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Some clarity is badly needed here. If you don't know some fairly arcane details of what's going on in Internet regulation, this looks as though it just prevents

Some clarity is badly needed here. If you don't know some fairly arcane details of what's going on in Internet regulation, this looks as though it just prevents the FCC from setting price floors and price ceilings, which would be fine. What's actually going on is fairly complicated, because there are five different parties involved: the consumer, a consumer ISP such as Verizon or Comcast, a backbone provider such as Cogent or Level 3, a business ISP such as Linode or AWS, and a business with a web site. The wires look like this: Consumer --- Consumer-ISP --- Backbone-provider --- Business-ISP --- Website And the flow of money looks like this: Consumer --> Consumer-ISP --> Backbone-provider <-- Business-ISP <-- Website For each connection, there is someone paying money who can take their money elsewhere if that connection is too slow. What's happening is that some consumer ISPs aren't happy with only being paid by consumers, and want websites to also pay them. That would make the flow of money look like this: Consumer --> Consumer-ISP --> Backbone-provider <-- Business-ISP <-- Website ^_____________________________________________________| The problem is that this arrangement would have businesses paying money to ISPs that they didn't choose, and can't walk away from. From a consumer's perspective, if a web site is slow, it looks like the website's fault rather than their ISP's fault, which distorts the incentives. This sort of arrangement isn't really compatible with free-market incentives, since the flow of money doesn't match who's providing services to who; it's less like normal business, and more like extortion. Unfortunately, I don't expect Congress to have access to clear explanations of all of this. But if you happen to have a congressperson's ear: rather than convince them of a position, please make sure they understand the full shape of what's happening. They're smart enough to draw the correct conclusion, but are constantly bombarded by misinformation.

dv_dt 11y ago
I think this is a very nice explanation that gets to the heart one of the key net neutrality issues. I would quibble with the statement "For each connection, there is someone paying money who can take their money elsewhere if that connection is too slow." There is one person in that lineup who often can't put their money elsewhere if the connection is slow, and that's the consumer. This is the main reason that the Consumer-ISP is in the economic position to demand payment for passage through the monopoly gateway to the consumer. If the consumer could chose other access options then Consumer-ISP isn't going to be able to demand extra payment for passage.
- derf_ 11y ago
  I think that's actually essential in making this possible. If consumers could walk away from their ISP, then if that ISP actually started throttling Netflix, all of those consumers would leave for an ISP that didn't do that. That's the reason for the asymmetry in the second diagram that was not present in the first.
  - learc83 11y ago
    > If consumers could walk away from their ISP, then if that ISP actually started throttling Netflix, all of those consumers would leave for an ISP that didn't do that. That's true for Netflix and a few larger sites. But for the other 90% of sites there aren't enough customers who would switch for ISPs to care.
- mjevans 11y ago
  Mostly due to lack of competition. Which is something that both congress and the FCC desperately need to encourage. Competition like, preventing states from making laws that limit competition. If the free market is truly healthy then it CAN compete with government provided services.
  - cderwin 11y ago
    The problem is Congress and the FCC bear just as much culpability for the anti-competitive telecom markets as the state governments. It's naive to think that a group that created these monopolies have any interest in the sort of deregulation that would actually encourage competition, and in particular would allow the success of new telecoms/ISPs.
    - lukeschlather 11y ago
      What's naive is describing Congress and the FCC as monoliths with singular, easily defined interests.
  - nsgi 11y ago
    However, even if there was more competition, ISPs would still potentially be able to demand money from less prominent services that consumers are unlikely to switch ISPs to use, and exempt their own services from data caps.
Cyph0n 11y ago
Thanks for the clear and concise explanation. Love those ASCII diagrams haha!
jrapdx3 11y ago
Thanks for your comment. The EFF article is woefully short of details re: what provisions in the bill are undesirable. I read the House info about the bill and read the committee reports (including the minority report), but none of this shed light on exactly what were the objections. I didn't know about the consumer ISP-proposed demand for payment from business. That indeed seems inconsistent with the mental model I've held re: how the internet is organized (i.e., like the first diagram). It seems pretty simple so it's surprising that the elected officials didn't grasp it. Perhaps their advisers/staff didn't inform them of the extortionate ISP demands. BTW looks like I'll need to write to my senators again about net neutrality, etc. It would be excellent if US citizens contacted their senators for the same purpose.
chongli 11y ago
Consumer ISPs are not a free market, they're a collection of regional monopolies. The solution is not regulation, it's increasing competition. If every consumer had a choice of 5 or more competitive ISPs, then the market would sort this out. ISPs could literally advertise "We won't slow down your favourite websites! All websites equally fast!"
- mcgwiz 11y ago
  So much This. ISPs could also advertise "we pass subsidies on from our preferred partners (web businesses) to you. [fine print: traffic with non-preferred partners is deprioritized]." That's not a value proposition that everyone, or even many, would accept but it's one that should be permitted and subject to (adequately competitive) market forces rather than regulation.
- pessimizer 11y ago
  Approximately 0.000% would advertise that. Instead they would all compete on how fast Netflix, Facebook, Youtube, Wikipedia and their special "Adult Package" were. The market would eliminate every site outside of the top 5% entirely (who probably account for 99.9% of all pageviews.)
  - tsax 11y ago
    Yes this is why it's unable to find any music outside of the Billboard Top 20 chart.
- AnthonyMouse 11y ago
  > The solution is not regulation, it's increasing competition. There are two responses to this. The first is OK do it and then we'll get rid of the regulations as soon as there actually are 5 or more competitive ISPs. But the more important point is that it doesn't actually solve the problem in question. There could be 10 ISPs that every consumer could choose from but every website would still have to pay all of them if they were allowed to charge websites, because the site can't get faster access to Verizon's customers by paying AT&T or vice versa.
CobrastanJorji 11y ago
This sort of thing helps explain projects like the Google Video Quality Report ( https://www.google.com/get/videoqualityreport/ https://www.google.com/get/videoqualityreport/ ) or the Netflix ISP Speed Index ( https://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/ https://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/ ). They could be viewed as attempts to shift the public perspective from saying "Netflix is slow" to "my ISP is bad at Netflix."
nathanielc 11y ago
Thanks for the wonderful explanation. My question is How? How does the bill allow a Consumer ISP to be paid by a Website owner? Can someone provide some text from the bill or at least a summary of how the bill is drawing the line from Websites to Consumer ISP? I don't see how FCC regulations however obscure or convoluted they may be adds a new money flow requirement. To be clear I am not disagreeing with the explanation but rather asking for help in understanding the leap from "this looks as though it just prevents the FCC from setting price floors and price ceilings" to "The problem is that this arrangement would have businesses paying money to ISPs that they didn't choose, and can't walk away from."
- jimrandomh 11y ago
  Right now, the FCC is actively preventing ISPs from making the threats they need to make to get money this way. This bill would remove the FCC's authority to do that.
themartorana 11y ago
If maybe they could have access to your explanation...
jfoutz 11y ago
That seems so incredibly risky for ISPs. Hi, we're Alphabet. we have 50 billion dollars in cash and have rolled out residential fiber. We also have insane amounts of market data, so we'll snipe all of the high density locations and let you suffer out in the sticks. I'm not super enthusiastic about buying access from Facebook or Google, but that seems like the endgame if the ISPs really end up getting a cut of the money.
philovivero 11y ago
Net Neutrality has been going on how long? 10 years? And this is the first time I've seen anyone explain it in a way I could grok it. Not enough up-votes in the world.
- ikeboy 11y ago
  Except it's false. You'll note that they didn't cite any examples of ISPs demanding money to provide access. The whole concern is that ISPs might ask for money, there's no indication any have done so afaik.
  - matt4077 11y ago
    Then I guess they shouldn't care about net neutrality either. But wait – why are they lobbying so hard for laws to stop it?
    - ikeboy 11y ago
      Example? They lobbied for this law, but this law doesn't stop net neutrality. They were against the original reclassification, but that's far broader than just preventing ISPs from blocking access to sites.
rina 11y ago
I am a consumer that pays Netflix. Where is that in your diagram? If Netflix wants to subsidize my Verizon bill I am okay with that. Yeah yeah I know...how will startup X have a chance to compete with Netflix then? Guess what nobody can. And even by some miracle if they get disrupted the benefits again will keep accruing to a handful of people. So what the point of the story? Netflix, Youtube, Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon are unregulated monopolies that I worry about much more than Comcast and Verizon. The EFF needs to bring that onto the table every time they talk about Net Neutrality.
- matt4077 11y ago
  It's debatable if a startup could compete with netflix now (I'd say there are possibilities, like starting outside the US or just being backed by content creators). What's less ambiguous is that netflix could never have started without net neutrality. If netflix has to "subsidize your verizon bill" that may be appealing at first (although I doubt you'll see any of that money). But why should verizon stop there? Why not cut out the middle man? Does verizon offer anything like netflix? Take a good look at that: it's what you're going to end up with, except that now they're still trying to complete with netflix. They won't have to do that if they're no longer required to carry netflix's traffic.
thomaskcr 11y ago
I think your explanation does miss some additional nuance though. > The problem is that this arrangement would have businesses paying money to ISPs that they didn't choose, and can't walk away from. From a consumer's perspective, if a web site is slow, it looks like the website's fault rather than their ISP's fault, which distorts the incentives. If a website is using significant resources, it shouldn't be on the ISP to subsidize their engineering. There have been plenty of websites throughout history that took up significant amounts of traffic relative to the total traffic. They always paid for leased lines (your third diagram) -- it's only recently that one very well liked company running almost entirely off Amazon decided that leased lines were extortion. If you compare the physical infrastructure of Google's YouTube or MLB.tv to Netflix, the difference is huge. Also, money doesn't always flow like that. If data is flowing equally (in bit-miles), there is generally no exchange of money. If it's not, money should flow the other way. Many of those backbone providers also were in the business-ISP market, and were leveraging their settlement free peering for more competitive pricing. When video streaming caused them to be pushing more data onto the networks than they were taking - the consumer ISPs wanted to be paid since it was no longer qualifying for settlement free.
- pyvpx 11y ago
  >If a website is using significant resources, it shouldn't be on the ISP to subsidize their engineering. There have been plenty of websites throughout history that took up significant amounts of traffic relative to the total traffic. They always paid for leased lines (your third diagram) -- it's only recently that one very well liked company running almost entirely off Amazon decided that leased lines were extortion. If you compare the physical infrastructure of Google's YouTube or MLB.tv to Netflix, the difference is huge. I don't follow. I am a consumer who has purchased an internet service package that advertises 100Mbps down, 10Mbps up, and 100GB of transfer every billable month. If I, the ISP, have 1000 customers fully utilizing that 100Mbps down between 6-11pm _it is my engineering problem_ Whether it is netflix, google, mlb, or literally anything else. _it is my engineering problem_ to provide the service I am charging for.
  - thomaskcr 11y ago

dv_dt 11y ago

I think this is a very nice explanation that gets to the heart one of the key net neutrality issues. I would quibble with the statement "For each connection, there is someone paying money who can take their money elsewhere if that connection is too slow." There is one person in that lineup who often can't put their money elsewhere if the connection is slow, and that's the consumer. This is the main reason that the Consumer-ISP is in the economic position to demand payment for passage through the monopoly gateway to the consumer. If the consumer could chose other access options then Consumer-ISP isn't going to be able to demand extra payment for passage.

derf_ 11y ago
I think that's actually essential in making this possible. If consumers could walk away from their ISP, then if that ISP actually started throttling Netflix, all of those consumers would leave for an ISP that didn't do that. That's the reason for the asymmetry in the second diagram that was not present in the first.
- learc83 11y ago
  > If consumers could walk away from their ISP, then if that ISP actually started throttling Netflix, all of those consumers would leave for an ISP that didn't do that. That's true for Netflix and a few larger sites. But for the other 90% of sites there aren't enough customers who would switch for ISPs to care.
mjevans 11y ago
Mostly due to lack of competition. Which is something that both congress and the FCC desperately need to encourage. Competition like, preventing states from making laws that limit competition. If the free market is truly healthy then it CAN compete with government provided services.
- cderwin 11y ago
  The problem is Congress and the FCC bear just as much culpability for the anti-competitive telecom markets as the state governments. It's naive to think that a group that created these monopolies have any interest in the sort of deregulation that would actually encourage competition, and in particular would allow the success of new telecoms/ISPs.
  - lukeschlather 11y ago
    What's naive is describing Congress and the FCC as monoliths with singular, easily defined interests.
- nsgi 11y ago
  However, even if there was more competition, ISPs would still potentially be able to demand money from less prominent services that consumers are unlikely to switch ISPs to use, and exempt their own services from data caps.

Cyph0n 11y ago

Thanks for the clear and concise explanation. Love those ASCII diagrams haha!

jrapdx3 11y ago

Thanks for your comment. The EFF article is woefully short of details re: what provisions in the bill are undesirable. I read the House info about the bill and read the committee reports (including the minority report), but none of this shed light on exactly what were the objections. I didn't know about the consumer ISP-proposed demand for payment from business. That indeed seems inconsistent with the mental model I've held re: how the internet is organized (i.e., like the first diagram). It seems pretty simple so it's surprising that the elected officials didn't grasp it. Perhaps their advisers/staff didn't inform them of the extortionate ISP demands. BTW looks like I'll need to write to my senators again about net neutrality, etc. It would be excellent if US citizens contacted their senators for the same purpose.

chongli 11y ago

Consumer ISPs are not a free market, they're a collection of regional monopolies. The solution is not regulation, it's increasing competition. If every consumer had a choice of 5 or more competitive ISPs, then the market would sort this out. ISPs could literally advertise "We won't slow down your favourite websites! All websites equally fast!"

mcgwiz 11y ago
So much This. ISPs could also advertise "we pass subsidies on from our preferred partners (web businesses) to you. [fine print: traffic with non-preferred partners is deprioritized]." That's not a value proposition that everyone, or even many, would accept but it's one that should be permitted and subject to (adequately competitive) market forces rather than regulation.
pessimizer 11y ago
Approximately 0.000% would advertise that. Instead they would all compete on how fast Netflix, Facebook, Youtube, Wikipedia and their special "Adult Package" were. The market would eliminate every site outside of the top 5% entirely (who probably account for 99.9% of all pageviews.)
- tsax 11y ago
  Yes this is why it's unable to find any music outside of the Billboard Top 20 chart.
AnthonyMouse 11y ago
> The solution is not regulation, it's increasing competition. There are two responses to this. The first is OK do it and then we'll get rid of the regulations as soon as there actually are 5 or more competitive ISPs. But the more important point is that it doesn't actually solve the problem in question. There could be 10 ISPs that every consumer could choose from but every website would still have to pay all of them if they were allowed to charge websites, because the site can't get faster access to Verizon's customers by paying AT&T or vice versa.

CobrastanJorji 11y ago

This sort of thing helps explain projects like the Google Video Quality Report ( https://www.google.com/get/videoqualityreport/ https://www.google.com/get/videoqualityreport/ ) or the Netflix ISP Speed Index ( https://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/ https://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/ ). They could be viewed as attempts to shift the public perspective from saying "Netflix is slow" to "my ISP is bad at Netflix."

nathanielc 11y ago

Thanks for the wonderful explanation. My question is How? How does the bill allow a Consumer ISP to be paid by a Website owner? Can someone provide some text from the bill or at least a summary of how the bill is drawing the line from Websites to Consumer ISP? I don't see how FCC regulations however obscure or convoluted they may be adds a new money flow requirement. To be clear I am not disagreeing with the explanation but rather asking for help in understanding the leap from "this looks as though it just prevents the FCC from setting price floors and price ceilings" to "The problem is that this arrangement would have businesses paying money to ISPs that they didn't choose, and can't walk away from."

jimrandomh 11y ago
Right now, the FCC is actively preventing ISPs from making the threats they need to make to get money this way. This bill would remove the FCC's authority to do that.

themartorana 11y ago

If maybe they could have access to your explanation...

jfoutz 11y ago

That seems so incredibly risky for ISPs. Hi, we're Alphabet. we have 50 billion dollars in cash and have rolled out residential fiber. We also have insane amounts of market data, so we'll snipe all of the high density locations and let you suffer out in the sticks. I'm not super enthusiastic about buying access from Facebook or Google, but that seems like the endgame if the ISPs really end up getting a cut of the money.

philovivero 11y ago

Net Neutrality has been going on how long? 10 years? And this is the first time I've seen anyone explain it in a way I could grok it. Not enough up-votes in the world.

ikeboy 11y ago
Except it's false. You'll note that they didn't cite any examples of ISPs demanding money to provide access. The whole concern is that ISPs might ask for money, there's no indication any have done so afaik.
- matt4077 11y ago
  Then I guess they shouldn't care about net neutrality either. But wait – why are they lobbying so hard for laws to stop it?
  - ikeboy 11y ago
    Example? They lobbied for this law, but this law doesn't stop net neutrality. They were against the original reclassification, but that's far broader than just preventing ISPs from blocking access to sites.

rina 11y ago

I am a consumer that pays Netflix. Where is that in your diagram? If Netflix wants to subsidize my Verizon bill I am okay with that. Yeah yeah I know...how will startup X have a chance to compete with Netflix then? Guess what nobody can. And even by some miracle if they get disrupted the benefits again will keep accruing to a handful of people. So what the point of the story? Netflix, Youtube, Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon are unregulated monopolies that I worry about much more than Comcast and Verizon. The EFF needs to bring that onto the table every time they talk about Net Neutrality.

matt4077 11y ago
It's debatable if a startup could compete with netflix now (I'd say there are possibilities, like starting outside the US or just being backed by content creators). What's less ambiguous is that netflix could never have started without net neutrality. If netflix has to "subsidize your verizon bill" that may be appealing at first (although I doubt you'll see any of that money). But why should verizon stop there? Why not cut out the middle man? Does verizon offer anything like netflix? Take a good look at that: it's what you're going to end up with, except that now they're still trying to complete with netflix. They won't have to do that if they're no longer required to carry netflix's traffic.

thomaskcr 11y ago

I think your explanation does miss some additional nuance though. > The problem is that this arrangement would have businesses paying money to ISPs that they didn't choose, and can't walk away from. From a consumer's perspective, if a web site is slow, it looks like the website's fault rather than their ISP's fault, which distorts the incentives. If a website is using significant resources, it shouldn't be on the ISP to subsidize their engineering. There have been plenty of websites throughout history that took up significant amounts of traffic relative to the total traffic. They always paid for leased lines (your third diagram) -- it's only recently that one very well liked company running almost entirely off Amazon decided that leased lines were extortion. If you compare the physical infrastructure of Google's YouTube or MLB.tv to Netflix, the difference is huge. Also, money doesn't always flow like that. If data is flowing equally (in bit-miles), there is generally no exchange of money. If it's not, money should flow the other way. Many of those backbone providers also were in the business-ISP market, and were leveraging their settlement free peering for more competitive pricing. When video streaming caused them to be pushing more data onto the networks than they were taking - the consumer ISPs wanted to be paid since it was no longer qualifying for settlement free.

pyvpx 11y ago
>If a website is using significant resources, it shouldn't be on the ISP to subsidize their engineering. There have been plenty of websites throughout history that took up significant amounts of traffic relative to the total traffic. They always paid for leased lines (your third diagram) -- it's only recently that one very well liked company running almost entirely off Amazon decided that leased lines were extortion. If you compare the physical infrastructure of Google's YouTube or MLB.tv to Netflix, the difference is huge. I don't follow. I am a consumer who has purchased an internet service package that advertises 100Mbps down, 10Mbps up, and 100GB of transfer every billable month. If I, the ISP, have 1000 customers fully utilizing that 100Mbps down between 6-11pm _it is my engineering problem_ Whether it is netflix, google, mlb, or literally anything else. _it is my engineering problem_ to provide the service I am charging for.
- thomaskcr 11y ago