FCC weakens net neutrality rule in a prelude to larger rollbacks

https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/23/fcc-weakens-net-neutrality-rule-in-a-prelude-to-larger-rollbacks/

by vivekmgeorge • 9 years ago

550 303 9 years ago

VonGuard• 9 years ago

This is the end. If we think this guy's gonna listen to the people, we're completely wrong.

MrZongle22• 9 years ago

This is why getting laws passed, instead of relying on executive orders and the whims of bureaucrats in power at the time, is so crucial.

dragonwriter4• 9 years ago

The same faction that opposes net neutrality in the FCC also controls both Houses of Congress plus the White House, in fact, the change in the latter that completes that control is why they control the FCC, not an unrelated independent event.

So laws would be no less vulnerable than FCC regulations.

spaced_out• 9 years ago

That's not going to happen as long as there are at least 40 Republicans in the senate. They used a filibuster to block a moderate Supreme Court nominee, you think they'll even consider allowing an internet reform bill to come to a vote?

epistasis• 9 years ago

Yes, that might be good, but it's a pipe dream at the moment. Further, having congress deal with such issues is open to far more political manipulation.

Having people who are competent at their job in regulatory positions seems just as important as having Congress do their job for them.

draw_down• 9 years ago

It's not the end. Things are just degrading, boringly, as they have been.

transfire2• 9 years ago

Oh, it might just well happen. The engineers that actually make this stuff work generally know whats up, and if things start to turn too sour, just watch them bring the whole damn net to a screeching halt. It'll make the SOPA blackout of 2012 look like daylight.

dopamean2• 9 years ago

Why is the FCC against net neutrality?

rc_bhg• 9 years ago

Republicans have control of Presidency and Congress.

dragonwriter4• 9 years ago

The Republican Party is against net neutrality and now controls a majority of seats on the FCC, hence, the FCC now opposes net neutrality. Since the issue really became a big deal, the FCC has been split on party lines over it.

dopamean2• 9 years ago

Then why are Republicans against net neutrality? I suspect the answer is "money" and that the wrong people are greasing the right palms to get this done. If that really is the truth then why aren't companies in tech doing more of the same to protect their interests? How the hell is it that companies like Comcast have the upper hand here?

shmerl• 9 years ago

Corruption. Monopolists hate net neutrality, since it aims to curtail their abusive practices. So they pay politicians to be against it.

jerkstate2• 9 years ago

Does anyone with a strong understanding of internetworking, peering and transit contract negotiation actually believe that "net neutrality" is possible? traffic shaping of saturated links seems like a necessary outcome to not undermine the smaller users (i.e. low bandwidth communications) that are impacted by heavy users (i.e. video streaming) if two peering parties can't come to terms on cost sharing for link upgrades.

riskable• 9 years ago

Does anyone actually believe we will "run out of bandwidth" to the point where traffic shaping will become essential?

Traffic shaping of saturated links sounds like a waste of time and resources when it's so much easier to just upgrade the hardware. It's cheaper too! It also happens to be the fucking purpose of the ISP (to provide adequate bandwidth for their customers).

Think of how much it costs to pay people to manage an incredibly complicated traffic ruleset--not to mention the massively increased CPU overhead--versus a one-time hardware purchase.

What you're talking about is either an ISP that's dying and can't afford to upgrade their shit or a greedy evil monster that simply wants to extract more profit from existing infrastructure in the most obtuse and invasive way possible.

woah2• 9 years ago

Do you also argue strenuously against optimizing software CPU and memory consumption?

It's the FUCKING PURPOSE of AWS to run my code! Why don't they just buy more hardware to make it run faster?

grandalf11• 9 years ago

Traffic shaping of saturated links sounds like a waste of time and resources when it's so much easier to just upgrade the hardware. It's cheaper too! It also happens to be the fucking purpose of the ISP (to provide adequate bandwidth for their customers).

This is a very naive comment. For anything other than a dedicated "business class" circuit with hard performance guarantees, speculation and shaping is involved in delivering the end product.

adrianpike• 9 years ago

Does anyone actually believe we will "run out of bandwidth" to the point where traffic shaping will become essential?

Traffic shaping has always been essential. Bandwidth has never been infinite, and there's always been latency vs. bandwidth tradeoffs that need to be managed.

dv_dt• 9 years ago

As long as a competitive market exists, I'm happy to let the market work out who has the better strategy: hardware oriented vs rulesets, etc. But where there is no competition (e.g. the last residential mile), I want regulations protecting me as a consumer with various accessibility, privacy, and fairness guarantees.

nickbauman• 9 years ago

Unfortunately profit is almost always made from oversubscribing the lines.

pmalynin• 9 years ago

AFAIK Level3 a few years back offered AT&T to pay and do the upgrade of the links on the AT&Ts side, which they refused.

At this point its blatant monopolistic anti-consumerism.

wtallis35• 9 years ago

I think it was Verizon, not AT&T. Some peering point in the LA area was overloaded, primarily due to Netflix traffic.

wmf3• 9 years ago

Peering and transit links simply shouldn't ever be saturated. If the parties can't come to terms then the government should set the rate at zero (Judgment of Solomon style).

oldrny• 9 years ago

Isn't the idea of network neutrality to prevent discriminating between traffic sources, not quantities? I.e. providers can still charge an arm and a leg for heavy users, and allow 'light' users to pay significantly less (maybe based on some non-linear scale?)

aanm19883• 9 years ago

Yeah, but anti-neutrality people tend to try to create the other narrative. Popular metaphor I've seen is "net neutrality is like telling the post office they have to charge the same for a large heavy package and an envelope". Which is not true, you have to charge the same for each heavy package regardless of what is in it, but you can still charge more than an envelope.

throwaway729• 9 years ago

So there's "internetworking, peering and transit contract negotiation", etc.

And then there's "Comcast allowed to bundle internal video streaming platform with bandwidth in order to compete against Netflix"

It's completely trivial for the FCC to allow the former and clamp down hard on the latter.

jerkstate2• 9 years ago

Eisenach wrote some papers on using existing antitrust laws rather than NN laws to punish anticompetitive behavior, which I think is reasonable. Apply the laws we already have, don't make new laws that prevent reasonable behavior.

diminoten• 9 years ago

Why is it trivial?

westbywest• 9 years ago

There is a difference between shaping traffic to better fit the capacity available, and constricting traffic since you're incentivized to push alternate traffic from a business partner. The latter is what NN advocates are trying to discourage, and it does arguably mess with the 'level playing field' notion.

dnautics2• 9 years ago

I don't think this distinction is as trivial as you think. Especially in a legal sense. Unless you want judges adjudicating in the Potter Stewart "I know it when I see it" sense, which can get scary.

jellicle• 9 years ago

The net neutrality battle is over shaping traffic to maximize profits, not shaping traffic to maximize throughput/usability.

In a dollar-shaped traffic paradigm, you might slow down traffic even when your link is 3/4 empty, in order to maximize profits.

Karunamon2• 9 years ago

Net neutrality refers to packet shaping by source and destination.

QoS refers to packet shaping by type of content.

wtallis35• 9 years ago

I don't fully agree with those definitions. ISPs need to be prohibited from preferring HTTP and TCP over other protocols. They should be permitted to perform only the kinds of QoS that will treat two traffic flows with the same data rate and packet sizes equally even if they are using different protocols and port numbers. Overt discrimination rules that specify preferences for certain endpoints or certain types of traffic (as identified by inspecting packets) is wrong, but fair QoS that only considers actual traffic patterns and only operates in the event of actual congestion is beneficial without being harmfully discriminatory.

pjc50• 9 years ago

Interesting example there, because if you apply traffic shaping against video streaming you either force it to reduce quality or ruin it completely.

What everyone is worried about is that ISPs will threaten to "shape" Netflix traffic unless Netflix pay them - straightforward extortion. Or zero-rate Facebook traffic while counting use of independent non-Facebook news sources against users' quotas.

wahern3• 9 years ago

That's not how it will play out, though. Even without network neutrality rules in-place, that would run afoul of anti-trust and consumer protection law.

The way ISPs will extract money is by nominally creating a two -tiered network. The lower tier will be the default tier. All external traffic will be routed over it by default. Entities like NetFlix will be able to pay the ISP to have their traffic routed over higher tier. The higher tier will have better latency, will be charged against an end-users throughput meter at a discounted rate, or both.

It will be a form of hidden price discrimination and thus a form of hidden tax on the market. price discrimination is usually a good thing, and even a hidden tax isn't per se bad. The reason this is bad is it will allow the ISPs to extract far more wealth from the Internet than they would ever add by improved and cheaper service.

A free market requires transparency in pricing between Alice and Bob. If Mallory can insert herself between Alice and Bob, she can obscure pricing signals. That means Bob will have a more difficult time assessing the worth of services provided him by Mallory and Alice. That also implies he'll have trouble assessing the value proposition of competitors to Alice and Mallory.

Comcast may try to extort money from Netflix, but alot of people assume that in the long-run Netflix would benefit from the tactic. They have a huge first-mover advantage. Comcast would never be able to provide a service like Netflix as well as Netflix does. The result will be that while Comcast may extract profits from Netflix, Netflix and other incumbents will have less competition and in the long-term might even benefit relative to net neutrality. Comcast will effectively provide a moat for Netflix and other incumbents in the form of higher barrier to market entrance for startups, as the incumbents will pay an effectively cheaper per-byte rate (much cheaper than in a net neutrality world) given their huge volume. Furthermore, incumbents will be a cash-cow to the ISPs, creating significant incentive to be hostile to competitors.

The losers will be consumers, prospective competitors, and overall technological and market vibrancy. But all of this will, again, be largely hidden. The solution is simple, obvious, fair, well-understood, but stark, especially in the context of a conservative narrative about regulation. It also has tons of precedent going back hundreds of years in terms of the legal and economic study of common carriers. The end-to-end principle of networks is conceptually related, too. The malady will be an obscure low-grade fever that saps value and weakens competitiveness, but will largely go ignored over time, after which people will wonder why the pace of innovation slowed down so much.

grandalf11• 9 years ago

actually believe that "net neutrality" is possible?

I don't think very many of the net-neutrality zealots have much technical understanding of internetworking or how ISP business models work.

Anything other than a dedicated, business class circuit has a lot of shaping and speculation baked in. This is why "residential" bandwidth is so much cheaper than dedicated.

One commenter last time this came up mentioned that the best practice for residential bandwidth providers is to have 50% headroom. As QoS algorithms get better, and traffic patterns are better understood, the amount of headroom ISPs need to buy will decrease, or it will get cheaper (as upstream providers arbitrage into a peak / off-peak (expected vs unexpected) model.

The thing we need to preserve about ISP incentives is that there should always be an incentive to improve network quality.

However for networks, quality is in the eye of the beholder. If your customers want to download 4K movies, maybe 1000ms of latency is not a big deal.

But if they want to do remote screen sharing or gaming (where even small latency is noticeable) then 1000ms latency would cause the ISP to go out of business.

The technical aspect of this that many people miss is that the same piece of cable can support very different traffic patterns (often but not always) AT THE EXPENSE OF other ones. Net neutrality seemingly advocates having lawyers and politicians come up with the "correct" shaping for all traffic, with no knowledge of what an ISP's customers want to use the circuit for, and no knowledge of what protocols might become popular next year.

Net Neutrality advocates want politicians and lawyers to effectively force ISPs to support a QoS that is closer to some unspecified ideal which those pols and lawyers have no idea about. They are simply being pressured/hired to do something they are clueless about, which helps some businesses and hurts others.

Google wants net neutrality because all service providers prefer that others bear the cost of delivering their content to end users. All content providers would generally agree.

But last mile providers would disagree, because they are faced with spikes in demand and growing/shrinking user-bases and are fighting not just against the price of bandwidth but the technological limits imposed by cable modems, LTE, etc. They would rather not have added constraints placed upon them (which will add costs).

While someday it may be necessary to prevent predatory QoS schemes from being imposed, there is not an adequate level of sophistication in regulators to trust them to create wise regulation in this area.

wtallis35• 9 years ago

The technical aspect of this that many people miss is that the same piece of cable can support very different traffic patterns AT THE EXPENSE OF other ones.

QoS isn't always a zero-sum game. Even non-interactive HTTP downloads benefit from reduced queuing latency, because TCP congestion control is more accurate when it gets timely feedback. On the flip side, explicit rules to never drop packets matching a certain signature often produces a negative sum game, and one that is easily abused.

__jal• 9 years ago

Does anyone with a strong understanding of internetworking, peering and transit not see the difference between QOS for technical reasons and things like zero rating?

It seems a lot of people are invested in muddying the difference.

michaelmrose2• 9 years ago

If you aren't shaping based on which endpoints paid a bribe we don't have much of an issue do we.

Google network neutrality then come back.

continuational• 9 years ago

Can't you just share the available bandwidth fairly between users in that case?

beatpanda• 9 years ago

How long until access to the open internet costs extra?

wmf3• 9 years ago

Never; ISPs are much cleverer than that. As long as neutrality advocates are fighting the last battle ISPs will run circles around them.

JustSomeNobody3• 9 years ago

5 years. Everything is always 5 years away.

wtallis35• 9 years ago

If you want a publicly accessible IP address without an ISP-imposed firewall blocking incoming connections on at least some ports, then it already costs extra, and has for a long time. For the most part, we're already getting just WWW (client not server) access plus a handful of other approved services. What we're facing in the future is difficulty even getting unrestrained access to the whole WWW.

woah2• 9 years ago

I asked this in another thread a few days ago, but why are edge servers and CDNs not a violation of "net neutrality"? If you've got an edge server on an ISP, and are paying extra for a leased line from your main data center to that server, you are effectively paying the ISP an additional fee for priority over other traffic on their hardware.

grandalf11• 9 years ago

To the end customer it's not priority, consider the two cases:

customer:

GET www.site.com/images/rounded_corner.gif

first hop to ISP, then n hops to www.site.com

GET cdn001.site.com/images/rounded_corner.gif

first hop to ISP, then second hop to cdn001

The overhead takes place in the routing mechanism, not in the prioritization mechanism. In both cases, it costs the ISP the same amount to send the data back to the customer. The data is not prioritized, it just happens to be available in fewer hops, which is often (but is not necessarily) faster. A CDN could exist that imposed greater latency in exchange for an improvement elsewhere, such as reliability.

subverter10• 9 years ago

This raises the limit on the number of subscribers a provider can have before regulation kicks in. In other words, a larger number of smaller providers have one less regulation to worry about.

Isn't more competition among providers what we want? Shouldn't we be doing everything we can – even if it's saving 6.8 hours per year in regulatory compliance – to help these smaller guys be able to take on these horrible behemoths like AT&T and Comcast?

guelo2• 9 years ago

Do we want secret network caps and slowdowns to be how they compete against the big boys?

and04• 9 years ago

This ^

I say this every time and no one has ever been able to answer: how is a simple "don't prioritize traffic" some kind of competition-killing regulation, and how would removing it actually create competition anyway?

subverter10• 9 years ago

They wouldn't be able to compete without offering a service that differentiates them from the competition in a way that appeals to consumers. "Secret network caps and slowdowns" doesn't sound very appealing, so why assume they'd all take that route?

I think it's more realistic to assume they'd differentiate through better service, faster speeds, higher/no caps, etc. That's what we want and are willing to pay for.

frgtpsswrdlame5• 9 years ago

Those 6.8 hours are spent making information public which is important to consumer choice. This move doesn't help competition, it harms it.

subverter10• 9 years ago

I think you're making an assumption that shouldn't be assumed: that these smaller providers won't voluntarily be transparent and open. If I were competing against the likes of AT&T and Comcast, I'd use that as a competitive advantage! They're trying to differentiate themselves from the incumbents, not be exactly the same.

But even if they weren't open and transparent, wouldn't technologists like ourselves push to find the limits and publish them online? We can hold them accountable just as well without piling on more regulation.

bubblethink• 9 years ago

What's a provider ? Can't you arbitrarily break a provider into smaller ones to avoid triggering this rule ?

wtallis35• 9 years ago

Isn't more competition among providers what we want?

Only at some levels. Physical last-mile connectivity is a natural monopoly; we shouldn't want more than one trench along each driveway. If an ISP has a local monopoly that only covers one city rather than a whole state, that doesn't change the dynamics of what's fair to their users.

scarface743• 9 years ago

I would think that any many decently populated areas, it's at least a "duopoly". You would have the cable company and the phone company competing. I have a choice between Comcast and AT&T.

walshemj• 9 years ago

Local loop unbundling is what you need like the UK has

conradev• 9 years ago

Don't paid peering deals (i.e. Netflix paying Comcast) only reinforce the competitive advantage that these horrible behemoths have?

amazon_not9• 9 years ago

Pretty much. Everybody else pays for their bandwidth. Only Comcast has the market power to demand payment for access to their customers.

fragmede• 9 years ago

By the way, every time I've noticed the FCC has come up on HN in the recent past, an aged account has always posted a pro Trump's FCC comment with an argument tweaked for HN's biases, as seen above, and if that is the only comment you read in the thread, you'd falsely conclude that they're right and believe that Ajit Pai's version of the FCC will be better for business than Tom Wheeler's.

Ajit Pai's FCC will be better for business, incumbent businesses like Comcast, AT&T, or Verizon, who'd rather not actually pay for network engineers, sysadmins, or software developers, and just sit there raking in cash, without owing anything to the communities they're in.

Reduced-cost access for people that can't afford it was the first thing on the chopping block, as well as for schools and libraries. Next up is net neutrality; this is undoubtedly the first move of many on this front.

In other news today, laws subjecting ISPs like Comcast and AT&T to get permission from you, before sharing browsing history, location, and other sensitive data. Don't be fooled, Ajit Pai's FCC is a friend to big business.

subverter10• 9 years ago

I'm certainly not sitting here agreeing with everything Pai's FCC has or will do, nor am I pro-Trump (not that it matters). My belief is their decisions will be a mixed bag in the long term.

What I've noticed is that almost every FCC decision since Pai took over has been spun as weakening net neutrality, which I think is incorrect and unfair.

necessity2• 9 years ago

People agree with someone you disagree, so it must be a conspiracy. Also I think you underestimate the intelligence of the average commentor.

necessity2• 9 years ago

Isn't more competition among providers what we want?

If that was the case no one would support net neutrality. We got it in Brazil and smaller ISPs are all shutting down (e.g. Viavale, Telenorte, etc). And poor people do not benefit from free data plans anymore (like free WhatsApp/Twitter, etc - WhatsApp is a major form of communication in Brazil, both socially and professionaly; personally I use Telegram but most people use Whats).

st3v3r5• 9 years ago

I don't buy that argument for a second. Especially with this rule.

Why should who I choose to do business with effect my rights?

rastapasta42• 9 years ago

A lot of the "smaller guys" who benefit from this regulations are subsidiaries of the behemoths like AT&T and Comcast.

pasbesoin• 9 years ago

Google Fiber got to a couple of nearby communities before they put the brakes on.

I'm left hoping that's close enough to branch out wireless service in short order.

Otherwise, I'm left screwed, between an AT&T that refuses to upgrade its local network (and it's a dense, accessible, suburban neighborhood -- hardly the boonies), and a Comcast that has doubled its rates for basically the same service. Both with caps that will quickly look increasingly ridiculous in the face of the wider world of data transfer.

We'll be back to them insisting on big bucks for assymmetric streaming of big-brand content, with increasing pressure to make that their content (a la data-cap exemptions, etc.)

guelo2• 9 years ago

I hate these types of articles that provide extensive quotes and even a screenshot of part of the pdf, but refuse to link to the actual documents. It's probably an advertising thing where they don't want people to leave the site.

The actual statements are available here https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-addresses-unnecessary-accou...

smnscu• 9 years ago

... and also plenty of links to their own articles!

jocose• 9 years ago

Look like the date is wrong at the start of the article. http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2017...

devindotcom2• 9 years ago

You're quite right. Normally I'm pretty good about that. (At least, I remembered today: https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/24/fcc-prepares-to-pull-broad...)

This article went through several revisions as I did research so the original opening couple paragraphs and links got lost in the shuffle. I've added the link back in.

mulmen• 9 years ago

Wow, thank you for this response. An author responding to a comment on their article seems rare in my eyes. Do you think this kind of commentary should happen on the TC website instead of a third party site? Do you think Facebook comments are conducive to constructive commentary on your articles?

seibelj4• 9 years ago

I know several people who are highly involved with the FCC, telecom industry, and telecom law that think that "network neutrality" is just 2 words. Until 1970, and only because of lawsuits, it was illegal to connect anything to your phone line. You could get any phone you wanted from Ma Bell as long as it was black.[0] If you wanted a different color you had to pay extra. It took force to make Ma Bell and the FCC allow you to plug in your own phone, your own computer, etc. The FCC supports monopolies, if you want competition you should applaud the deregulation of telecom.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_500_telephone#Ownership_...

frgtpsswrdlame5• 9 years ago

How do you imagine the deregulation in this article will help competition? Specifically, that is.

seibelj4• 9 years ago

By allowing upstart MVNO's to avoid arduous regulation processes. I am involved with 2 MVNO's that have been trying to merge for over a year, they don't have that many customers, and no one opposes it. Yet the FCC dragged their feet with no updates and no reason for the delay. This has real world, multi-million dollar consequences. The process is moving forward now since Ajit got hired.

Armchair technologists read an article about net neutrality on arstechnica and think it's black and white. News flash - telecom and ISP's have been shaping traffic since the beginning! You think NetFlix has high quality video on shitty connections because they are nice? Wrong! They pay for the privilege.[0]

I say, let the free market decide. The history of telecom is beyond insane. If you actually care about this stuff maybe you should learn more. This book is pretty esoteric but it gives the true history https://www.amazon.com/Great-Telecom-Meltdown-Fred-Goldstein...

[0]https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304834704579401...

badsock2• 9 years ago

Telecoms are a classic example of a natural monopoly - which is to say it would be monopoly whether there's regulation or not.

How do you imagine there would be competition in, say, fibre? A bunch of companies all running their own last mile? That's incredibly inefficient.

asciimo• 9 years ago

The whole thing should be a public utility like water, electricity, and sewer.

seibelj4• 9 years ago

I would argue that wired and wireless are very different beasts. If you want to regulate fiber, that's debatable, but a competitive wireless landscape is ripe for competition given all the possibilities for delivering service.

JediWing• 9 years ago

Huh?

The only reason you could connect "any lawful device" after 1968 was because of the FCC "Carterphone" rulemaking.

In its absence, Ma Bell would have kept forced leasing of standard phones as long as possible. Perhaps I'm misunderstand you (or missing sarcasm?).

seibelj4• 9 years ago

The FCC was regulating the monopoly! And why would anyone want a monopoly to exist? "Cheap phone service for grandma". That's always been the justification for all the insanity. It took years to deregulate and allow true competition, and it always came through because of lawsuits. Telecom is an industry run by lawyers.

rocky11383• 9 years ago

Can't we just create our own local Intranets using Ethernet cables running around cul-de-sacs?

Mine connects to yours which connects to his which connects to hers. Eventually we'll have formed a network.

Asooka• 9 years ago

That's how a lot of ISPs in eastern europe started - string cable along dense neighbourhoods by just letting it hang off any nearby pole, trees, or along steel cables strung between two close buildings with no poles or trees around. I imagine building regulation codes are more strictly enforced in USA and will stop that kind of thing.

JustSomeNobody3• 9 years ago

Yes. Then eventually someone will come along and say, "i'll do it for you for a fee" and they'll get a bunch of customers and they'll own the cables and then rename themselves Comcast.

rocky11383• 9 years ago

How about we make it a rule that if anyone wants access to the network they are not allowed to charge for it. It must be done only to help grow the network for its own sake.

wav-part• 9 years ago

Is not net-neutrality better handled by IANA ? If you are going to call your router "internet", you must treat all IP packets equally. Seems like reasonable terms to me. Afterall this is the property that made Internet what it is today.

wmf3• 9 years ago

IANA has no enforcement authority. I also wouldn't be surprised to see ISPs respond by simply removing the word "Internet" from their advertising.

fallingfrog• 9 years ago

I suppose one way to enforce net neutrality might be to route all traffic through TOR.. that might mess up the caching for a service like Netflix though. (Could someone who knows more than I do comment on that?)

amazon_not9• 9 years ago

Tor does not help against net neutrality violations. Tor only helps if you want some anonymity for your traffic.

ryandrake• 9 years ago

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lacroix• 9 years ago

The FCC won't let me be

boona3• 9 years ago

If Trump also continues with his plan to deregulate as well, I'm of the opinion that this is great news. This could make Google Fiber and other similar undertakings much more viable. It always gives me the hibby-jeebies when government takes strong control over an industry. This is especially true in the case of the FCC where their original mandate went from regulating airwaves, to regulating the content of said airwaves.

TheGRS• 9 years ago

I'm not sure how federal deregulations would help cities install more fiber, are there any federal regulations that would impede them? I always thought the issue was more around infrastructure monopolies in each city. Its not like new fiber companies can just lay their own lines down, they need to work through the city to get permission to put new lines in or share existing lines.

boona3• 9 years ago

Hmm, that's a good question. It's not clear to me at what level of government the most stifling regulations are. I had also read that they wanted to offer phone services for free, but they dropped those due to the incredibly high regulations in that field as well.

https://www.cnet.com/news/google-to-government-let-us-build-...

morgzilla• 9 years ago

I can see how a bit of outrage about this is how the NRA got to the place it is today. This by itself isn't that meaningful, but anything can be politicized, turn public opinion and gain momentum. That's why the NRA's position is to say NO to any kind of gun regulation, because they know that's how you ensure guns are made available and gun culture is for sure secure.

In the tech community I see people rising up against any kind of movement against net neutrality. And I do not want to see it erode. But I worry that by becoming averse to any reversal, any compromise, the communities stance will eventually be so politicized that it is just another part of the unreasonable and ultra biased political landscape that grinds progress to a halt.

smallnamespace• 9 years ago

The thing about democracy based on mass mobilization of different interest groups is that no negotiation or compromise is possible, because leaderless groups are incapable of doing anything so complex. Compromises only happen person to person between strong leaders or between small groups of elites that both groups accept -- "Only Nixon could go to China".

But for the last 30 years, both the left and the right (for both good and bad reasons) have been tearing down the very idea of legitimate elite authority, whether it's from politicians, academics, or anyone else. Who today has the moral standing to make reasonable compromises that everyone would accept?

wtallis35• 9 years ago

There are pros and cons to gun ownership; it both contributes to and harms the public good. Net neutrality is a more lopsided issue—the arguments against net neutrality are all about legalizing extortion and promoting a tragedy of the commons, or else they're non-specific arguments against regulation of any kind.

Taken on its own and rationally, the net neutrality issue is much less amenable to producing a permanent stalemate than gun control. Existing political factions can incorporate positions on net neutrality into their existing political stalemate, but outside of such a context it's pretty easy to see that holes in net neutrality like the one here are absurd—why should smaller monopolies have more leeway to abuse their customers than large monopolies?

chris_va4• 9 years ago

To be fair, your "arguments against net neutrality are all about legalizing extortion" already sounds a bit "ultra biased".

What if someone wants to start an ISP, and charge less for a lower QoS band? Is that legalized extortion?

(Not to say it would be a good idea, I agree that it is a slippery slope)

bobbington3• 9 years ago

You want these companies to profit. If they don't profit they won't build out infrastructure. I think you should be much more grateful to ISPs for the service they provide instead of angry for chargin what is in your opinion too much

BinaryIdiot5• 9 years ago

Net neutrality is a more lopsided issue—the arguments against net neutrality are all about legalizing extortion and promoting a tragedy of the commons, or else they're non-specific arguments against regulation of any kind.

Not really. I think that's just your bias for net neutrality showing through.

In my opinion, because of the way internet providers have been allowed legal monopolies, net neutrality is going to be required for fair internet access as the ability for the market to determine winners and compete has been taken away by politics.

But if I was the owner of the pipes themselves? I'm not so sure I'd see it the same way. Try to think about it from another perspective. If you owned something that cost a lot of money to install that connects multiple houses together and then, years later, the government stepped in and explained how you could or could not make money off of it because everyone wants to use it, I'm not so sure you'd feel very positive about it.

Granted it's an imperfect analogy but just trying to show you that even when you think an issue is lopsided, it may not be and it can be difficult to let go of as many BIASes.

tracker1• 9 years ago

I'm in favor of net neutrality.. but lets be serious.. there are users who are far more "using" of their bandwidth than others. And any given company should have every right to sell/filter as necessary those users. But as to what content they filter, imho that's a different story.

But the two get muddled quite a bit.. and what happened between Verizon and Netflix is an outright shame, but I can kind of see both sides regardless of where I stand personally. The trouble is where to draw the line, and what lines to draw from a legal standpoint.

Drawing only from what I got from the article, they're only requiring these companies to be more transparent to their customers, and I'm all for that. I think the 100k customer break was probably reasonable, but even the 250k break won't affect the really big players in the space.

My bigger fear is where individual states are legislating against local communities/cities offering broadband.

Oxitendwe• 9 years ago

That's why the NRA's position is to say NO to any kind of gun regulation, because they know that's how you ensure guns are made available and gun culture is for sure secure.

There also exist groups whose sole purpose is to make gun ownership infeasible for the vast majority of Americans. Given this, I don't believe their position is unreasonable - the threat to their values and culture is very real.

comicjk• 9 years ago

There exist groups whose sole purpose is... every conceivable political position. This argument is so general as to be completely reversible. "We have to support the NRA to stop excessive anti-gun legislation," but also "we have to support gun banners in order to stop excessive pro-gun legislation." It's a recipe for endless polarization.

kevando• 9 years ago

We need an NRA for the free internet.

tomelders• 9 years ago

Undersandly, the conversation in here revolves around the technicalities and semantics of net neutrality. But this isn't an issue of technology. It's a political issue, or worse, an ideological issue. It's not about the empirical truths of net neutrality, or the collective intent of those who created, and those who continue to develop the technology that has woven itself into the fabric of humanity. It's about idealouges imposing their ideals on every facet of our lives, regardless of the facts.

The sad fact is, this is yet another grim attack on net neutrality by nefarious agents who see the web as something to be dominated and bent to their will exclusivley for political and economic gain.

Like it or not, the work we do is going to become highly politicised. Are we ready for this? Do we have the moral fortitude to resist the influence that fuzzy, sloppy, and emotive politics seeks to have on our discussions?

I think back to how we handled the Brendan Eich debacle. I (regretfully) came down on the punitive side of that argument. And I participated in that debate with a level of anger and vitriol that embarrasses me now. But whichever side you took, there's no doubt that for a brief moment we were deeply divided. The Brendan Eich story was a flash in the pan compared to what is about to happen.

Should we engage in political debate, or should we avoid it? Can we buck the trend and participate in political debate in way that doesn't tear us apart, or should we ignore it as it happens around us and impacts upon our lives and work? Or is there a path between the extremes, where we can be neither ignorant to our political leanings nor beholden to them?

I don't dare offer any advice on how we should prepare ourselves for what is about to come, I just hope we can all think about how we hope to respond before it happens.

One thing I will say though, being someone prone to highly emotional reactions in all aspects of my life; developing software in teams has taught me the value of "strong opinions, weakly held".

intended6• 9 years ago

I think the tech industry and HN crowd are waking up too late, and this might be because of the previous HN cultural wave. Initially HN was like the slashdot crows, in that it was geeky and making money of being entrepreneurial was an ideal, and not a way of life.

Eventually that changed as the culture shifted to enabling and succeeding in startups. A lot of the meta culture and crowd is now many steps away from the old hacker roots and far closer to the entrepreneur /wanterpreneur group.

This latter group really isn't in it to get into a political battle, and it makes no sense to get involved in a waste of time. As a result achieving critical mass, or uniting people under political oriented architectures won't happen soon enough.

Maybe it's time to head back to /. ?

pyrophane• 9 years ago

im ignorant here. What was HN like initially? I assumed since it was the discussion board of a startup accelerator that it was always pretty focused on that.

Natsu2• 9 years ago

It's funny that we're so divided on what to do about this, because when the plan by big ISPs to start discriminating based on site popularity was announced, basically everybody from right and left was outraged by those plans.

Then it became some kind of political football and people were divided up on how to respond to it.

intended6• 9 years ago

Pay close attention. This is how people manage to kill normal sensible ideas.

The attack comes on several levels, all of which are dependent on having at least some website/newsite which is willing to repeat your claims.

Your audience can be broken into 3 buckets (several more, but 3 is enough for a demonstration)

1) The first bucket is non-experts but intelligent. Tie them down in various plausible sounding arguments, primarily designed to appeal to people who dont't know the subject, but can make out logical sounding arguments. These people become your rank and file who serve to sound convincing and tie up experts

2) Experts - With your rank and file, tie up all people who know the subject, or increasingly develop methods to keep them distant from actual contact with people. Over simplify their arguments and try and engage Experts in the arena of PR.

3) Everyone else - show that experts are out of touch, or just lie, advertise the benefits and leave out the risks. Point out that experts are currently in debate and cant settle on the benefits (thanks to your hard work).

The general 3 steps to spreading FUD

forgottenpass• 9 years ago

The big mainstream political topics might be getting more intertwined, but don't think for a moment that means we weren't already heavily politicized. It's been that way for at least as long as I've been paying attention. So many overlapping opinions can feel less political when the people that would disagree aren't paying attention (or dissent isn't noticeable).

We've spent the last decades proving that there is no soul and no ethics to be found here. Just sleazy after the fact rationalization. Morally bankruptcy extends all the way into the design of software. We abuse the unearned trust of users that have no option but to come to us for tools. And devour our own when they stray too far from the fashionable perspectives.

The end of net neutrality makes us face the possibility of someone doing to us what we did to the nobodies: forcing ourselves into the middle of their day-to-day business and instead of just facilitating what they want to do, finding every single way to extract money from that privileged position.

Like the man who worries about the possibility of his country becoming a police state to distract himself from the fact it already is, we debate topics as if our little slice of the world hasn't already been hollowed out. Even if we don't like that Eich was run out of town, the fact it happened feeds the lie we tell ourselves: that we have the ability spot actual wrongdoing and act meaningfully to stop it.

The system didn't need anything more out of Eich, so he can be disappeared over $1k to Prop 8. Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg have overseen the destruction of privacy as a human value, but they're fine and nobody cares all that much about losing it. The system needed privacy to go.

In 50, 100, 200+ years, when people look back at our time now, who do you think will be seen as more malicous? Eich or Zuck? How long until golden boys of tech turn out like Christopher Columbus? A reductionist and simplistic fairy tale about his amazing contribution to our history has eventually swung. Now all you see are people that continue to "bust myths" about this monster, long after everyone has stopped believing them.

ci5er• 9 years ago

I think back to how we handled the Brendan Eich debacle. I (regretfully) came down on the punitive side of that argument.

Can I ask why? I know many sober, moral and analytic people who got themselves quite riled up and (in my eyes) burned an accused man before the facts were all in. I understand why any angry crowd saturating a company's dial-in board would make any employer say "I don't know what's right or wrong - but you are a costly employee to keep on!" To me, that seems like the opposite of justice-seeking behavior.

But, I've been told, that my views on these things are too blinkered, and I'd like hearing it from your perspective (esp. now that you've calmed down!)

transfire2• 9 years ago

This issue could well turn out to be Trump's Achilles heal. If they go too far, the engineers that actually make the Internet work can easily bring the whole shebang down in protest -- and the world is so addicted to the Internet at this point the outrage would be deafening. And if Trump is too proud to back down...

Crye• 9 years ago

Let me put my hat in the ring here.

Deregulation of access to consumers will result in cheaper internet and most likely faster internet speeds. However, it will concentrate power to those who already have it. Large ISPs will charge heavy bandwidth companies and only the largest heavy bandwidth companies will be able to afford the fees.

Those heavy bandwidth companies paying the fees will recoup the money through advertising. Remember newspapers and large TV media companies make the majority of their money through advertising. When companies rely on advertising, the users are no longer the customers. They are the product.

Further protecting the companies which rely on advertising will allow those companies to focus less on the customers and more on the advertisers. Companies relying on the allegiance of advertising will naturally shape their political standing to views of the advertisers. Remember also that advertisers are not paying for just eyeballs, but they are all paying for control. If a company starts moving away from their advertisers' political ideology they will lose revenue. Net Neutrality will ultimately give more control to companies that already hold power.

Just my two cents...

jackmott2• 9 years ago

I would amend that to say it may result in the illusion of cheaper internet. Your internet bill will go down, but services on the internet you use will either get more expensive, or degrade (as with adding advertisements).

bobbington3• 9 years ago

Leave it alone. Stop demonizing the companies that give Internet.

bobbington3• 9 years ago

Internet is plenty fast. Companies need to disclose what they are doing to customers, but government shouldn't regulate it

Pica_soO• 9 years ago

I wish we had a slow, but high bandwith alternative to the web in public hands. The problem is the infrastructure.. if there was a way to create a gnu add-hoc wifi network between every home hotspot - at least within a city, the web neutrality could be restored.

rebase• 9 years ago

I'd like to add the only optimistic response I can think of. The only benefit of deregulation is the opportunity for disruption of monopolies. Especially so in a landscape of tech.

If provider A starts providing terrible bandwidth, incredibly high prices, and terrible service, it means that that provider X has a lucrative opportunity to provide better bandwidth, better prices, and great service.

I hope these rules aren't used to help entrenched monopolies, but provide an ripe opportunity for the space to innovate.

I hope these rules will be on the wrong side of history, but there is little stopping anyone from using the free market to their advantage.

FCC weakens net neutrality rule in a prelude to larger rollbacks

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