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It's hard for me to empathize (in the literal sense of the word) with someone who dislikes net neutrality. What're the reasons / justifications for why the cur

It's hard for me to empathize (in the literal sense of the word) with someone who dislikes net neutrality. What're the reasons / justifications for why the current laws and rules are wrong or insufficient?

unclesaamm 9y ago
The purporse of anti-net neutrality advocates is basically to make the web less free so their clients (large telcoms) can capture more profits. I think big money realized fairly late in the game that the Internet's decentralized structure makes it difficult to perform rent-seeking, so any legislation that tends to centralize the Internet is viewed as a pro by these people. In other words, it's the same effect you see in every other field -- special interest lobbyists for large corporations want to rewrite the rules to suit them, at the expense of ordinary people's privacy and a democratic Internet
derekp7 9y ago
From what I understand, there is the concern that potential new technologies wouldn't be allowed under a strict interpretation of net neutrality. For a hypothetical example: go back in time when voice over IP first came on the scene. At that time there wasn't enough excess bandwidth to guarantee voice packets would arrive on time. Now you could prioritize voice traffic, but you'd have to either charge a fee, or find a way to positively identify voice data (otherwise everyone would turn on the voice QOS flag in all their apps even if they didn't need it). This would then not be net neutral. Of course, today there is enough excessive bandwidth that voice traffic doesn't need to be prioritized. But what about an application where an expert doctor is controlling a robotic surgical instrument from cross country? Would a special service class for those packets be allowed under net neutrality laws? But the real reason, is that as soon as there is additional bandwidth available, technology finds a way to consume all of it and then some. So the ISPs want to be able to de-prioritize some heavy bandwidth users (such as bittorrent), and/or give higher priority to traffic with paying users like Netflix (for a toll fee, of course), or their own video services.
- pseudalopex 9y ago
  ISPs charging their own customers for prioritization is completely compatible with net neutrality. Detecting and prioritizing voice would be open to interpretation but would probably be considered reasonable network management. Letting people mark whatever they want as latency-sensitive but charging more for it? Totally fine.
  - derekp7 9y ago
    Of course, it is a fine line between an ISP allowing someone (who is not a customer) to pay them for higher priority, vs the ISP purposely maintaining a low quality route to certain other web sites to "encourage" them to pay up (this is what Comcast did with Netflix a while ago -- Netflix traffic came through a smaller pipe into Comcast, until Netflix paid up).
    - pseudalopex 9y ago
      It was more complicated than that. Level 3 took advantage of its peering agreement with Comcast to undercut Akamai for Netflix's business. Comcast argued that the agreement was meant for transit, not to subsidize Level 3's CDN operations. All three companies had valid points, and all three had ulterior motives.
rhino369 9y ago
I generally just don't see the point is making certain business models illegal when there wasn't anyhing that bad going on before the net neutrality laws were passed. Tmobile is certainly violating net neutrality with it's binge on and free music streaming features. But it's generally good for the consumer. All the arguments for net nuetrality sounds like slippery slope fallacies to me. "They'll block everything except their own AOL like service!" No, they very probably won't. I'd rather have a wait and see approach. If the ISPs become abuse, then we should apply net neutrality. But I see no reason why we shouldn't then apply "OS neutrality" to apple and google. Or search neutrality to google and bing. Or social networking neutrality to facebook and snap. Facebook and google actually do the sort of stuff people are upset that ISPs might do.
- pseudalopex 9y ago
  Comcast effectively blocked BitTorrent and exempted its own video service from data caps. T-Mobile throttled video that didn't participate in BingeOn. AT&T blocked FaceTime. How to regulate operating systems, search engines, or social networks, if at all, are entirely separate questions. Most American households have only one option for high-speed Internet service; nobody has to move to a different city to use a different search engine.
mstodd 9y ago
I believe the government is immoral, and people and businesses should be free to create and trade unregulated. Even if I thought net neutrality was 'good' for consumers and business and the economy, I wouldn't trust the government to pen it's legislation

unclesaamm 9y ago

The purporse of anti-net neutrality advocates is basically to make the web less free so their clients (large telcoms) can capture more profits. I think big money realized fairly late in the game that the Internet's decentralized structure makes it difficult to perform rent-seeking, so any legislation that tends to centralize the Internet is viewed as a pro by these people. In other words, it's the same effect you see in every other field -- special interest lobbyists for large corporations want to rewrite the rules to suit them, at the expense of ordinary people's privacy and a democratic Internet

derekp7 9y ago

From what I understand, there is the concern that potential new technologies wouldn't be allowed under a strict interpretation of net neutrality. For a hypothetical example: go back in time when voice over IP first came on the scene. At that time there wasn't enough excess bandwidth to guarantee voice packets would arrive on time. Now you could prioritize voice traffic, but you'd have to either charge a fee, or find a way to positively identify voice data (otherwise everyone would turn on the voice QOS flag in all their apps even if they didn't need it). This would then not be net neutral. Of course, today there is enough excessive bandwidth that voice traffic doesn't need to be prioritized. But what about an application where an expert doctor is controlling a robotic surgical instrument from cross country? Would a special service class for those packets be allowed under net neutrality laws? But the real reason, is that as soon as there is additional bandwidth available, technology finds a way to consume all of it and then some. So the ISPs want to be able to de-prioritize some heavy bandwidth users (such as bittorrent), and/or give higher priority to traffic with paying users like Netflix (for a toll fee, of course), or their own video services.

pseudalopex 9y ago
ISPs charging their own customers for prioritization is completely compatible with net neutrality. Detecting and prioritizing voice would be open to interpretation but would probably be considered reasonable network management. Letting people mark whatever they want as latency-sensitive but charging more for it? Totally fine.
- derekp7 9y ago
  Of course, it is a fine line between an ISP allowing someone (who is not a customer) to pay them for higher priority, vs the ISP purposely maintaining a low quality route to certain other web sites to "encourage" them to pay up (this is what Comcast did with Netflix a while ago -- Netflix traffic came through a smaller pipe into Comcast, until Netflix paid up).
  - pseudalopex 9y ago
    It was more complicated than that. Level 3 took advantage of its peering agreement with Comcast to undercut Akamai for Netflix's business. Comcast argued that the agreement was meant for transit, not to subsidize Level 3's CDN operations. All three companies had valid points, and all three had ulterior motives.

rhino369 9y ago

I generally just don't see the point is making certain business models illegal when there wasn't anyhing that bad going on before the net neutrality laws were passed. Tmobile is certainly violating net neutrality with it's binge on and free music streaming features. But it's generally good for the consumer. All the arguments for net nuetrality sounds like slippery slope fallacies to me. "They'll block everything except their own AOL like service!" No, they very probably won't. I'd rather have a wait and see approach. If the ISPs become abuse, then we should apply net neutrality. But I see no reason why we shouldn't then apply "OS neutrality" to apple and google. Or search neutrality to google and bing. Or social networking neutrality to facebook and snap. Facebook and google actually do the sort of stuff people are upset that ISPs might do.

pseudalopex 9y ago
Comcast effectively blocked BitTorrent and exempted its own video service from data caps. T-Mobile throttled video that didn't participate in BingeOn. AT&T blocked FaceTime. How to regulate operating systems, search engines, or social networks, if at all, are entirely separate questions. Most American households have only one option for high-speed Internet service; nobody has to move to a different city to use a different search engine.

mstodd 9y ago

I believe the government is immoral, and people and businesses should be free to create and trade unregulated. Even if I thought net neutrality was 'good' for consumers and business and the economy, I wouldn't trust the government to pen it's legislation