The Invisible War for the Open Internet

https://medium.freecodecamp.com/inside-the-invisible-war-for-the-open-internet-dd31a29a3f08

by bootload • 9 years ago

322 159 9 years ago

medium.freecodecamp.com

roesel• 9 years ago

This is insanely wordy. I would appreciate a TL;DR;

_nalply• 9 years ago

Each communication technology tends to cycle through phases: Invention, pioneering, commercialisation, lock-down and obsolescence: telegram, telephone, radio, cinema, TV, etc. Internet is in the lock-down phase if net neutrality is not enforced. Without net neutrality providers can split the Internet into channels and make bundles out of channels, like this: Base Internet $29.95 plus International sites $5 plus news $5, and so on. This way they can make more money. However this will force out the long tail (niche content) and force us into walled gardens and in the future even get us an Internet as locked-down as China's. This is not capitalism, but corporatism. We should fight the lock-down by donating to specific non-profits, educate about the open Internet, contact representatives and share the article.

Perhaps one should make a tl;dr out of this?

louithethrid• 9 years ago

TL;DR now costs extra, because im some important pipe-part of the thread stack, and demand money to squeeze it down further.

losteric• 9 years ago

tl;dr: Rent-seeking

edit: seriously though, read the article... it's not long

gumby• 9 years ago

It's only about 8,000 words. Long by Buzzfeed standards, short by The New York Review of books.

bootload4• 9 years ago

"This is insanely wordy. I would appreciate a TL;DR;"

Start here: "How to Read a Paper" ~ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14228912

Is it that hard to read the title and the first 100 words. In papers this is usually the abstract. If you can't find the meaning inside the first one hundred or so words it is waffle and may not be worth reading.

Here is a hint. Network neutrality, enshrined in law, is under attack by large ISP companies for control and profit. There are precedents in our technology history. Tech companies are not run by benevolent skivvied, sandal wearing hippies, who hang around the Dalai Lama in their spare time to be enlightened. If you disagree with my editorialising, that's what happens if you ask someone else to re-interpret the story. Read the entire article instead.

endgame• 9 years ago

It's also well written and rolls along at a decent pace.

quincyla3• 9 years ago

Author here. I just realized someone had submitted this to HN. I spent a lot of time researching and writing this article, and am excited to read any feedback you may have.

Also, here's how you can contact the FCC directly:

1-888-225-5322

press 1, then 4, then 2, then 0 say that you wish to file comments concerning the FCC Chairman’s plan to end net neutrality

Or on the web:

https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filings/express Under Proceedings, enter 14-28 and 17-108

Suggested script:

It's my understanding that the FCC Chairman intends to reverse net neutrality rules and put big Internet Service Providers in charge of the internet. I am firmly against this action. I believe that these ISPs will operate solely in their own interests and not in the interests of what is best for the American public. In the past 10 years, broadband companies have been guilty of: deliberately throttling internet traffic, squeezing customers with arbitrary data caps, misleading consumers about the meaning of “unlimited” internet, giving privileged treatment to companies they own, strong-arming cities to prevent them from giving their residents high-speed internet, and avoiding real competition at all costs. Consumers, small businesses, and all Americans deserve an open internet. So to restate my position: I am against the chairman's plan to reverse the net neutrality rules. I believe doing so will destroy a vital engine for innovation, growth, and communication.

This information is taken from this thread on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/6894i9/heres_ho...

bootload4• 9 years ago

" I just realised someone had submitted this to HN."

I did, important and a good read.

Trivial Q. What search term did you use on google to get show the paid adverts google inserts above "freecodecamp"? Was the term generic? I get this result (no adverts, many links to freecodecamp): https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/34191703472

quincyla3• 9 years ago

I just used the term "freecodecamp". I think they showed the ad based on geolocation.

pdonis4• 9 years ago

I submitted a comment basically along the same lines, but focusing on rebutting particular claims in the FCC's notice:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14215198

bootload4• 9 years ago

thx @pdonis, comments are second class submissions.

Would be an interesting experiment to have a page to submit HN comments as posts (add a title, get a few ppl to recommend).

treymo• 9 years ago

Great article! My only feedback on the article is that you cite sources (maybe I missed it).

I find the Western Union and Hayes espionage story emotionally appealing but I couldn't find any serious sources with a quick Google search. The Rutherford B. Hayes Wikipedia article mentions neither Western Union or any sort of spying/espionage.

quincyla3• 9 years ago

This is explored in Tim Wu's book, which I strongly recommend reading. "The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires": http://amzn.to/2cjtFDH

austincheney10• 9 years ago

To be clear, and I do agree with you, that net neutrality is only half the problem. You hint on this very directly several times, but don't actually acknowledge this out right.

There are two warring trusts here, and both are equally evil in that they will abuse you as much as they can. On one hand there is the distribution problem, which is the ISP monopoly. With the recently media fallout around rolling back ISP data collection some of the big ISPs have openly promised to not resell this collected data... but if they own their own advertising networks they have less incentive to.

On the other side there is the content provider mega-states, which actually bigger and scarier than the ISPs. As your facts indicate the top 8 apps in the Apple app store come from Google and Facebook. Using their ad networks they can track your browsing habits as a third party service on second party sites, which means they know who you are even when you have no account with them or are logged out.

Remember the fallout of SOPA. SOPA scared the shit out of social media. If that law passed then social media would actually have to police the content of user submissions without motivation from multi-billion dollar law suits.

On one hand the ISP army is kind of evil in that they force their authority upon the public and the public is often powerless to do anything about it. The benefit of that is that they don't have to be dishonest about it, which is some level of transparency... even if still an aura of corruption.

The content provider side is scarier to me, because they can only gain wealth and influence if users lend it to them... and for convenience most users absolutely give up their privacy. They often don't need the same super-power lobby force the ISPs need if they can convenience their users to scream loudly enough together.

Fortunately, they are each the solution to the other's problems. If you believe the content providers are the greater evil then prioritize distribution and diversify your content sources. If you believe distribution (the ISPs) to be the greater problem then consolidate your content consumption and receive it through alternate providers.

guelo2• 9 years ago

The ISPs are not trying to help you diversify your content sources, they want in on the content provider's take. Ideally they want to be the content monopoly themselves. Barring that they'll insert themselves in the middle as the gatekeeper and kingmaker charging both sides of the market. Either way consumers lose.

dragonwriter3• 9 years ago

Fortunately, they are each the solution to the other's problems.

No, they aren't, because the major ISPs are also significant content providers and are trying to use their positions as ISPs to promote their own content-provision businesses. Unless you view "solving" the existence of incumbent large content providers as something that is done by making the oligopoly of ISPs also the oligopoly of content, the ISPs are not offering a solution to anything, just the same problem you are describing, intensified, with their own faces replacing the incumbent dominant content providers.

mirimir• 9 years ago

What's your take on overlay networks, such as VPNs and Tor, as a workaround?

corv2• 9 years ago

They're not much use in China and that's the direction the net is heading.

cookiecaper5• 9 years ago

If you don't have showdead enabled, you should enable it. There's at least one real comment currently marked dead (from user rustynails, whose account is almost 2000 days old and appears to have been autokilled after posting a MRA rant around 6 months ago). You said you're excited for feedback, so heads up.

studentrob34• 9 years ago

Could certain cities make laws requiring last mile competition? Somebody in this thread mentioned that this is true in areas of Europe. In the US, maybe the easiest place to start doing that would be on a smaller scale and in urban areas. What cities are under a stranglehold of ISP monopolies? Do we have any maps of ISP coverage?

If we had some data and a map we could pinpoint which areas have high density and low competition.

rayiner7• 9 years ago

Cities don't have any leverage. I used to live in Baltimore (quite dense east coast city). Comcast has a de facto monopoly there. Verizon has fiber in most of Maryland, and all the surrounding suburbs, and wanted to build in Baltimore. Baltimore demanded full coverage of the city, and the numbers didn't work out so Verizon didn't build. Baltimore begged Google to build fiber but Google categorically doesn't agree to build out requirements.[1]

What is Baltimore going to do? You can regulate all you want but you can't make companies build. The big dense cities best suited for fiber also tend to be broke, so municipal fiber isn't in the card either. There are no restrictions to municipal fiber here in Maryland--parts of Anne Arundel (heavily rural county around Annapolis) that don't have FiOS are getting municipal fiber. But Baltimore, like most larger US cities, is poorly managed and has no money.

[1] Baltimore is in some ways a great candidate for fiber. The 740 miles of conduit under the city is owned by the city itself; utilities and telcos all rent conduit space per linear foot from the city. It's a significant east coast telecom hub. But fully 1/4 of residents are at or below the poverty line. Very few neighborhoods have enough higher income people who could afford to subscribe to $70/month fiber service. Outside of a handful of rich, heavily gentrified places like D.C., NYC, and SF, most of the dense cities (the ones best suited for fiber) in the US are also extremely poor. (That is in stark contrast to London or Paris, where wealthier people tend to live in the city while lower income people live in close suburbs).

Stranger43• 9 years ago

Any law regulating last mile could potentially conflict with the telcos property rights and might actually be unconstitutional(despite the fact that to some extend US was founded to get away from the communications monopoly of the British East India company).

Europe gets around this by the fact that all of the telcos i descended from a state monopoly and bound by contract to behave like a common carrier and allow 3rd party raw cable access.

ohthehugemanate• 9 years ago

I like the irony that this well researched and thought out article is published on medium.

coldsauce• 9 years ago

Where is the irony? Just like any other platform, Medium will have bad content and good content.

wmf2• 9 years ago

The point of Medium is that people won't read your blog but if you write the exact same thing on Medium they will read it.

niftich3• 9 years ago

There is no irony here.

Today, with net neutrality, the author can choose to publish on Medium, where some publishers and readers congregate for particular types of content, and anyone on the Internet who wants to read Medium can, without having to buy into a price-discriminated tier to escape beyond the home-turf vertical.

In the future, will you be able to say the same?

nebabyte4• 9 years ago

There absolutely is. Medium is in that "one of X top sites" while blogs would be in the long tail.

"Without having to buy X" just means you've yet learned nothing of the past. "Without having to buy" is just internet.org and (potentially, ultimately) a good tagline for trial subscriptions of zero rated content.

It's not the money (or "free" gratis) that matters, it's the control (or "free" libre).

People continuing to fundamentally not understand the rationale of controlling your own tech will be the single biggest contributor to "efforts to save the internet" failing, if you ask me.

bamboozled2• 9 years ago

Maybe losing the current web wouldn't be that bad, it's largely become a centralised, tracking and surveillance tool for mass marketing and used for spying on citizens. One gets the feeling that any significant level of "openness" died a long time ago.

It's not that it's useless, but a fresh start might not be the worst outcome.

myowncrapulence• 9 years ago

This is exactly why an entirely encrypted internet would be desirable. ISP's won't be able to track or throttle since they won't know who's connecting to what.

studentrob34• 9 years ago

That would stifle development in its own way. We haven't repealed net neutrality yet. Let's keep at it and see where this goes.

gregmac• 9 years ago

Or your ISP would just MITM everything and provide their own CA you must accept to use their service.

topranks4• 9 years ago

It would need to be like TOR - if you just encrypted then they'd see who you were talking to, just not what you're saying.

darkkindness• 9 years ago

a fresh start might not be the worst outcome.

The article gave the implication of having a locked-down internet reminiscent of China's -- losing net neutrality doesn't necessarily mean losing this centralized, tracking and surveillance tool for mass marketing and spying.

I would love to hear your definition of 'fresh start'.

nebabyte4• 9 years ago

I'm guessing they're holding out for a meshnet. Less realistically likely to be implemented at scale (and scale is what makes the internet as wonderful as it is) anytime soon than uber's moonshot of building their autonomous fleet in time tbh

Also even if that is it it would solve nothing, [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14220269

bamboozled2• 9 years ago

De-centralised models such as IPFS [1] seem promising. Mesh networks sound perfect for local / focused communities to keep in touch.

Fresh start may have been the wrong wording, how about fresh approach? Rather than just settling for what we have, begin experimenting with new technological approaches and new architectures in the hope what we have can rework what we have now, drastically. Moving to better more open models.

It's odd how quickly technology moves in other fields except not much has changed with regards to how the world builds and consumes the Internet over the last few decades, this lack of progress might be deliberate as it's in clearly certain groups interest to have it this way.

[1] https://ipfs.io/

transposed2• 9 years ago

The article got me thinking what might happen in a dystopian future where all networks are under tight control and surveillance. Well, there's already the dark web... But what about the physical "backbone" to support a world wide web? Could you do it without laying thousands of miles of fiber optic cable? And without flooding the radio spectrum?

topranks4• 9 years ago

No you couldn't.

astrobe_• 9 years ago

It's still fine if you don't use the modern multimedia interactive Internet, that needs a large bandwidth and big data centers, and therefore big companies and therefore questionable monetization schemes.

Roll back to the nineties, when most of the traffic was made of text, and then a Cuban network is good enough.

But of course, you have to say goodbye to Netflix and Youtube. That's not a bad thing. When I was a student in the nineties, I decided I wouldn't have a TV or a computer in my room, because those where too distracting for me. So I ended up reading books and listening to radio.

The radio is a wonderful thing. It doesn't monopolize your primary sense. Making content doesn't require as much resources as for the TV. They don't need makeup. They don't need lighting. As a result they can focus more on the meaningful content. They just can't distract people with spectacular or pretty images anyway (even ads are better, because it's kind of difficult to sell stuff with boobs here).

But don't hope too much. People won't go back in the nineties. YouTube and Facebook not being available is a no-go for them. Net neutrality and openness will be undone piece by piece over time. But if you're OK with going back to the BBS era (or the too short Gopher era), the bandwidth you'd use would be so tiny compared to the rest that the Internet giants won't care about you.

studentrob34• 9 years ago

But of course, you have to say goodbye to Netflix and Youtube. That's not a bad thing. When I was a student in the nineties, I decided I wouldn't have a TV or a computer in my room, because those where too distracting for me. So I ended up reading books and listening to radio

Media is what you make it. Parents once viewed radio and books as distractions too. Fact is, the internet is loaded with free, useful educational content. The availability of that to anyone who has an internet connection is threatened by rolling back net neutrality.

spectrum1234• 9 years ago

My main gripe with Net Neutrality is simple economics. For almost any good or service you can pay for different tiers of quality.

Why should the internet not be this way too? If the answer is because its a monopoly I would have to disagree.

wmf2• 9 years ago

What ISPs are doing goes far beyond different tiers of quality.

Like TWC/Spectrum secretly intentionally congesting Netflix, then telling customers that upgrading to a faster plan will fix it (which it won't, because the customer's plan wasn't the bottleneck). Then TWC/Spectrum secretly stopped congesting Netflix after Netflix secretly paid them.

Like AT&T/Verizon charging content providers to bypass caps, then probably secretly charging their own content provider much less than they charge other companies.

In theory the FCC's "not my problem" policy may allow these cases to be solved by the FTC, but first the FTC would have to somehow find out that this stuff is going on.

jkoll• 9 years ago

Websites already pay for the internet connections their servers use...

pdonis4• 9 years ago

There can still be tiers of quality under Net Neutrality. ISPs can still offer different levels of bandwidth to their customers for different prices. What they can't do under Net Neutrality is offer faster bandwidth for websites that pay up and slower bandwidth for websites that don't.

H4CK3RM4N2• 9 years ago

You can pay for faster postage in the same way you can pay for a higherspeed connection. But, what ISPs are trying to do is make you pay for faster postage on letters printed on pink paper.

Spivak• 9 years ago

Right, everyone pays someone for access to 'the Internet' and of course you can pay more for higher bandwidth. The issue is that last mile ISPs realized that they can make people who do business with residential customers pay them in addition by artificially restricting access to their services.

cookiecaper5• 9 years ago

I think that there's a tech bubble around this issue. In my experience, most normal people happily trade internet speed for discounts. In fact, I've found that people are more likely to be suspicious of those seeking high internet speeds than sympathetic.

I am willing to bet that if someone offered an internet package that included full speeds for Facebook, Wikipedia, and 30 YouTube videos for $5 /mo, and then 20% speed for everything else, it'd do really well.

Interestingly, this is a really a question about keeping the internet a free market. Just as a local boutique retailer would not be happy about the shopping center charging customers $1 per store they entered, small publishers, as usual, will be the people harmed by a non-neutral internet.

I'm sure the big players are enthralled by the idea that their competitors will soon have an even harder time accessing alternatives, as if it wasn't difficult enough with a rabid copyright regime and restrictive network access. IMO, the only reason tech incumbents oppose net non-neutrality is because they're worried that Comcast will use it as a kludge to stymie the growth of their platforms as media platforms (which Comcast et al are desperate to do, because cordcutting is eviscerating the cable industry).

It's too bad that the mainstream conservative party in the US has interpreted "free markets" and "competition" to mean making the startup environment extremely difficult for the little guy.

intended3• 9 years ago

And this article correctly highlighted an issue with the new tech firms, once the old guard of CEOs dies, and the current crop of techies take charge. Imagine google run by someone who came out of the uber school of thought,

intended3• 9 years ago

Because you already do?

You want more speed and bandwidth, pay for it. You want yet more, take a look at corporate plans.

The internet is a meta creation on top of the bandwidth. It's the conversation you have over the telephone.

The ISPS Are asking to double dip. They want to charge based not on network usage and speed subscription. They want to charge based on what you say and whose you listen to.

abvdasker• 9 years ago

It's a lot more complicated than that, especially when you consider that companies like Comcast also produce content via their subsidiaries (NBC and by proxy Hulu). Vertically integrated companies like Comcast can quickly turn into monopolies, eliminating healthy competition and hurting the consumer in the long run via rent-seeking behavior (which we already see today to some extent). Net Neutrality prevents these vertically integrated companies from favoring content which would benefit their businesses.

afriend4lyfe• 9 years ago

If the big ISPs started throttling data and putting up walled gardens, what would stop competitors from entering the market to offer the "net neutral" flavor of internet we're used to?

Some communities are already banding together to start their own ISPs. I'm not familiar with how they deal with the "last mile" infrastructure challenge. But if it only took a big investment up front then that begs the question why did Google Fiber fail? Lack of community support?

If net neutrality was as valuable to us as we make it out to be, then what would stop local grassroots efforts from installing their own community-based ISPs in response to losing it?

studentrob34• 9 years ago

Good question. I wouldn't say Google fiber failed. They've paused expansion.

Also, living overseas in Taiwan I get 50+ Mbps down/5 up for $4/month on a landline (cable), paid a year in advance, and in SE Asia you can get 3g Sims giving 5gb data for $10. Here I pay $6 for 1gb 3g per month, prepaid.

Granted, Taiwan is much more urbanized so costs for this go down, but it begs the question what sort of stranglehold ISPs hold over urban America. Perhaps urban America is subsidizing rural America, and Google didn't want to play that game to its finish. Just a wild guess. Anyway, much too soon to call that product a failure, particularly since it is still active.

niftich3• 9 years ago

what would stop local grassroots efforts from installing their own community-based ISPs

High meatspace costs (digging, permits), obstruction of easements by incumbents (like pole access [1][2]), and in 19 states, state laws [3], are some of the barriers to municipal broadband efforts in the US.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/08/att-e... [2] https://www.wired.com/2016/09/utility-poles-important-future... [3] https://muninetworks.org/communitymap

rayiner7• 9 years ago

Some communities are already banding together to start their own ISPs. I'm not familiar with how they deal with the "last mile" infrastructure challenge. But if it only took a big investment up front then that begs the question why did Google Fiber fail? Lack of community support?

Google Fiber failed because Google doesn't care about fiber; they care about creating competition for ISPs to ensure continued access to its services. They realized they don't need fiber for that-5G technologies will be good enough to create competition for ISPs but can be deployed far more cheaply.

pdonis4• 9 years ago

I'm not familiar with how they deal with the "last mile" infrastructure challenge.

In many localities, they can't, because laws and regulations have been put in place giving monopoly access to one of the big ISPs.

topranks4• 9 years ago

In most of Europe competition in last mile networks is enforced by law and ISPs don't have nearly the scope for all this nefarious stuff. If they block/throttle or charge premiums you can just go to one of their competitors.

This is because the companies who own all the last mile networks (mostly former state monopolies,) are legally compelled to wholesale that last mile access.

studentrob34• 9 years ago

Wow, that was really forward thinking of places that do this. Can you cite some speeds and costs?

We should push for this in high density areas of the US. Not just beg a federal agency not to roll back net neutrality, which, under Trump, they may be able to do without losing much popularity.

studentrob34• 9 years ago

How can we translate this for laypeople? This was my attempt,

Imagine your existing water utility divided its offerings into "regular water" and "super clean water". You'd think, wait, isn't my tap water already clean? And you'd be right.
Swap "regular water" for "faster internet to specific websites" and you get the lobbyists' argument for killing net neutrality. It would produce slow internet to websites that don't pay up, effectively allowing ISPs to earn money two times for the same product, and elbowing smaller content producers out of the internet

Improvements welcome. I think it could be more succinct.

theprop• 9 years ago

Try this: imagine the government put up a fence in front of everyone's house and they let poor people in fine, but charged rich people to get in through the fence. That's the basic idea for ISPs...they want to charge Google, Facebook, etc. money. They're already charging Netflix (Verizon forced them to pay or they would throttle them).

There is NO CHANCE that ISPs will actually invest in two technically different products like regular/super clean water! That's just how ISPs want paint the debate, that they want the right to invest in "better technology", but the bottleneck is the last mile and the chances that Verizon will lay 2 different cables to your house is exactly zero! The requirement for prejudicial packet routing to deliver things like HD video is a non-starter, Netflix when it's not getting throttled is already delivers great hi-def video in the current non-prejudicial packet-based internet.

It is really pure "extortion"...at least in my view and a clear case of necessary government intervention to insure fair market behavior (e.g. ISPs can only charge consumers, not web services, for internet service).

studentrob34• 9 years ago

Thanks for your ideas! Points about bottleneck at the last mile and Verizon not offering to lay more cabling to your house are good

I realize that ISPs want to paint the debate as separate products. I wanted to use their language in my description so that people can interpret their words alongside mine.

If you're constantly making different points and not addressing your opponents', I feel the listener will walk away with a 50/50 chance of agreeing with you, probably choosing to follow their political party.

If you offer some translation, maybe we can get some meaningful discussion about it.

Regarding charging rich people to enter the fence. I feel that would only help convince the general public that net neutrality benefits big companies. Google and Facebook, forgive me if you work there, are teetering on not being perceived as evil mega corporations with access to all our data. Naming them as a victim doesn't do much to win over the public.

H4CK3RM4N2• 9 years ago

This is a pretty good take on the 'pipe' idea from the last time Net Neutrality was threatened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtt2aSV8wdw

studentrob34• 9 years ago

Ah, thanks for that link. That should be distributed again. Net neutrality at much more risk today than it was 3 years ago when that video was published

memracom• 9 years ago

Swap regular water for Brawndo. It's got electrolytes.

Watch the movie "Idiocracy"

studentrob34• 9 years ago

Funny movie, but, telling people they're idiots for considering the FCC's proposed policy changes isn't going to get anyone to listen.

nebabyte4• 9 years ago

"Imagine some service came along tomorrow that was a better fb or youtube, and real fb/youtube got even shittier (play to anything you know annoys said friend about those plats, or think up things they could do for profit that would annoy your friend)

"Now imagine that that new service can't compete, because fb/goog have a handshake deal with your ISP, so as long as you live here you're stuck with shitty X."

Honestly this ^ kinda thing is all most people would care about if at all.

kristopolous2• 9 years ago

My way is simpler and more broad: "Do you trust Comcast/Frontier is on your side? Why give them more power?"

Phrasing it as no more than "the latest trick from ATT to screw you over" has huge resonance with people I've talked to. They don't care what it's about generally.

cookiecaper5• 9 years ago

This only works with people who are already anti-corporate. A normal conservative would say "Because they're entitled to run their business and use their property as they see fit, and if you don't like what they're offering, you don't have to buy it."

The much better argument is that BigCos are seeking to establish a cartel for the primary purpose of excluding entrepreneurship and limiting consumer choice. Emphasize the importance of the internet as a free platform for the market and that net non-neutrality allows an undue influence over that market to whoever the local telecom provider is.

This is very real, because the main driver of interest for net non-neutrality from the ISP side is the possibility of protecting cable subscriptions. On that front, it's tech giants v. telecom and entertainment giants.

Over 30% of Disney's gross revenue comes from ESPN (yes, really!), and most of that revenue comes from cable subscriptions. Anecdotally, typical-speed internet access will only consume around 30% of the average consumer's cable bill, meaning a cancellation results in ~70% monthly revenue loss from that customer (bundles, contracts, and packages are used to attempt to control this).

Cordcutting is a very real threat to the established players, directly conflicting with their interest in delivering stable internet services that are sufficiently reliable and speedy to stream videos.

edoloughlin• 9 years ago

The germ of the idea is already in the article: imagine if your power company demanded that Samsung paid them for the electricity your TV uses etc.

just2n• 9 years ago

I think the problem is less that there are companies who want to sell you "faster internet to specific websites" and more that there can't be any companies who want to sell you "fast internet to all websites." And that remains true even with reclassification, and the arguments against that aren't against the freedom to access any content you want on the internet, but rather than it makes that competition even harder and less likely to happen.

I'm just not sure it's fair to say that one side here is for content agnostic networks and the other is against them, but rather two different approaches to solving the problem where just about everyone agrees with content agnostic networks.

studentrob34• 9 years ago

I think the problem is less that there are companies who want to sell you "faster internet to specific websites" and more that there can't be any companies who want to sell you "fast internet to all websites."

I don't follow. You don't feel there are currently any companies that provide fast access to all websites? Perhaps that's true in some parts of the US, but it isn't true worldwide. That suggests there is another way to go about setting up a competitive environment that yields low cost, high speed internet.

I'm just not sure it's fair to say that one side here is for content agnostic networks and the other is against them, but rather two different approaches to solving the problem where just about everyone agrees with content agnostic networks.

When your ISP middle man charges special access fees for certain data, that isn't content agnostic. It's specifically giving preference to some content over others based on big corporate $$.

AndyMcConachie2• 9 years ago

You want an analogy, here's a simple one.

The Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) was created in 1887 to prevent the vertical integration of the freight train industry. Folks like Rockefeller (Standard Oil) owned the oil production and shipping (freight trains). And used their ownership of freight trains to price discriminate against competitors. Standard Oil shipped for free, other's oil had to pay so much money it put them out of business. The ICC was founded to combat this and break up vertical monopolies.

In 1934 the FCC was founded in a similar vein as the ICC. One of its founding missions is to break up/prevent/regulate vertical monopolies.

What the ISPs want is they want to be Rockefeller. They want to own the transit and the oil, only this time the transit is moving at the speed of light, and the oil is packets.

studentrob34• 9 years ago

Pretty solid example. Thanks!

transposed2• 9 years ago

“Those are some lovely data packets you’ve got there. It sure would be a shame if they got lost on their way to your users.”

There were a lot of good quotes from the article, but this one struck me as particularly apt. I saw something on tumblr today about how "net neutrality" just doesn't resonate with people - and it's true - I tried striking up conversation about this and some people didn't even know what I was talking about.

markdown2• 9 years ago

In my country, mobile service providers (Vodafone, Digicel, Connect) all have very popular packages like "Sign up for this data plan for $6 and get free unlimited access to Facebook and Instagram.

Anyone trying to push net neutrality here would have a hard time getting the masses on board once told they'd have to give up "free" social media.

intended3• 9 years ago

Which country is this ?

nebabyte4• 9 years ago

This isn’t capitalism — it’s corporatism. Capitalism is messy. It’s wasteful. But it’s much healthier in the long run for society as a whole than central planning and government trying to pick the winners.
Capitalism allows for small businesses to enter and actually stand a chance. Corporatism makes it impossible.

What you're calling "corporatism" is simply "late stage capitalism". As long as you continue to buy into the delusion that your almoghty dollar will make you a multimillionaire someday, you empower those who have the actual machines of finance under lock and key to act as the new monarchs of your world.

studentrob34• 9 years ago

You act like a full scale revolution is the only solution and that this would somehow redistribute wealth. I really doubt it. If done all at once, there'd be a power vacuum that someone would come into.

I think we can support last-mile competition or regulation, and educate people about why net neutrality is important. That's our job as technologists.

loup-vaillant3• 9 years ago

You act like a full scale revolution is the only solution and that this would somehow redistribute wealth.

Where did that come from? I didn't read that in the above comment.

Unless you have this idea that to get to socialism one has to undergo a bloody revolution? Nope. One just have to set up taxes properly and pump up public services.

DonbunEf7• 9 years ago

I have seen these five steps before, in a dream. They are chaos, discord, confusion, bureaucracy, and the aftermath. Discordians stand vindicated.

AndyMcConachie2• 9 years ago

To be clear this is less about the Internet and more about the USA. I doubt Internet users in other countries should really care about net neutrality in the USA. If anything, once the FCC ruins the Internet for Americans other countries will take pride in being less like the USA and strengthening their net neutrality legislation. Similarly to how health care discourse in EU countries often cites the USA as the bad example to avoid.

75dvtwin• 9 years ago

I do not think anybody wants ISPs to be in charge of internet. However, I also believe, that most do not want USA FCC to be in charge of internet either.

Arguing for a benefit, without clearly identifying the strategic negatives, is intellectually dishonest.

Perhaps, it is with the help of these types of arguments, is how some monopolies and dictatorships are built out.

Here is an example of the discussion analyzing some arguments of the validity of FCC reach:

  "This Comment argues that requiring ISPs to filter pirated material is within the FCC's ancillary jurisdiction pursuant to Title I of the Communications Act,'1 but only so long as the targeted activity has a detrimental impact on network activity."

http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic... pp. 535-538

I would argue, that it is the power of consumer choice to obfuscate his/her usage of internet (and, protecting companies that help with that) -- should be the goal.

Rather than, giving FCC the authority to regulate ISPs or consumer usage of the internet, via the ISPs.

I do want to mention that I appreciated some (but not all) analogies used by the author. I liked this one especially.

  "Not only did Western Union back Hayes’ campaign financially, it also used its unique position as the information backbone for espionage purposes. "

It reminded me, in just recent history, of how the previous (2008-2016) US president used US (and, probably, UK's) foreign intelligence services to target the opposition of his foreign policies, and the people's choice of the next president.

I also liked the analogy of TV and facebook, I fully agree -- Facebook is working hard on creating a 'walled garden' of information dissemination, and digital identity of every individual. And they would love to cut out the 'amateur hobbyists'.

Jaymoon85• 9 years ago

I agree. Nobody is considering the problems an FCC-regulated internet brings to the table. With the exception of the telegram and cinema (those controlled by Western Union and Hollywood), the feds regulate the telephone, radio, and television. The internet is just the latest thing government bureaucrats want control over.

With the fate of a major Internet policy in the balance, Pai's proposal may lend momentum to U.S. lawmakers who have proposed replacing the current FCC rules with congressional legislation. Republican members of Congress have said they are ready to craft a bill that enshrines some of the existing regulations permanently into law. But that effort is expected to stall without support from Democrats, such as Sens. Edward J. Markey (Mass.) and Ron Wyden (Ore.) who argue the FCC can and should regulate ISPs more heavily. [1]

In regards to Facebook, Twitter, etc. creating their own modern walled gardens, let them. They'll soon see the demise that others have, 10-20 years ago.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/04/26...

hartator• 9 years ago

I am for paying a neutral gateway to Internet. However, I don't get why we should forbid Facebook to give access for free but only to their services if they want to.

syphilis2• 9 years ago

FCC chairman Pai has been very public about revoking Title II status. You can read his wolf in sheep's clothing speech from last week:

https://www.fcc.gov/document/chairman-pai-speech-future-inte...

It's a disappointment after Wheeler, but entirely expected, to see Pai fighting against net neutrality. I suggest reading the response by commissioners Clyburn and FTC commissioner McSweeny:

https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-cmmr-clyburn-ftc-cmmr-mcswe...

https://www.fcc.gov/news-events/headlines

0xcde4c3db• 9 years ago

That timeline of Google ads in Part 3 is pretty damning. Not of Google specifically, but of the whole push for "native advertising". This also ties in with "engagement" measures like autoplay-by-default on YouTube and "next article" popups on news sites. It's all about maximizing appropriation of users' attention.

The Invisible War for the Open Internet

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