionist history. Up until very recently, Title II was the "nuclear option."[1] There's plenty of people who are pro-net neutrality who were skeptical of Title II. That's why they originally threw their support behind the FCC's last attempt at net neutrality, which tried to impose neutrality without reclassification.
[1] Conservatives don't like it because it allows the FCC to do things like rate-setting, even if this administration chooses not to use that power. Liberals don't like the specter of FCC regulation of content.
PS: The accusations of astroturfing on HN are a vile sort of rhetorical tactic.
Mark Cuban's position isn't technically savvy, it's an opportunity for him to make more money. He says flat out that the Internet model that has worked for decades is broken now, because Netflix. Oh, and QVC should have a right to pay for preferred treatment and lower latency.
The reality is that building core network capacity to handle the likes of Netflix and 8k television is possible and gets cheaper as time goes on. I just participated in the buildout of new datacenter... The cost of building densities of network interconnect and compute unfathomable in 2005 is actually lower than the old 1gb stuff. WAN and telecom equipment that used to take up 10k ft^2 now take two racks and cost 80% less.
The capital investment issues the ISPs face have nothing to do with interconnect -- their dollars are spent in the last mile.
The public interest isn't compatible with Mark Cuban's ability & desire to throw millions of dollars at telcos to give his ventures an advantage. Market forces don't apply when the ISP business is slowly consolidating into a circa 1965 AT&T redux.
Isn't this what it boils down to for the opponents of Net Neutrality ? Either they can't make as much money or they can't buy themselves advantage.
Also expect to see someone like Cuban challenge this on 1st amendment grounds. Given that for the 1% mindset spending money equals speech, the government stopping them spending money to again an advantage is in their mind a restriction on speech. Sad but true.
Mark Cuban's position isn't technically savvy, it's an opportunity for him to make more money.
An update to original article lends evidence to what you said:
Note: 2:08 pm. Thursday. As readers have noted, Cuban has been a celebrity spokesman of sorts for AT&T, appearing in a series of commercials for the wireless giant.
Your comment is currently "above the fold" and even though I agree with you, I downvoted because I don't think this discussion should involve what Mark Cuban whatsoever.
Whatever dialog he spurs is going to be an intellectual dead end.
BTW, why isn't anyone talking about the Interstate Commerce Commission, the predecessor to the FCC, and the similarities between common carrier status of railways and Internet service providers?
We have over a hundred years of actual evidence to support the pros and cons of regulating public communications. Why are we choosing to instead resort to blind conjecture based on talking point samples from the last decade?
I mentioned Mark Cuban in context of the parent comment. Whatever our opinion of Mr Cuban, his arguments are essentially the same as the telecom people.
If we had a functional market, the excesses of the ICC would be a cautionary tale of great impact. Unfortunately the behavior of the ISPs has illustrated that we don't have that functional marketplace. I think we should follow the path successfully implemented (in most places) for utilities like water, electricity and the legacy telephone service.
I know, it just sucks that this is now turning in to a discussion directed by some loud mouth on a reality TV show.
Anyways... I'm not disagreeing with you. I agree that we should follow historical precedent and that ISPs should be regulated as Type II common carriers.
The railways that the ICC were primarily established to regulate were most definitely not a functional market. Railways at the time were also charging different fees for the different things they were transporting. Their customers also didn't have a choice of competitors and suffered under collusion between companies. Network Neutrality is essentially an extension of the same conversation.
The ICC also had statues for regulating communication. The FCC took over for the ICC's role in regulating communication in 1934 and the organizational was modeled on the ICC with 5 member appointed by the president.
We should be talking about what worked with the ICC and what didn't. If people are offering conjectures about what the results of these FCC regulations will have on the Internet they have plenty of historical evidence to use for their arguments. We can point to how the railroads abused and had a negative impact on society. We can show how overregulation harms industry. We can show example of regulatory capture. We can show example of tragedies involving unmanaged shared common resources.
Railways and the ICC are a very similar analogy but we can reason about all sorts of other precedent. We can find examples from the Hanseatic League, the Holy Roman Empire, the Dutch East Indies Company, the South Seas Bubble or anything else from our history. It all applies and led to our existing systems of government, business and law.
> This is revisionist history. Up until very recently, everyone considered Title II the "nuclear option."
That is revisionist history. From the outset of the NN debate, a large subset of the pro-NN crowd has pushed for Title II, and this increased after the court made clear that the critical elements of net neutrality could not be enforced by regulation, without substantial gaps, except under Title II.
It is simply not true that, until very recently, everyone considered Title II the "nuclear option".
I guess I'm defending network neutrality again today.
> Conservatives don't like it because it allows the FCC to do things like rate-setting, even if this administration chooses not to use that power.
The FCC hasn't been granted any new authority, they always could have done the reclassification and then done rate-setting. The only way to change that is to pass a law, which can happen or not independent of reclassification.
> Liberals don't like the specter of FCC regulation of content.
Are they regulating content? They haven't classified it under Title III or VI.
> Mark Cuban faults ‘Silicon Valley groupthink,’ says FCC broadband rule a mistake
I can't understand what Mark Cuban is talking about. He keeps talking about "uncertainty" and asking questions as if the presumptive answers would be problematic. What if they classify cable TV as an over the top service that can't have paid prioritization? I don't see the problem. There is no actual reason why HBO and CNN can't be delivered like Netflix.
He just seems to be confused in general. Like talking about broadcast TV indecency regulations that aren't even under Title II.
> Conservatives don't like it because it allows the FCC to do things like rate-setting, even if this administration chooses not to use that power. Liberals don't like the specter of FCC regulation of content.
This is a funny line of reasoning on the part of Conservatives. Reclassification under Title II is supposedly bad because it allows future Commissions to impose rate-setting requirements. But, in the absence of Title II reclassification today, a future Commission could still have imposed a rate-setting regime. How? They could have reclassified broadband under Title II! In other words, reclassification under Title II today doesn't allow future Commissions to do anything they couldn't have done before, if they wanted to, because in either case, the the Commission has the power to take both steps simultaneously.
I guess you could argue that it makes it easier politically to impose rate setting in the future. But I'm not sure this holds any water if the very thing that worries most critics of Title II reclassification is rate setting.
So their only argument is the "slippery slope" one. That's pretty weak given how difficult it was to get these rules passed.
Also, in Verizon v. FCC SCOTUS essentially reinforced the Chevron doctrine even more. So there essentially is no slippery slope at the FCC. They don't require a gradual rules change procedure, there is no slippery slope for them to fall down.
It refers to setting the rate for monthly service. Title II was written to regulate phone companies, where for many years AT&T had a government-granted monopoly on phone service. In return for that monopoly, the government got the right to regulate phone rates.
> Up until very recently, everyone considered Title II the "nuclear option."
As far back as the 90s, when Mosaic was still the most advanced browser out there, I was noting that Title II common carrier rules for ISPs were the best choice to balance free speech needs -- to prevent ISPs and Backbone providers from censoring the content they carry -- and protect ISPs from liability for their users' communications.
It's only taken two decades for the industry to realize the same.
The big media companies have almost nothing to worry about when it comes to the legality of the content they sell. It's the individual user or small dissident group that would be harmed by repressive censorship rules. Those same interests would fair no better under corporate-controlled internet, because their views would be blocked or crowded out of access by the companies protecting their own interests.
Except when their own interests do not clash with that of those trying to exercise free speech. Which is pretty universally the case. Regulation will now make it harder for those persons who value free speech, we only have "legal speech" left.
Calling FUD here. Do you have any precedent or any other legal basis for imagining that this reclassification will somehow allow FCC to regulate content on the internet.
For those who might not know, it's possible Netflix could benefit from paid prioritization: it would protect Netflix from start-ups aiming to take the place of Netflix.
I'm not sure what Netflix's official stance is on net neutrality, but it's possible Mr. Cuban thinks this way.
They've had trouble getting cooperation from ISPs even when they've gone as far as offering free caching devices to ISPs to minimize their interconnect traffic. This should be a pretty big win for them.
> Conservatives don't like it because it allows the FCC to do things like rate-setting, even if this administration chooses not to use that power.
I don't understand this fear. Let's consider two hypotheticals in which this administration does not want to do rate setting but a future one does.
Hypothetical one:
• This administration uses Title II with forbearance of rate regulation for NN.
• Later administration drops the forbearance and imposes rate regulation.
Hypothetical two:
• This administration finds some way to do NN without using Title II (perhaps not being able to do as strong a version of NN as they want).
• Later administration wants to do rate regulation. They reclassify as Title II and impose rate regulation.
I don't see how the later administrations ability to impose rate regulation is significantly easier under hypothetical one. It just changes the specific rule they have to write. Since they have the power to impose Title II, they can drop that into their rule if it hasn't been done by an earlier administration.
> Up until very recently, Title II was the "nuclear option."
Up until recently (2005), ADSL was classified as Title II. Reclassifying it as an information service made it so much better that VDSL2 (which can provide 100Mbps!), defined in 2005, has .... hardly rolled out anywhere.
I'd argue that Title II classification (along with competitive access requirements) was a huge handicap on the telcos ability to make money in DSL, so it was starved of investment, and that by 2005 they were already too far behind cable to compete.
Why won't this happen with cable? What motivation does Comcast have to keep increasing the speed of their network? Especially since, believe you me, the calls for the FCC to mandate "open networks" (i.e. competitive access) could be right around the corner.
The original Title II classification which included local loop bundling killed DSL investment and allowed cable broadband to take over the market. Ever wonder why America has cable broadband and the rest of the world uses some version of DSL or fiber provided by the telephone company? Title II.
As soon as it was deregulated, Verizon and AT&T began upgrades. But before then, they weren't going to build upgrades to networks that any competitor could borrow at wholesale value.
The title II being proposed is a lot lighter than the old kind applied to the DSL, so it won't necessarily destroy invesment. But the fear is reasonable.
> As soon as it was deregulated, Verizon and AT&T began upgrades. But before then, they weren't going to build upgrades to networks that any competitor could borrow at wholesale value.
Given the great intentions that such bastions of corporate ethics like AT&T and Verizon have, is it possible that they simple held out until the got what they wanted?
What exactly is "unethical" about not investing tons of money in something that isn't going to yield the kind of profit your investors want? People act like Verizon and AT&T have a moral obligation to spend money on telecom infrastructure as a public good at minimal price above cost.
Well, investing tons of money in lobbyists to pass state laws to prevent the deployment of municipal broadband utilizing public tax monies and breaks, is considered unethical (at least to me).
So, not investing in infrastructure is not the problem, but preventing others from doing so, is scummy.
They do not want to invest AND they don't want to compete.
which is actually better than spending billions and then losing the ISP market to cable + other ISPs using wholesale.
It's actually a rational move. Title II prevented them from competing effectively with the companies that were not under Title II, hence the rational decision not to invest in competing infrastructure.
What's interesting, though, if you look at the published numbers... The number of new subscribers each year grew at about the same rate, with DSL in the lead (of growth, but not hard numbers), until 2005... When they both leveled off. DSL more sharply than cable. Most of the historic data only differentiates between greater and less than 200kbps, though, so it's difficult to know the impact that it did on bandwidth availability growth for the two connection mediums.
> The original Title II classification which included local loop bundling killed DSL investment
Then why, when reclassified as an information service, did it not get better? It got better from 1999 to 2005 (768kbps -> 1-6Mbps), but only in very select regions has it actually improved beyond that in the past ten years.
By the monopoly phone provider's logic, it did "get better" after it was reclassified.
(This is where AT&T switched to "Uverse" fiber-to-the-neighborhood network, with speeds up to 40+mbps. And since that's an "information service", no other companies are allowed to use it to sell internet, even though it's literally the same phone line as DSL, with almost identical technology and performance seen in other countries faster DSL services)
I guess I'm a little confused. The last mile unbundling would have just been the node-to-home lines, would it not? A new ISP entering the market would be able to lease those, but not necessarily the fiber network? Or would that fiber network have been unbundled too?
That is mostly a technology issue. There is a maximum bitrate at which the transmission line can support for a given distance. To get past that, they have to start dragging fiberoptics to nodes they build closer to your house. Before you hit that speeds, protocol upgrades were giving you faster speed.
And I wouldn't say "very select regions." At least a quarter of the country live in areas with FTTN or FTTP networks deployed by the telecoms.
The FCC even tried to create a net neutrality rule without reclassifying broadband providers under Title II, but it was struck down by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in Verizon v. FCC (2014)[0]
Nobody really wanted to impose the Title II regulations, which were written for a different technology and era, on broadband providers. But absent new legislation, which is a no-go in today's Congress, it was the only way for the FCC to establish the legal authority to promulgate the rule.
> The accusations of astroturfing on HN are a vile sort of rhetorical tactic.
Though I'm in the libertarian anti-NN legislation camp, I don't know if this is true. Previously when I tried to express my views I got voted down. I assumed from this that HN is naturally heavily pro-NN legislation. (Or maybe they just didn't like the particular argument I made. * shrugs *)
Though, I do agree that it's a bad rhetorical tactic.
Reasonable people can disagree about Title II, but there's no getting around the fact that just in the last few weeks the issue has been turned into 'Obamanet' as a political football.
You might not believe it, but it's true. Just yesterday at lunch I overheard a bunch of old (retired?) guys at the next table repeating that tired line "Obamacare of the Internet".
Oh I know it's true. The Wall Street Journal started callingit 'Obamanet' as soon as Wheeler dropped his editorial a few days back. Joke's going to be on them, I suspect.
"Active government involvement" isn't what we're talking about here, though; merely a rule that broadband infrastructure has to be freely sublet to resellers, producing interesting things like this[1].
Title II doesn't force the government to care about what's going through the pipes; nor did the UK's broadband law. That was entirely a separate bout of moralizing, that was no easier or more difficult to enact or enforce given the broadband law.
The UK did not set up a similar policy. They built the phone network with government money, then when they privatize BT, they gave Openreach a monopoly with high rates to ensure profitability. Consequently, BT has twice the profit margin of your typical American utility, and actually about the same as TWC. It's EBITDA on revenue for Openreach is almost 50%. It's a sanctioned monopoly that enjoys monopoly profits.
The new rules are very clear that broadband providers are not subject to rate setting.
>Rate Regulation:
>the Order makes clear that broadband providers shall not be subject to utility-style rate regulation, including rate regulation, tariffs, and last-mile unbundling.
>Universal Service Contributions:
>the Order DOES NOT require broadband providers to contribute to the Universal Service Fund under Section 254. The question of how best to fund the nation’s universal service programs is being considered in a separate, unrelated proceeding that was already underway.
He was an early entrant into the tech world, having been a software reseller and integrator, selling custom systems and maintaining them himself.
Then he joined Broadcast.com, a sort of mini-Netflix-but-audio for broadcasting sporting events, which sold to Y! for $5 billion or so dollars.
He then co-founded AXS TV, which was the first HD satellite network.
He may be wrong on this issue. He may be right. But to pretend he isn't tech-savvy is to either ignore his history or to set the bar to an absurdly elitist standard. At the least, he's likely more tech savvy than your elected representatives, and possibly moreso than Tom Wheeler.
Whether this is germane to the discussion is another matter.
Liberals don't like the specter of FCC regulation of content."
This is a prime example of FUD. Can you cite any precedent where title II powers have been applied to regulate content (also known as "speech") in any other medium?
> You sound upset about the accusation. What if it were true though?
If it were true, that would be bad and a problem. We crack down on such misuses of HN in every way we know how. As a matter of fact, we take them personally as an attack on the whole community.
But making such accusations indiscriminately is a sure way to poison the very same community. We don't want that to happen either. That means we all have to be disciplined about this and not just cry "NSA Shill!" (or whatever) out of frustration at wrong or contrary opinions.
The truth is that opinion is divided on this, as on most other issues, among legitimate community members. That alone means that ipso facto accusations of astroturfing aren't legit here. Without evidence, it's just a personal attack, and those are not ok.
Comments like this are what make musings about astroturfing so toxic.
I don't know what it is about us message board nerds that makes this so hard to grok, but you cannot suggest that someone is a shill without overtly calling their integrity into question. Questioning someone's integrity is intrinsically uncivil. Don't be uncivil.
This sort of comment is a huge pet peeve of mine: you're accusing people who disagree with you of not just being wrong, but being maliciously and intentionally wrong. As if alternate viewpoints can only be explained by a literal conspiracy theory designed to mess with people like you. It's a lazy way to avoid acknowledging that alternate viewpoints even exist, let alone considering whether they have merit.
(But then again, that's just what I would say if I wanted to prolong the conspiracy.)
but this is the standard method Democrats have employed for years. They take any debate and make it personal. No longer is the discussion of the subject at hand but the persons involved. This allows all sorts of toxic labels to be branded about, racist, bigot, for the rich, elitist, and more. They don't want to debate facts, the fastest way to avoid facts is to brand the other side with a label associated with hate and/or stupidity.
I just want to know, what takes so many pages as to describe these rule changes? Why was it so important to pass changes without public review? What part of transparency don't people get?
Unfortunately, "hate and stupidity" are often correlated with the issues. The political position opposite of granting, say, LGBT's the same rights as everyone else has literally no other basis than hate and stupidity.
There may be valid arguments to be made against net neutrality, but I have yet to see one that doesn't start with putting more money in the pockets of the telcos.
This is America, where infrastructure is communism. I mean if we provide good infrastructure, pretty soon we'll be sending people to gulags or something like they do in Europe and Canada.
I'm an European and it's the first time I hear about us being sent to gulags for making infrastructure that actually works.
BTW. In Poland, infrastructure was all fine until they started to privatize it. Now our trains barely work, and public transport companies like to compete with each other by showing which one sucks at doing their job more...
I don't believe I have enough information to conclude that classifying broadband as a Title II utility will be a good thing. My general impression is that more and stricter regulations in an industry is usually (though not always) a bad thing for consumers in that industry, so while I'm not vehemently against this NN bill, I certainly am not excited or optimistic.
I consider my views reasonable, although I guess an unreasonable person would consider their own unreasonable views to be reasonable. I'm definitely not astro-turfing, although if I get a check from the Ministry of Truth I will refrain from cashing it and let you know.
> My general impression is that more and stricter regulations in an industry is usually (though not always) a bad thing for consumers in that industry, so while I'm not vehemently against this NN bill, I certainly am not excited or optimistic.
I would say that's more strongly the case in competitive industries where there's some consumer choice in play to keep bad companies in check. But there are very few people who choose Comcast from between multiple broadband providers. And then they shot themselves in the foot in the public discourse with their constant stream of customer abuse and terrible support stories.
I'd say I'm cautiously optimistic about this, but I should read up more on what parts of Title II are being applied to what parts of the network here.
In particular, does this have any effect on Comcast saying "Netflix needs to pay us or we won't install sufficient peering to meet our customers' demand for Netflix connections"?
Having a second ISP choice where Netflix works properly would fix that pretty quickly, but I'm not clear on whether Title II does. But the FCC also just overruled state laws blocking municipal broadband networks, so that's going to be another option to keep an eye on.
> My general impression is that more and stricter regulations in an industry is usually (though not always) a bad thing for consumers in that industry
In cable internet the average consumer has only one or two potential providers. On top of that, companies who try to break into the industry face significant political and regulatory challenges when they lay fiber.
I don't understand how you can think this kind of industry should be unregulated. There are few market forces keeping providers in line, and we see the results of that in the industry's attempts to extort internet companies with throttling.
The industry is already highly regulated, and there's a difference between thinking an industry should be unregulated and thinking that not all conceivable regulations are good for an industry.
State level issue is great. If US citizens never cross state borders. Just think of the joys is we have different standards for sterilization across the board.
On the contrary, one reason state level regulations are preferable is that US citizens can and do cross state borders much more easily and often than national borders.
This is pretty typical for HN. You get a lot of techno libertarians who think any form of regulation is the worst thing ever. To say that the new classification is somehow going to be worse I think is a bit of a stretch.
Because recent government conduct has been stellar, I really want more government regulation, government always knows best, government does an amazing job, is very fair, is very open and transparent, government is democratic and responsive to citizen concerns.
Isn't this argument basically, "governments are prone to being co-opted by special interests, therefore we should go ahead and give away the farm to Comcast"?
The problem of government isn't simply that they can be co-opted by special interests. It's that they have a near-monopoly on the ability to implement policies using the threat of violence, and that ability can be co-opted by special interests.
The guy who runs the gas station down the street could also be co-opted by special interests, but I'm not particularly worried about that, because he has very little ability to force people to, for instance, give him a portion of their income.
Question: suppose a group of knowledgeable engineers and technicians in a city decided that they were going to run their geography's network infrastructure without the supervision of Comcast shareholders. They decide to stage a nonviolent sit-in overnight in Comcast offices to take over the extant and state-guaranteed monopoly of the network infrastructure in that area, and another group delivers food to them until Comcast gives up its claims.
Does Comcast calmly decide to talk to them about them nonviolently, or does it call in mass State violence to get back control?
You assume a separation between property rights and State power that doesn't exist. They're two sides of the same coin. Capital and property rights don't exist in opposition to the State, but in a mutually-dependent complex of institutions and learned practices.
That doesn't mean you have to throw out one or the other, or both. But it's fair for people to try to change the norms that govern relations between them in a way that generates the social outcomes they prefer.
I suspect that Comcast would call the police. But imagine a similar situation happens in a hypothetical society with no state police, or better yet, in some area where there are no state police available in a reasonable time frame (plenty such areas exist, even in the USA). Don't you suppose that Comcast might have private security guards?
Of course! I'd go so far as to say that's the case in most of the USA--Comcast almost certainly has some level of private security at most of its locations, even (or perhaps especially) in urban areas.
I'm not sure, though, how that undermines the point that Comcast shares in the monopoly of violence with the government. It doesn't make its violence independent of government (at least in the USA): small matters can be dealt with most quickly by those private forces, but in more serious matters, Comcast would call on government violence to provide either a supporting or primary role. The people in conflict with Comcast could do the same, but the difference is that Comcast would actually get the government's help.
Note that this isn't a claim of fascist corporatism or anything: it's part of a healthy society, and really the only way I can imagine a civil society I'd want to live in working. But there's no reason to say that Comcast doesn't have the ability to be co-opted by special interests (its shareholders and affiliated unions, to be explicit about who I'm talking about) and use state-guaranteed violence to impose economic policy in the small on unwilling participants.
> I'm not sure, though, how that undermines the point that Comcast shares in the monopoly of violence with the government.
I didn't mean to imply that. I was addressing your point of protection of property to be only possible via the state, which I believe to be demonstrably false. The fact that Comcast would likely call the largest and most powerful group of property enforcers (the state) is not particularly interesting.
Wouldn't it be: "governments are prone to being co-opted by special interests, therefore we rather allow companies to compete with each other freely in an open market and let consumers make the choice"
Competition requires a "free open market", which isn't a thing that exists, and it depends on a knowledgeable and informed consumer base, which also isn't a thing that exists, and this all depends upon there being choice in the marketplace, which as has been demonstrated ad nauseum, also isn't a thing that exists.
What if the free market in telecommunication does not exist "yet" or is, due to a long history of regulation and government involvement, inhibited, we need to add another bureaucratic layer? If Google Fiber shows up in my neighborhood and Comcast did everything to upset us, would not we all switch and Comcast realize that it needs to adjust (its service, pricing, quality, speed)? I guess my difficulty lies in not understanding why this market warrants a different approach than any other market.
Two decades is a long time to set up a market, to be honest. And in that time, there have been fewer choices in the market, with smaller companies being regularly gobbled up into large conglomerates with astoundingly bad customer satisfaction the result.
or is, due to a long history of regulation and government involvement, inhibited
And this is really begging the question, in the fallacious sense.
Where does this "bureaucratic layer" argument come from? The only telcos that are going to be burdened by these regs are ones who are already doing shady stuff. In other words, the ones that need to be.
And on a more visceral and arational level? Fuck 'em. Fuck Comcast, fuck Verizon. They had years to get their house in order, and it wasn't regulation preventing them from doing so. It wasn't regulation that gives Comcast the worst customer satisfaction scores in the entire industry. It wasn't regulation that made Comcast's "capacity" problems magically disappear when Google Fiber shows up in the same city. It wasn't regulation that made Comcast acquire and abuse what amounts to a monopoly position. It wasn't regulation that made Verizon run what amounts to a protection racket on Netflix.
Nobody put a gun to the CEO's heads and said "be the biggest bastards you possibly can" - they managed to do that quite well with minimal government involvement.
Perhaps this market warrants a different approach because it's demonstrably broken and because the internet is more akin to infrastructure than a consumer good.
Stefan Molyneux came out with a one hour long video today - very detailed historic overview and discussion - of the government involvement that led to the current state of affairs (which beg for more government involvement, etc). Its worth watching it in its entirety: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Z_nBhfpmk4 Personally, I can't stand Comcast/Verizon/AT&T either, but I was born in Stasi East Germany. To me, the idea to further entrench government in what should be a completely free market place, seems backwards.
A "completely free marketplace" will always tend towards a monopoly, and besides, that philosophy doesn't work when there are physical barriers to entry.
Against the concept of democratic government, or against the implementation of a purely democratic government with no other additional regulations?
I think it's the same thing with the "free market". The general concept is sound, but there are corner cases that must be addressed. Infrastructure, I would argue, is one of those.
Against the concept of any government whose policies ostensibly reflect the preferences of the population and whose authority is ostensibly consented to by the population, which I believe includes most modern Western nation states.
According to mainstream Western theory (as I understand it), even aspects of policy which are not directly democratic or even routinely voted on by elected representative, like the Constitution, are justified as having legitimate authority because they are consented to by the governed.
In other words, even those "additional regulations" you mention, which I assume include things like basic human rights which are supposedly not subject to reversal by normal voting, are included in my broad usage of the phrase "democratic government."
That would be the ideal, but infrastructure issues such as this can't be handled by a "free market" acting all by itself.
That's because whoever owns the land the infrastructure runs through can block progress, and the free market solution of competing elsewhere doesn't work. Land access is inherently limited by real world access problems that don't obey free market ideology.
A free market for public utilities would start from the public, i.e. government, OWNING said infrastructure outright and then allowing private corporations to lease the right to use it to provide service. Only the government has the legal right to eminent domain so it can build roads and public utilities and generally seize land for the common good - private corporations would have to negotiate with every landowner whose property needs to be crossed, and that is obviously unworkable in the real world.
From the current situation - which is a hodge podge of municipal services, private corporate services, agreements that limit competition, coupled with land access needs only eminent domain can provide - the only way to arrive at this paradise of "free market competition" is for the government to nationalize the entire thing, void all contracts with private service providers, and recreate the rules to allow competition among service providers by renting/licensing the infrastructure that is owned by the public. Otherwise it would take decades for existing agreements to expire or be renegotiated, and any improvement still have to rely on access and easements and various forms of eminent domain anyway.
I cannot imagine the unending howling of the libertarian-type crowd if this were to happen. They complain that various governments have created this situation (municipalities giving exclusive deals to cable providers) but government power had to be there in the first place or there wouldn't be any infrastructure at all.
It is much cheaper to purchase legislation mandating people buy a product or mandating legal barriers to protect a business from competition than it is to convince people to willing purchase and engage with a business.
Why are people so afraid of each other? Why are people so afraid of allowing their fellow humans to choose the services and products and businesses they want to choose? Why are people so quick to call upon the government to implement through force the ideas they think are best? Especially when they are faced with the reality that their government continually flaunts their own laws when it suits them?
So many intelligent people so quickly willing to give away their rights to a government they criticize on one hand but call upon to protect them with the other.
? can you help me understand, I am curious why you believe this to be the case?
By any metric I can think of US government regulation has increased dramatically. Size of US tax code, number of laws, number of regulations, number of government agencies, expenditures, population of washington DC, the # of people with security clearances.
The only thing that has decreased is total work force, but if you add in the additional hiring of contractors that reduction is also thrown into question.
Sometimes it is, and sometimes they do. It would be unwise to dismiss the possibility out of hand, especially on an issue this contentious that has this many powerful players against it.
I have looked hard at the issues & I'm not on any campaign.
Paid prioritization is not a bad thing. Blocking websites is.
There is a whole nascent standard called LTE direct that suddenly becomes pointless if you can't distinquish traffic priorities. There are innovations that are being cut out of the picture for entirely new m2x flows & peer to peer flows because of the desire to remove paid prioritization.
It is not productive to assume that the only reason that someone disagrees with you is because of a coordinated campaign to spread FUD.
I can't help but suspect that the ultimate effect of paid prioritization would be to stifle future growth.
Say you're a mobile carrier in the not-too-distant future. Lots of your customers are addicted to the hottest new social network in the Valley, FaceFlix. Trouble is, you're catching hell from both sides -- your customers are complaining about sluggish performance, and FaceFlix is complaining about inadequate bandwidth. What's your path of least resistance? Do you spend money building out your network, buying expensive chunks of spectrum at auction and erecting new towers all over the place? Or do you choose to make money, charging FaceFlix to drop their competitors' packets into the bit bucket? It will seem like a no-brainer from your point of view, and that's why paid prioritization is a bad idea.
It just sounds like a recap of the apocryphal story from the early telephone days, where a local undertaker was said to be bribing the operator to reroute calls away from their competitor. Why is that behavior suddenly OK this time around, in your eyes?
LTE direct allows peer to peer routing of traffic over high capacity, licensed spectrum. In rural areas where a device has shoddy coverage, you could conceivably route traffic from devices with poor coverage to devices with strong coverage and then out to the Internet.
You wouldn't want to do this for streaming traffic, as it could negatively impact the experience of the device with the strongest coverage. But you could do this for traffic that has lower performance requirements.
Paid prioritization has existed over the course of the entire Internet. I happens every day- and it is known as peering agreements. Would you characterize the history of the Internet so far as "stifled growth"?
The thing is, "net neutrality" arguments are not really about peering agreements. They are a consequence of a deeper, unfortunate reality: anyone who uses a packet-switched network to emulate a circuit-switched one is in a state of sin. Streaming applications like to pretend that they have a dedicated circuit connection to their peer, whether that peer is a centralized service like Netflix (or their CDN provider), or another end user's cable box or handset. That's not the case, but we have to maintain the fiction that it is, and treat packets that are part of a Netflix stream just the same as transient ones to or from Twitter.
Just how to preserve this unnatural state of affairs is what is being debated. If we don't understand this fact -- if we create laws or technical standards that favor one type of packet over another -- we risk foreclosing all sorts of interesting and valuable applications in the future that no one has even imagined yet.
So no, I don't think it's a good idea to promulgate standards that work well with transient messages and datagrams but not streams. If that's true of LTE Direct (and I'm not familiar with the spec, so I don't know if it is), then that's a problem. We've already baked that behavior into the architecture of the Internet itself, and it's only going to become a bigger issue as time goes on.
Amen. Isn't Google Fiber an attempt of the market responding to a lack of competition? It's probably more likely for a company to go out of business / lose market share than for a government agency to give up power.
At what point does "prioritization" effectively become blocking? People navigate away from websites that take a long time to load or have advertisements.
Not to mention that companies like Comcast have their foot in the online entertainment content game, and could very easily use paid prioritization to get an unfair advantage over competing services.
If you do a search for the net neutrality position of companies like AT&T, Verizon, Centurylink- you'll find plenty of material on their policy blogs on why this is a bad thing.
Interesting that Verizon and CenturyLink focused entirely on the fact that Title II regulations are old. I'm curious what the specific issues they have with it are; after all, there are plenty of old laws that still work fine.
It's become really hard to find any actual information or discussion though. Seems like every page I find is a bunch of bullet points either saying "Regulation will stop all innovation, drive ISPs out of business, and destroy the internet" or "If we don't regulate, Comcast and TWC will stop all innovation and destroy the internet." Sheesh...
If you play video games, use realtime video services like facetime, or use a VPN for mission critical work, do you really want your traffic flows to be identical to something that delivers content to a rendering engine?
Different traffic has different requirements & performance characteristics. From a pure engineering perspective, this is a very poor decision and treating all traffic equally provides artificial and often unnecessary constraints.
I have never experienced any situation where prioritization has effectively become blocking.
> Different traffic has different requirements & performance characteristics. From a pure engineering perspective, this is a very poor decision and treating all traffic equally provides artificial and often unnecessary constraints.
Banning paid prioritization does not stop the ISP from prioritizing traffic for engineering reasons.
What it bans is prioritizing traffic because a content provider paid for their traffic to be prioritized. For example, Amazon would not be able to pay to have Amazon video prioritized over Netflix video, and Netflix would not be able to pay to have Netflix video prioritized over Amazon video.
what would be so bad about that? doesn't that mean that we would have to "regulate" every successful business, because they could use their additional profit to gain "unfair market advantages"?
Suppose my ISP has oversold their bandwidth (which they all, of necessity, do). I'm trying to watch Amazon. My neighbor is trying to watch Netflix. My ISP doesn't have the bandwidth to give us both a good video experience, and so has to choose which of us will get inferior service.
Let's say I only watch video occasionally. My neighbor watches all the time. I consume maybe 5 GB a month. He consumes 1000 GB.
Me and my neighbor have the same tier of service, and are paying the ISP exactly the same amount.
You really don't have a problem if Netflix were allowed to pay my ISP to make sure that my neighbor's video watching gets priority, so he gets a great video performance, and mine sucks?
Thank you for the example. However, I thought that's quintessentially part of competition in a free market. Who would prevent netflix from offering a better service, make a deal with another ISP, allow other companies to offer products that fit your consumption and streaming habits better?
Hmm, I watched from your starting timestamp for a good 10 minutes or so, and the point being made seemed to be that the government should have gone for ISP regulation sooner (or at least done something to prevent ISP monopolization sooner). Is that what you were getting at?
Different types of content have different requirements. Different content within the same type does not. This is not an issue of prioritizing VoIP over a large single file. This is an argument against prioritizing Company A's VoIP over Company B's VoIP.
> Paid prioritization is not a bad thing. Blocking websites is.
Paid prioritization can be effectively used to block websites at the will of the providers. "We offered that website our paid tier, but they refused our $1,000,000 demand and are now capped at a bit per second."
We've already seen companies with Netflix competitors wielding caps against Netflix. It's hardly a crazy concept that Comcast could wield them against speech they don't like too.
The caps were already there. That is what peering is about.
If you can offer the service internally on your network, then by all means you should be able to allocate as much bandwidth as can. The peering points are the choke points. This is where things get nutty.
Netflix has developed boxes that can be deployed in operator networks to avoid the peering choke points. They didn't want to pay Comcast to operate these boxes (They have to be operated). It's not like netflix didn't have a choice in this situation.
> According to Cogent’s CEO, “[f]or most of Cogent’s history with Comcast…[as] Comcast’s subscribers demanded more content from Cogent’s customers, Comcast would add capacity to the interconnection points with Cogent to handle that increased traffic.” After Cogent began carrying Netflix traffic, however, “Comcast refused to continue to augment capacity at our interconnection points as it had done for years prior.”
This was a deliberate strategy to bring Netflix to heel, and it meant Comcast screwing over their own customers, who were paying good money for their internet service, to win the battle.
> Netflix has developed boxes that can be deployed in operator networks to avoid the peering choke points. They didn't want to pay Comcast to operate these boxes (They have to be operated).
Do you have a citation for this? Netflix eventually paid the peering agreements, which are dramatically more expensive than paying Comcast to operate OpenConnect boxes (unless they're taking the same strategy with those and pretending they'd cost millions of dollars to plug a few 4U servers into a rack).
It very well could be that Comcast or someone else hired a bunch of people to flood comments (though it's strange timing to do it afterwards rather than before). But can you acknowledge that at least some of us have honest disagreements with you on the issue? Or should this opinion really be anathema to this community?
> People aren't worried about the main gist. People are scared of the fine details that they categorically refused to release before voting.
Strangely, the people that have suddenly expressed concerned about the second thing in the major media as the vote approached are the same people that were expressing opposition on the first ground until very recently (and, many of them continued to do both.)
What's wrong with that? I consider myself one of those people.
Broadband companies have a government sponsored monopoly. There are good, fair reasons for that. One of the rules with being gifted a government sponsored monopoly should be that you aren't allowed to abuse that monopoly power. Very reasonable. People agree in principle.
Now we're adding some rules to prevent that abuse. However we don't know what they are! Just as the pendulum was much too far on one side it could easily swing much too far to the other. A great way to evaluate if it's swinging too far is by reading the rules. Which people asked to do. And they categorically refused! The only reason this vote came up is because of passionate public opinion. But now they won't let the public know what is actually being voted on? That's fucked up.
I would personally like to see telecommunication companies spend 1 trillion dollars in infrastructure over the next 20 years. I want wireless gigabit internet. I'd like 10 gigabit wired connections. Maybe more. Will these rules make that harder to do? Will that be more likely or less likely than before? NOBODY IN THE PUBLIC KNOWS. To celebrate the passing of laws when you don't actually know what was passed is insane.
If you'll notice, the lines of attack closely mirror the anti-Obamacare lines.
"700 regulations and no one has even read it!" is very close to the "No one — not one single member of Congress — has read the bill" Michael Steel was using in 2009.
Not entirely. If you read the lower court ruling [0] you'll see that the argument made against allowing the subsidies is pretty tortured. You have to read the statute in the most literal and least interpretive way possible to think that the original intent of congress was to bar subsidies for states that opted not to set up exchanges. But hey who knows. SCOTUS season isn't until June. As it applies to NN, it is perhaps appropriate to note the different processes the ACA when through compared to whatever regulations the FCC ends up adopting. We shall see.
An "error" that only exists in the most tendentious possible reading of the bill isn't evidence of anything other than the intent of the people challenging the ACA.
Title II was designed for phone-line utilities in the 1930s, where there really was a total monopoly: you either got service from your single phone company, or not at all.
For broadband, most Americans had not one but zero options 20 years ago.
Now, most have 2 or more wired options (cable and DSL), and 3 or more cellular-wireless options. Some have extra fiber, cable, or DSL options. Some have other wireless options in the unlicensed spectrum. (Most people have more broadband options than smart-phone OS options; should the iOS/Android be federally-regulated as a software utility?)
There are certainly places where the options are too few and too expensive. But that's a local issue, often created by correctable local government errors. To say there's "virtually no competition… for most" is a false claim lacking perspective.
Based on that false impression, Title II puts every ISP, even where there is competition, under federal-review rules designed for the single-provider telephone monopoly of the mid-20th century. Utility-style regulation tends to lock-in incumbents: it doesn't expand competition or options, but rather gives up on competition, and just tells the presumed-permanent "monopolist" what to do.
> Now, most have 2 or more wired options (cable and DSL), and 3 or more cellular-wireless options.
If this is the counterargument to the idea that we have a captured market and should regulate it like one, then it's essentially a concession: wireless is a non-starter because of inherent limits, and saying "oh, there's always one alternative" isn't exactly describing a vibrant competitive market in the land of tethered connections.
But the thing is, that's pretty much a red herring. The net neutrality debate isn't about competition among carriers at all. It's about competition between people offering services over the network, and most specifically whether those offering/receiving those services have to pay by source/destination.
It's arguable that the new rules address more than that, but if the carriers didn't want us to land here, maybe they shouldn't have fired the first shot by threatening the neutral model.
"This thread has turned into an astro-turfing campaign for the anti-NN advocates"
It's disingenuous to call an opposing opinion "astro-turfing" in an attempt to discredit them. There are 700 total rules to the regulation. We haven't been able to see one of them. This doesn't concern you in any way?
"and a necessary thing seeing how there's virtually no competition in broadband access for most people in the US."
Tell me how more regulation will lead to more competition and a better Internet for the consumer.
"I'm finding it hard to believe that the regular HN crowd has suddenly turned virulently anti Title II. This definitely smells like a coordinated campaign to spread FUD."
Most people were afraid to talk about it because the HN community typically down votes everyone to hell that has opposing opinions.
I gave up awhile back because nobody would listen, but I'm not giving up today.
"This definitely smells like a coordinated campaign to spread FUD."
It seems you won't even listen to the opposition and are trying to discredit anyone that is against this government regulation as "FUD". It sounds like you are the astro-turfing one.
I just went through your recent comment history and it's pretty clear you're interested in no such thing. You've been blindly repeating Fox News style prepared talking points without regards to actual information presented to you. As an example this was explained to you in another subthread below:
"Regulatory orders aren't generally published before being approved by the initiating authority (preliminary notices that are subject to revision before being approved are published when those are approved by the authority, as was the case with the NPRM on this issue published last year. The final decision based on the NPRM and public comment received since the NPRM, is what was voted on today, which will then be published.
This is the processed followed by basically every regulatory body for virtually every regulatory action in the US government (sometimes there isn't an advanced notice like the NPRM, however.)" by dragonwriter
As just one more examples out of dozens more, here's what tzs explained to you in another thread yesterday:
---
> The FCC has a 332 page plan to regulate the Internet (which the public does not have a chance to even look over before it is passed)
No, the FCC does not have a 332 page plan to regulate the internet. Tom Wheeler has a plan, although it is much much shorter to 332. The 300+ pages is for a document that includes his plan, a long explanation of the reasons and the authorities for each part, and a long look at the large number of comments that were received after last years FCC plan.
The FCC will have a plan if the Commissioners vote in a couple day to make adopt Wheeler's plan, at which point it will then be available for public comment so that we can all see it and comment. After that, the FCC decides to adopt it or not.
---
Seeing your ad-nauseam repetition of the same talking points while utterly disregarding cogent responses to them, it's a pretty safe bet that your opinions and desire for "open and honest discussion" carries as much weight as those of party hacks screaming at each other on cable news.
> I just went through your recent comment history and it's pretty clear you're interested in no such thing. You've been blindly repeating Fox News style
> Seeing your ad-nauseam repetition of the same talking points
My thesis is that these accounts are not here for legitimate argument. They are here to spread FUD via talking points. I attempted to prove the futility of attacking the arguments by showing that they have been clearly countered before while failing to budge this account from their fixed talking points.
> My thesis is that these accounts are not here for legitimate argument.
If you suspect accounts of not being here for legitimate purposes you are welcome to email your suspicions to us at hn@ycombinator.com. But it's not ok to make accusations of astroturfing in HN threads. The degradation it causes to the discourse is obvious from the current discussion alone: wherever it comes up turns into a toxic waste pond.
Personally accusing paulhauggis of being a shill just because you don't like his politics is one of the worst examples I've seen. I think you owe him an apology. Even if you're right that someone refuses to change his mind when shown superior arguments, the only thing that entitles you to accuse them of is human nature.
> My thesis is that these accounts are not here for legitimate argument. They are here to spread FUD via talking points
If you feel anyone's opinion that isn't your own is somehow FUD, that's a problem.
For example, you are unlikely to change my viewpoint or opinion on a great number of things, even through well thought-out and concise arguments. I also happen to believe Fox News isn't as terrible as a lot of people like to think (they are, after all, the news network with the most viewership and highest ratings year after year).
Point being, you shouldn't attack individuals because they don't agree with you (or the popular opinion). You should attack their argument.
And clearly someone who's invested enough time into getting 1K+ upvotes isn't a drive-by-night account. I get suspicious when new accounts post that were created on or around when the article was posted, and/or accounts with very long account history but almost no comments and no upvotes (why go 500 days with no comment but now you post?).
> I also happen to believe Fox News isn't as terrible as a lot of people like to think (they are, after all, the news network with the most viewership and highest ratings year after year).
If your opinion of what makes a news network good or terrible is based on whether or not they get high viewers and ratings, I'm not quite sure what to say. No one who calls Fox News terrible is doing so because they think no one is watching, and I can't believe you actually believe that.
> Point being, you shouldn't attack individuals because they don't agree with you (or the popular opinion). You should attack their argument.
Pointing out instances of him ignoring coherent rebuttals to his argument is an attack on the argument. His argument is weak because he is ignoring responses that refute his argument.
> Thank you. I think this is sufficient grounds for me to avoid wasting any of my time arguing with you.
Conversely, has anyone managed to change your mind here in this thread?
Probably not...
The point of good argument isn't to convince the other party they are woefully wrong and everyone should just eventually come to the same conclusion.
Some debate for sport/fun, others to make a point. In the end a good debate serves to strengthen one's own ideals via plugging of logic holes poked by the opposite party. Occasionally someone may change their viewpoint -- but only someone with a very strong ego would believe their sole argument was so compelling...
If you surround yourself in an echo chamber, it's easy to believe your viewpoint is the only correct one.
> The point of good argument isn't to convince the other party they are woefully wrong and everyone should just eventually come to the same conclusion.
Applied to both parties in the argument, yes it is. Argument is digging for truth. The most productive outcome is for some or all of the parties involved shift their beliefs to more accurately reflect reality.
Just to clarify - when you argue, are you attempting to present the actual reasons you believe your point to be true? If not, then you are arguing in bad faith, and contributing heat to the discussion rather than light. If you really are arguing in good faith, then it's just plain crazy to strengthen your position upon being confronted with flaws in your reasoning.
> Some debate for sport/fun
In the context of a serious discussion, I believe the term for this is "trolling".
> In the context of a serious discussion, I believe the term for this is "trolling".
That's not always true. Have you never had a sporting debate with a friend who's opinion you knew full well going in?
In addition, a common debate preparation tactic for "serious" debates is often to argue from the opponent's side. This forces one to better understand the opposition's stance, better prepare for common responses and assertions, and discover potential logic flaws in one's own position.
> Have you never had a sporting debate with a friend who's opinion you knew full well going in?
Huh? You mean have I argued with a friend about a belief of theirs I was aware of ahead of time? Yes? If you're asking if I was disagreeing with them just for fun, while pretending to be serious, then no, because I try not to be a jerk to my friends.
I'm well aware of debate tactics and devil's advocacy, and for the most part I think they're epistemic poison. It's great to examine your own arguments for flaws, because you might actually be wrong! But the idea that you would do so merely for the sake of patching up any holes you find is revolting.
I suggest you google "arguments as soldiers" if you're not familiar with the phrase. Not for the sake of learning or gaining perspective or anything, it'll just help you understand where I'm coming from so you'll be better-equipped to take me down.
Let's turn the tables- I'm going to apply a hypothetical:
I find all of your arguments to be talking points. How can we possibly have a reasonable dialog? I have just insulted you by explicitly stating that you are insincere in your position.
This is how you're treating everyone who disagrees with you. It is utterly unproductive. You are executing a Denial of Service attack on any reasonable dialog.
The same arguments being repeated again and again, usually by multiple different people (almost as if the arguments have been disseminated from the same source), with any rebuttals or addressing of those points by people opposing the central point being ignored or not addressed in good faith.
Part of the value of hackernews is that you get informed people presenting ideas that you might not otherwise have considered. Attacking someone because they violate orthodoxy is something that is lampooned in this comic. YOU'RE THE GUY IN THE COMIC! http://xkcd.com/386/
It doesn't matter whether a contributor intends his argument to be "legitimate" or not. The validity of an argument is completely independent of the presenter of that argument.
"I just went through your recent comment history and it's pretty clear you're interested in no such thing. You've been blindly repeating Fox News style prepared talking points without regards to actual information presented to you. As an example this was explained to you in another subthread below:"
I don't watch Fox news, sorry (I cut cable years ago). I know it may come as a shock to you that people actually think critically about a situation, but this is what I am doing. I have brought up many good points and concerns, and they seem to be getting side-tracked and you are (attempting) to discredit me.
"Seeing your ad-nauseam repetition of the same talking points while utterly disregarding cogent responses to them"
Look at my response. He said there is a 300+ page plan and now we know there are 700 regulatory rules that still have not seen. Can you show them to me? This would stop me from asking.
"As just one more examples out of dozens more, here's what tzs explained to you in another thread yesterday:"
So, I ask for more transparency and your response is another poster that basically said that it's not done this way. Can you tell me why it isn't done this way and why, going forward, it shouldn't?
Now, instead of trying to delve into my past and attack me personally (which is usually a red flag for me, but I will ignore it), tell me:
1) What are the 700 regulations and why should I not be able to see them? My business and my life runs through the Internet and I pretty much use it every day. I should have some say in rules that will now be imposed on me.
2) Even if we get to see proposals before regulations and laws are in place, it's still not a vote.
In the very beginning, we will probably see no change with the new regulations. It's 5 or 10 years down the line that's still unknown. By this time, people will not associate the higher bills and other effects with this new regulation and politicians will push the blame on something else.
I'm actually shocked that intelligent people have no problem just giving their rights away in the blink of an eye.
It's disingenuous to call an opposing opinion "astro-turfing" in an attempt to discredit them. There are 700 total rules to the regulation. We haven't been able to see one of them. This doesn't concern you in any way?
No, because this is the norm - the commissioners draw up a proposal, vote on it, then it's published in the Federal Register as a 'notice of proposed rulemaking,' witht he text of the proposed rule in full, and there is a comment period. Following that, the FCC publishes a 'notice of adoption of final rule,' which may or may not include changes based on the submitted comments. the process is summarized here: http://www.fcc.gov/rulemaking
Most people were afraid to talk about it because the HN community typically down votes everyone to hell that has opposing opinions.
Spare us the ad hominem attacks. Substantive arguments generally do just fine on HN. Rayiner, for example, has been making substantie arguments against the idea of Title II classification for months and it hasn't done his standing any harm whatsoever.
What happened to open and honest discussions?
It's not honest to pretend that this rulemaking process is somehow different and worse from the normal one that has been in place for years.
What's wrong with the existing procedure, specifically? Why is it not adequate to view and comment on it at the time it is published in the Federal Register as a proposed rule? This is, after all, the whole point of the Federal Register.
Where was the pressure to change this rulemaking procedure over the last X years before this particular issue came up?
I have no experience in how to aggregate opinions in order to make policy decisions. I don't directly have a problem with the specific procedure. My concern comes from the historical results of US regulatory agencies, which I am not impressed by. I do not know if the public commenting process has a significant effect on those results.
Its the only actual formal proposal that there has been. Yes, its true that it (based on the outlines provided) it differs substantially from what has been considered in recent weeks and adopted. That's the point of having an advance notice for comments as part of the regulatory process.
OTOH, its also quite common for the subsequent published act after a call for comments on a proposal to be the final decision, even if it differs substantially from the original proposal.
How is that different from the other FCC policies? It's only the opposition echo chamber repeating the "secret Obama plan to control the Internet" spin.
> Then be prepared to change the rules that _all_ independent regulatory bodies with a voting commission operate under. Because this is SOP.
Its actually pretty much all regulatory bodies -- its just there is no formal "vote" in regular executive branch hierarchies before a regulatory action is adopted. But they still don't publish the internal drafts that are considered before they are adopted (they do sometimes publish NPRMs before final rules, but the FCC did that in this case, too.)
How many times in the past did the FCC vote on internet or broadcast policies using the same process as this one resulting in regulations that protected special interests at the expense of consumers?
Re: lack of competition:
In my neighborhood there is only one real broadband ISP: Comcast. The recent re-definition of "broadband" may have caused some other providers to improve some of their offerings.
"Tell me how more regulation will lead to more competition and a better Internet for the consumer."
I would bet our internet bill will start to look like our phone bill with lots of little fees and taxes tacked on. One of them will probably be titled something like "Affordable Internet Access Tax".
Even Eric Schmidt told Obama it was a bad idea. IBM, Intel, and Cisco are against it. My posts were shadow banned on HN for being against these regulations. It's odd that people like you can't fathom that there are two sides to this issue.
If you are referring to Google's concerns voiced after early outlines of the Title II approach, they objected to something that was discussed earlier as part of the approach -- identifying a "service" provided to edge providers by ISPs distinct from that provided to retail customers, and classifying that newly-identified service under Title II -- because it might create a basis for ISP to edge provider charges.
This provision, from subsequent outlines provided, is not part of the final package, which only addresses retail broadband service as a Title II service and addresses ISP to edge provider relations in terms of the impact they have on retail customers.
And all of the web-tech companies who support Net Neutrality rely utterly on other peoples' wires to deliver content to their users. They have a huge interest in regulating telcos into "dumb pipes." There's huge monetary incentives on both sides of this debate.
Yes, they rely on other people's wires, namely the ones rented (i.e. paid for) by the consumers of their products. How do you justify double dipping in this case?
Apple charges me for my iPhone, then takes 30% when someone sells me an app for it. Sony charges me for a PS3, then charges publishers a fee for every copy of every game they release. When your property facilitates a transaction between two parties, it's not "double dipping" to charge a fee to both.
It would be inconvenient if my ISP was keeping 100 year old infrastructure running like my power company. Or refusing to upgrade aging lead pipes leaking poison into the drinking water like my water company. The U.S. has a multi-trillion infrastructure deficit, and regulating utilities as dumb services is a huge part of that.
Legislating the wires into "dumb pipes" has certain advantages in terms of openness, but there's no money in building dumb pipes, and these pipes are expensive and must be continually upgraded, much more so than other kinds of utilities.
Utilities don't set their own rates, for obvious reasons. Public rate-setting boards do, and they are beholden to municipal politics, which target the lowest-common denominator. If you tried to raise rates to upgrade the network, you'd be shouted down by people talking about old folks on fixed incomes.
What do you think is going to happen at a rate-setting meeting? For every young nerd who thinks the utility should invest in fiber, how many people like my parents will be there (who wanted to switch from FiOS to cable to get Indian channels)?
The FCC"s plan isn't NN. It's a gigantic steaming pile of regulations that's ostensibly designed to implement NN. So far, any attempts at public debate gets reduced to emotional screeches and partisanship without any real meat to anything.
We're doomed. Maybe not today, tomorrow or next year, but censorship as you fear it is coming and you have yourselves to blame.
I just don't get this. The telecoms already started the censorship process when they decided to prioritize some types of traffic over others. The free market failed free speech the moment that happened, so yes, we the people decided to phone our government and tell them we don't want a bunch of $limeball$ deciding who gets to see what.
We've exchanged impending corporate censorship for possible, maybe, conjectured future government censorship.
This really isn't helpful. If you'd read his comment, it would be clear that his last account was banned, which would all but necessitate that any new accounts would be, y'know, new.
Further, it shouldn't need to be pointed out, but the insightfulness of one's posts should not be judged against how long they've been members of a website.
As someone else pointed out, a lot of new accounts were posting ISP talking points, which looks a whole lot like astroturfing.
Obviously the insightfulness of comments shouldn't be judged by how long someone has been a member of a website, but how long they've been a member of a website may be a good indicator of their motivations.
As another brand new account, I could see why you'd say that. But in practice, our understanding of what people say is rooted in who they are.
If somebody wants to write a book making a formal, evidence backed argument on something, I'm less concerned with who they are. But when somebody jumps into a discussion with a few sentences, asking who they are and what their motivations are is much more reasonable. Especially on a topic where, as with this one, billions of dollars are on the line.
There are now plenty of people whose whole job is to argue a party line that may have no relation to the truth or to what the speaker believes. There's literally no point in having a serious discussion with, say, a tobacco company PR rep, because they are paid to mislead people forever, to never be convinced, and to distort the dialog as long as possible. With somebody like that, treating them like an honest interlocutor is not only a waste of time, but I believe it actively harms the discussion.
> But when somebody jumps into a discussion with a few sentences, asking who they are and what their motivations are is much more reasonable.
Not really. You're not taking the idea of ad hominem far enough. When somebody jumps into a discussion with a few sentence and no citations or evidence, you ought to reject the validity of that argument regardless of who is presenting the argument. That argument is unsubstantiated, period, whether it's posted by a brand new throwaway account or a renowned expert in the area of discussion.
I just feel like if he's so trivially wrong, and you're so obviously right, wouldn't it be better just to explain that? Instead of sinking so low on the debate pyramid as to only be one step above the bottom?
If you are not a serious interlocutor, then there is no point in explaining anything to you. It's like trying to get to know a bot. And getting off in the 101 stuff for the zillionth time is a distraction from having a more interesting and substantive discussion.
And given that you're apparently mainly here to throw shade on people discussing this in ways you don't approve of, I have no reason to think you're a serious participant who's actually after a useful discussion.
People wouldn't be going "hmm, there's a lot of green names and they're all conveniently anti-NN" if there weren't. Like, y'know...you, yourself, elsewhere in this thread.
Yes, I happen to be anti-NN, no, I do not think that the way things currently are works. No I do not think the cable companies operate fairly in a free market.
Sorry, I'm anti-NN, sorry I joined only 11 days ago. I can assure you. the two are not related. Again, if elsewhere in this thread, I'm making points you disagree with. attack and refute the points themselves. How else can anyone ever think you have the slightest idea you know what you're talking about, if all you can do is spout people's account age and karma ratings? if being anti-NN is so trivially stupid, shouldn't you be able to point this out quite simply?
The way I know that eropple knows what he's talking about is that I've been reading his comments for years, and so have a sense of his competence, interest, and manner of thinking.
They reason I suspect you don't is that you've turned up with a brand new account and an apparent partisan interest. If you would like not to be suspected like that, you could, as I and eropple have, connect you account to your full identity rather than concealing it while lashing out at others.
Indeed. The one thing I love about HN is that it's small enough that after time, you simply get to know other commenters and you learn their areas of competence.
How is it relevant information that a certain topic brought in a new person? I could understand it if the person had been around a few years and only commented on that topic, but a new person could be just a recently inspired person.
This is a politically charged topic with powerful, malicious actors. The thread an unusually large number of green members posting mostly against what HN has been mostly for.
It's an odd pattern, and the parent above saying it's "vile" to call it what it looks like is overblowing it.
I'm not seeing that pattern. I've seen a total of 7 green members on this topic. That to me isn't all that unusual. The vast majority of green I saw was for NN. Are you saying HN is against NN? I thought HN was for NN.
My what a wonderful ivory tower you must live in.
I just think it's weak. If being anti-NN is so incredibly stupid, shouldn't refuting the points they make be trivial? why not just do it, and safe yourself the trouble of being accused of sitting one-step up on the debate pyramid from "Name-calling"?
> My what a wonderful ivory tower you must live in.
Accusations of astroturfing without evidence are not ok, but personal attacks such as this are not allowed on Hacker News either. Please review the site guidelines:
Also, now as a utility, internet can be regulated for content, be it decency standards or political speech. Maybe not now, not next year, but what about in 5-10 years? Content is content, all bits are equal, all bits are over the same utilities. And internet as a utility is now regulated.
> Also, now as a utility, internet can be regulated for content, be it decency standards or political speech.
To be frank, this isn't something I particularly fear. You're referencing TV regulation, but the main limiters on TV content are corporations owning the airwaves and people's fear of sex. The internet is not limited in space the way frequency bands are, and good luck trying to enforce pornography laws. Pornography laws are a limitation I worry about a bit, but so far I don't see any evidence that anyone is pushing for using utility regulation to limit pornography, and we can cross that bridge when (if?) we come to it.
If content regulations happen, they'll come in with the new flavor of the month, i.e. 'social justice.' There will be vague statutes against 'harassment' I'm guessing, and anyone decrying their vagueness or broadness will be decried a racist, sexist shitlord. You won't get 80's style 'Christian moralism' language in 2020.
> Are you suggesting it's some kind of conspiracy?
Despite the Tumblr feminist movement, I don't think most people are in favor of this sort of regulation, and there isn't sufficient monetary motivation that I can see for such regulation to happen.
However, I do agree that this kind of regulation would also be bad. But again: we can cross that bridge when (if?) we come to it.
Your mistake is to imagine that you have any power at all to affect such outcomes and processes. They will be guided by media/PR/social forces, not your arguments. I guess it's the universal democratic conceit of the 'we.'
So government censorship vs corporate? At least the former is a body controlled (indirectly) by public votes/opinion, whereas the latter is a monopoly that's either unaware or indifferent to consumer opinion.
If the telecoms hadn't pushed their luck by starting the censorship process to begin with, we could have all sat pretty with the status quo for a while.
"""Google has grown. And strong net neutrality rules are now no longer a top company priority. They could even be a hindrance. Officially, Google hasn’t taken a formal position on the president’s net neutrality proposal."""
I fail to understand how this could hurt Google. If ISPs start modifying speed and/or access to certain domains I can only see that as damaging for Google. The only thing I can think of is the typical pattern of a company becoming hugely successful then begin seeking to change the laws that allowed them to grow so nobody else can follow the path. Kinda like cutting the bridge after you've crossed it.
If you are google with billions in the bank, what does it matter to you if Comcast wants to charge you a little bit more? The real effect is that entrenched powers get further entrenched because of less access to alternatives.
Lets say Comcast wanted to charge search providers 500million dollars. Thats not a lot of money from Googles search engine profits. But how much is 500 million of Bings budget? Yahoos? DuckDuckGo? I would be surprised if every search provider was willing and able to pay fees like this.
Frankly, I don't give a shit what corporations were for or against. Unless you have actual criticisms of the bill itself, I can only conclude that there are, in fact, not two sides to this issue.
Wait, you're telling me to criticize a "bill" that hasn't been published yet? Are you kidding? You do know that this "bill" with its 70+ regulations was passed in private, right?
> Wait, you're telling me to criticize a "bill" that hasn't been published yet? Are you kidding? You do know that this "bill" with its 70+ regulations was passed in private, right?
Which kind of begs what exactly you think you're criticizing.
All the statements by the FCC leading up to this bill have been ones I would consider positive. So until I actually see the bill, I'm not criticizing it.
Nobody is against NN. Nobody wants the internet to be less free. The problem here is that the FCC is detonating a nuclear bomb to try to put out a house fire. It's completely unnecessary and will do more harm than good.
> Nobody is against NN. Nobody wants the internet to be less free.
Yes, absolutely the telecom companies are against net neutrality, because they want to be able to charge a premium for some sites, and give preferential routing to some kinds of traffic.
Also, I just want to highlight that there are lot of brand-new accounts on this thread posting cable-company talking points.
> because they want to be able to charge a premium for some sites
Elaborate on this plan.
> and give preferential routing to some kinds of traffic.
This is generally how the internet works. When you say "kinds" you mean surgery in action data vs. netflix data. Or when you say "kinds" do you mean netflix data vs. ISP movie provider data. That is the same kind of data.
You need to be a little more clear.
The internet gives preferential routing to certain kinds of data by design.
* A bunch of new accounts arguing the opposite as well.
>> because they want to be able to charge a premium for some sites
>Elaborate on this plan.
OK. Comcast offers their "On Demand" service over their IP network. I can consume it with their set-top box, or with an XFinity app on my XBox. The bandwidth that I use for this app does not count against any data cap that Comcast may impose, and they're also doing traffic shaping to give this on-demand content preference over what I would get with Amazon or Netflix apps sitting next to the Comcast app in my home menu. That is using their position as the last-mile provider to give their content preferential treatment.
>> and give preferential routing to some kinds of traffic.
>This is generally how the internet works. When you say "kinds" you mean surgery in action data vs. netflix data. Or when you say "kinds" do you mean netflix data vs. ISP movie provider data. That is the same kind of data.
You need to be a little more clear.
The internet gives preferential routing to certain kinds of data by design.
See above. Comcast and others are already giving preferential treatment to their own video streaming services vs. other services that are streaming the same kind of content.
The major consumer isps have been crystal clear (unless you don't wish to understand): they look at large consumer-facing internet companies and want a piece of the action. eg the recent action by Verizon to charge Netflix money to deliver Netflix to Verizon's paying customers. So if we don't want pay-to-play internet companies, we need net neutrality. Particularly given the widespread monopoly structure of home internet access.
Stick around and be a productive member of the community and I'll happily engage you in debate. But I don't see much point debating with < 1 hour old accounts spitting ISP talking points -- so far it's most likely you're just an astroturfing corporate shill. I can't prove it of course, I'm just playing the odds.
Perhaps if a significant amount of the new accounts were not parroting discredited anti-neutrality talking points..
It's a pretty simple calculus. Some fairly influential people hang out here, and monied interests have been screaming their heads off that they don't want this. With that in mind, it's a lot more likely that shilling and astroturfing is going on than it is not.
Whether that applies to you or not cannot be said (it's unfalsifiable anyways), but the facts stand.
4 for NN (not necessarily for the FCC action)
1 against
1 unknown
1 ambiguous
Unless you have a different definition of new account, it is not even close to 'all but universally'.
Edit: I'm still not seeing how your edit applies. There was only one new person I saw that would even come close to 'parroting discredited anti-neutrality talking points'.
I'll give you that one person easily fits the bill. The rest I'm just not seeing it. I'm not sure how you can get anything out of 'time will tell'. Two where just arguing against the blanket labeling of green members as astroturfers. One of the parents wasn't even arguing against NN, but the way this decision acheives it. Other than that one person where is the astroturfing from the green members?
Do you consider me an anti-NN astroturfer even though I have yet to comment on the decision?
> This thread has turned into an astro-turfing campaign for the anti-NN advocates.
Anybody who disagrees with you must have been bought and paid for by your evil opponents, huh.
> This has long been generally agreed upon by reasonable people as a good thing... and a necessary thing seeing how there's virtually no competition in broadband access for most people in the US.
Honestly, this kind of statement is what sounds like ridiculous astroturfing.
To have a robust market, you need a variety of players. Witha duopoly, you generally end up with approximately the same service as a monopoly, but with two slightly different price points. But the fast majority of the US has at best 2 choices even for a 4 Mbps plan. At 25 Mbps down, then only 2.4% of customers have three or more choices.
I would rather have a robust market, and indeed I'm one of the few people who has stuck with independent ISPs even though it costs me more. But given the oligopoly we've got, I'm happen to take strong regulation to prevent abuse.
The FCC had to change their definition of "broadband" to get that "quite literally almost no competition" result.
The traditional 4Mbps standard found 2 or more wired and 3 or more wireless providers at about 90% of US addresses.
I like ever-faster service, but the idea that's what most people need or even want – when superfast speeds cost more – isn't well-supported. 4Mbps is already plenty for HD movies and video teleconferencing. When and where people crave more, and if the solo 25Mbps-provider annoys them with pricing or traffic policies, more options will arrive, just as they have been arriving for the past two decades.
Most places in the US had zero 4Mbps options 20 years ago, and now they have 5+. Options and speeds have been steadily growing, not shrinking. But utility-style federal regulation, without regard to local competitive possibilities, slowed telephone-network dynamism for decades. It will similarly constrain rather than expand 'broadband' choices, by forcing them into a nationally-managed utility mould.
> 4Mbps is already plenty for HD movies and video teleconferencing
The last six years of my life have been consumed by work on video streaming services. While in a lab environment you would be correct, I can tell you that in the real world you are off by a factor of about 4, and will be off by a factor of about 8 for 4k video.
> Most places in the US had zero 4Mbps options 20 years ago, and now they have 5+.
I have no idea where you got that idea, unless you think wireless is a substitute for cable or DSL. It's not.
While I trust your experience with regard to whatever specific streaming assumptions & goals your project was seeking, in fact my DSL, maxing at 5Mbps in speed tests, has no problem streaming HD from Netflix for a sharp picture on a 50" TV. (A sibling commenter links to Vudu's FAQ that reports 2.25Mbps as their threshold for HD streaming.)
And we're not limited to streaming: at 5Mbps, iTunes HD downloads complete faster than they can be watched, and at 4Mbps you just need to give them a 10-minute head-start per hour.
So no-one at 4Mbps – the floor at which ~90% of America already has 2 or more wired providers and 2 or more wireless providers – need be locked out of their inalienable human right to video-entertainment. At most they might need to wait a few minutes... or watch in the SD that was good enough for decades of TV-watchers.
Wireless is not yet a perfect substitute for cable/DSL, but it's an acceptable substitute for many people, when they're not heavy audio/video consumers. My wireless service (TMobile LTE) is about 4x faster at my home than my DSL wired service – and so I've switched to wireless on occasion when I needed large software downloads to complete quickly.
You are fortunate to live somewhere with high-quality DSL, and not have anyone else using your connection. These things do not hold true for the majority of people. I expect you're also tolerating much longer startup times than most consumers tolerate.
Vudu is not providing meaningful HD. The way you get 2.25mbps "HD" is by providing a 720p or 1080p stream of very low quality. 2.25mbps is not capable of providing even close to HD quality without going to h.265, which is not currently practical.
Your premise was that 4mbps was "plenty" for HD. To now speak of SD is simply admitting that you are wrong, and 4mbps is not meaningfully broadband.
I also have T-Mobile LTE. It's almost useless without putting the phone in the window, has massive latency spikes, and can't maintain high speeds for long without dropping out completely. It is of no practical use in replacing the connection I do actual work on.
If you can download 1 hour of HD in 1 hour and 10 minutes over 4Mbps, that is still "plenty" in my book – especially since 90% of the USA have multiple options for that bandwidth.
If one provider is out front with more bandwidth for impatient cinemaphiles – good for them! Let them charge more, in more ways, as a motivation for competitors to upgrade.
The ability to satisfy all other net uses – web, email, short videos, software downloads, audio streaming, video conferencing, etc – from multiple competing providers almost everywhere is still pretty good. Saying that's "not broadband" is arbitrarily raising the standard to create a false sense of crisis.
It's too bad your LTE needs a careful window positioning; I've noticed mine faces many weak spots around the neighborhood. But wireless is competitive in many places, for many people, for many uses – and keeps getting better. No one is trapped indefinitely with bad service needing federal rescue – the rates and options have been improving non-stop for decades, based on raw competitive factors.
5 seconds is beyond the tolerance point for most consumers. 3 seconds is getting into annoyance territory. You're mostly OK below 2.
Your argument is now circular. 90% of the US is fine because they have at least 4mbps, which is fine because 90% of the US has it. That doesn't work. In fact, I can turn it right around on you, as Wheeler recently did -- "When 80 percent of Americans can access 25-3, that's a standard.".
You have cinemaphiles exactly backwards. They are more tolerant of delays and long downloads than ordinary consumers, because they understand and expect that they will have to put up with such for maximum quality. Ordinary consumers want something that works like a TV channel or a website.
Raising the threshold for internet service to be classified as an advanced telecommunication capability is not a "federal rescue", it's the FCC doing what it's mandated by 47 USC § 1302[0] to do -- report on the availability of advanced communications capability, defined as "high-speed, switched, broadband telecommunications capability that enables users to originate and receive high-quality voice, data, graphics, and video telecommunications using any technology.".
You should also read the actual report[1], where they discuss exactly why the new level was chosen. Hint: They recognize households consist of more than one person.
I've personally had three fixed wireless installations over the past decade. Two residential, one business. I've researched the option in numerous additional cases for both business and residential service.
Both business and consumer services are typically more expensive by 10-100% and have installation (particularly LOS) requirements many -- if not most, in topographically unfavorable areas -- cannot meet. While the business services are usually OK once installed, consumer services are particularly unstable and the equipment prone to early death.
Notably, the wireless ISPs I'm familiar with ended up either shut down or moving to a different line of primary business as soon as any sort of viable wired service made it into town.
While far better than relying on mobile data if you don't have other options, it's still definitely not a substitute, even for DSL.
Under the hood, consumer fixed wireless is usually just wifi gear, but running on licensed frequencies and attached to big outdoor antennas.
If you're very, very lucky, the hardware might have been manufactured to run optimally on those frequencies, or it might just be a WAP in a different box running tweaked software.
This has the generally-crappy results you would expect.
Business gear is substantially more robust and expensive.
The parent is referring to the fact that consumer plans for nearly all ISPs don't guarantee 4 Mbps at all times. Instead they offer "up to 4 Mbps". Average performance is less than that, especially at high-usage times of day.
Historically, that's been an issue. But in fact, the FCC has been testing this, and most users' actual speeds are barely any lower than advertised (and sometimes even higher) during peak periods. From their 2014 report [1]:
"On average, during peak periods DSL-based services delivered download speeds that were 91 percent of advertised speeds, cable-based services delivered 102 percent of advertised speeds, fiber-to-the-home services delivered 113 percent of advertised speeds, and satellite delivered 138 percent of advertised speeds."
And, a majority of wired connections are advertised as "6Mbps or higher" [2] – so even if throughput at peak times was only 66% (while in fact it averages 90%+), it'd be still be plenty for HD video from Netflix, iTunes, and Amazon.
The sense of distress here is based a lot on folklore and outlier complaints. Most people are essentially getting the full headline speeds, even during peak times, and have 2+ choices for service sufficient for all but the most bleeding-edge applications.
4Mbps is not enough to handle a single HDX stream from Vudu (http://www.vudu.com/faq.html) much less a family household streaming to different devices.
Per your link, 2.25Mbps is sufficient for HD from Vudu. Also, 4Mbps is the floor for meeting the original broadband definition; most offerings are higher.
Remember, if not for an accident of history (cable and telephone services running over completely different kinds of wires), it wouldn't be a duopoly, it would be an outright natural monopoly -- a prime candidate for treatment as a public utility.
Reading comment threads, a person new to the issue might get the impression as if the US government just nationalized comcast. I'm finding it hard to believe that the regular HN crowd has suddenly turned virulently anti Title II. This definitely smells like a coordinated campaign to spread FUD.