6 ms·

July 12th: Internet-Wide Day of Action to Save Net Neutrality

160 points by btrask 9y ago

danjoc 9y ago
Am I the only one who has started to feel like a useful idiot defending the big 5's riches? What we have now isn't a neutral net. We're complaining about traffic shaping by ISPs, while big 5 are shaping it already, deciding what we read, what we can download, and who we mingle with.
- sigmar 9y ago
  >We're complaining about traffic shaping by ISPs, while big 5 are shaping it already, deciding what we read, what we can download, and who we mingle with. What? I'm not sure I understand your position, but removing all FCC rules on Net Neutrality are not going to make any of that stuff better.
  - danjoc 9y ago
    >removing all FCC rules on Net Neutrality are not going to make any of that stuff better I'm saying I'm not sure it makes it worse. The current rules seem to make the big 5 as winners at the expense of the ISPs. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/opinion/is-big-tech-too-powerful-ask-google.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/opinion/is-big-tech-too-p...
    - wfo 9y ago
      The monopolist ISPs that are regularly voted by far the most hated companies in the country are making plenty of money and doing just fine. If you want to talk about antitrust action against the big 5, I'm absolutely with you -- they are monopolists and they need to be broken up. But your solution is to redistribute ultimate power back to the most hated monopolists in the country? Who have a physical monopoly, often enforced by law and physical reality, not because people of mindshare and some unpleasant anti competitive bundling? The gilded age was worse than the 90s. Then 90s was not great, but we punished Microsoft and moved on to something better. The solution is NOT to return to the gilded age with ISPs as modern monopolist robber barons which is what removing NN does. At this point, I'm glad the big 5 are ultra powerful -- they are the only entities with the power to support consumers (the government won't) if they choose to do so. And sometimes, they do. Amazon is, for example.
- plandis 9y ago
  > We're complaining about traffic shaping by ISPs, while big 5 are shaping it already, deciding what we read, what we can download, and who we mingle with. What companies are you including in your "big 5"? I don't think any of the typical big tech companies have monopolies in the same way that I only have 1 and only 1 ISP from which to chose.
  - danjoc 9y ago
    >What companies are you including in your "big 5"? Google/Amazon/Facebook/Microsoft/Apple. >I don't think any of the typical big tech companies have monopolies in the same way If you buy a Google Home, you're basically fighting an uphill battle to use something other than Google Play music, right? If you have Comcast, then they make using Netflix a battle vs Comcast's own on demand video, how is that different? >I only have 1 and only 1 ISP from which to chose. You don't consider AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint an ISP? Those four are pretty universally available in the US, and for a lot of people, mobile carriers are their primary ISP.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - AlexB138 9y ago
      > If you buy a Google Home, you're basically fighting an uphill battle to use something other than Google Play music, right? If you have Comcast, then they make using Netflix a battle vs Comcast's own on demand video, how is that different? It's different both because I can easily live without a Google Home in modern society, but not without the internet, and because there is actual competition in the Home assistant/automation market, where there is none in the ISP market in much of the US. The necessity of the underlying service being controlled is significantly different, to the point many see the Internet as a utility, and the actual ability of a consumer to make a decision is wildly different.
      - danjoc 9y ago
        >there is actual competition in the Home assistant/automation market, where there is none in the ISP market in much of the US. What is your definition of an ISP? A cable company? Dish is an ISP, the four major mobile operators are ISPs, Verizon even has fiber service in some areas. In most of the US, you have about as many choices in ISPs as you have in Google Home/Alexa/iWhatevers.
- bogomipz 9y ago
  The "neutral" part of Net Neutrality refers to the delivery of the bits by the ISPs not the sender of those bits. If Net Neutrality goes away wouldn't it actually strengthen the position of the current dominant players? They are the ones who can more easily afford to pay for preferred delivery no?
  - danjoc 9y ago
    >If Net Neutrality goes away wouldn't it actually strengthen the position of the current dominant players? Would it? I'm under the impression, many of the companies big enough to muster some form of competition against the Big 5 are the ISPs who would be negatively impacted by Title 2 rules. >They are the ones who can more easily afford to pay for preferred delivery no? I suppose the ISP could cut them off and offer their own versions of the services. It wouldn't be very much different than how Apple dictates what you can and can't do on their mobile devices.
    - bogomipz 9y ago
      >"I'm under the impression, many of the companies big enough to muster some form of competition against the Big 5 are the ISPs" So you believe that those ISPs that are mostly local monopolies(maybe part of a duopoly at best)are going to provide competition? How as has that been working out so far? The average American now pays $103.00 a month for crap cable service and crap equipment[1]. And that price is only increasing[2]. In fact cable TV price increases have outpaced inflation every year for the last 20 years[3]. Also it's not just video and music streaming bits that could be de-prioritized in the absence of Net Neutrality, its all bits. The last time I checked none of these ISPs operated all the other things I use the internet for like reading news, shopping, checking email and making travel arrangements. Do you imagine they will offer competition there too as soon as they aren't bound by Title II? Look at any Cable provider's on-screen interface for the channel guide or the plastic remote that hasn't changed in 20 years that you need to use to navigate it. Do these give you the impression these are innovative companies capable of building good software and competing? Lastly there are other ISPs besides the eye ball/last mile networks(Comcast/Time Warner/Charter etc.) There are also the Tier 1 ISPs[4] that internet companies buy transit from in order to deliver their service to end users. If Net Neutrality goes away those Tier 1 ISPs that own national backbones and are upstream from all the eye ball/last mile networks are free to "play games" with delivering bits as well. [1] http://www.leichtmanresearch.com/press/092316release.html http://www.leichtmanresearch.com/press/092316release.html [2] http://www.consumerreports.org/tv-services/your-cable-bill-is-going-up-more-than-you-think-this-year/ http://www.consumerreports.org/tv-services/your-cable-bill-i... [3] http://www.businessinsider.com/cable-tv-prices-inflation-chart-2016-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/cable-tv-prices-inflation-cha... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network
- FullMtlAlcoholc 9y ago
  That may be, but it is a vastly better outcome than giving comcast, att et al more power.
  - danjoc 9y ago
    Not enacting Title 2 does nothing. It doesn't give Comcast, AT&T, or any other company any power they don't already have. Net Neutrality is currently an argument against status quo as I understand it.
- jcastro 9y ago
  If you don't like incumbent internet companies then not having net neutrality will ensure that no competitors ever displace them.
- laughingman2 9y ago
  It will become even more monopolised without protection in isp level. Assholes at Netflix who supported it now turn their backs because they have become big company that now no longer needs net neutrality to grow..
protomyth 9y ago
Is there an actual technical definition of what Net Neutrality means with some document a Representative or Senator could put in a bill and a network engineer could look at the network setup and say if it conforms or doesn't? I've heard some definitions that don't square with what I believe the statement means.
- erentz 9y ago
  I'd define true net neutrality quite simply as delivering the same performance to all traffic regardless of source or content of that traffic. That said QoS and other more complicated traffic engineering mechanisms are widely implemented and seems kind of hard to get rid of. Google for example makes use of egress peer engineering techniques to ensure certain applications of theirs will take lower latency paths to customers, while they may shed other traffic from customer VMs in Google cloud to higher latency paths. Or we might move Skype traffic onto low latency backbone paths and give it lower latency over some other traffic that we can't identify. Does this count as non-neutral? If so, that's a really-really big deal for all the cloud providers, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google who do this.
  - _red 9y ago
    >I'd define true net neutrality quite simply as delivering the same performance to all traffic regardless of source or content of that traffic. That requires bending the laws of physics to implement. Google fiber will always be able to deliver Youtube content faster than anyone else, the speed of light being what it is and all....or perhaps you are suggesting they should be forced to house their servers in Comcast Data Centers? >QoS and other more complicated traffic engineering mechanisms are widely implemented and seems kind of hard to get rid of. Its more than just that. The entire communications infrastructure -- not just internet but nearly all form of comms -- embed within themselves the notion of over-subscription. The phone company, internet ISP, postal service all have more potential demand than they have available bandwidth. QoS must be implemented otherwise these services would simply collapse. Moreover, If I pay for 1Gb internet and you pay for dial-up is that "neutral"? Is it legal for me to pay you extra to route my VOIP traffic with priority? Or should that be banned? NN was a very very clever name for a political regulatory move. Unfortunately when people try to get to the task of defining it they uncover that its basically a solution in search of a problem.
clishem 9y ago
It asks for my ZIP so this action is not Internet-wide.
- bogomipz 9y ago
  The zip code field is optional as is phone number. Note the absence of asterisks.
austincheney 9y ago
They are equating this with SOPA... I just lost interest.
- mekarpeles 9y ago
  Why did you lose interest? Both SOPA and Docket 17-108 fundamentally address freedom of speech on the Internet. The outcome of the SOPA fight was the 2015 Open Internet Order (which ostensibly treats the Internet as a public utility and protects against both government and corporate attempts at censorship). Docket 17-108 (what this is about) reverses the 2015 outcome and gives ISPs discretion to regulate the web and slow down or block companies with competing services, which is what they did in 2011 and a reason why the Open Internet Order was crafted[1]. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/verizon-blocking-google-wallet-2011-12?IR=T http://www.businessinsider.com/verizon-blocking-google-walle...
  - austincheney 9y ago
    Neither issue is directly related to freedom of speech. Net Neutrality is indirectly (extremely indirectly) due to throttling based upon bandwidth and content factors that could influence the types of content a user prefers to receive. SOPA had absolutely no bearing on freedom of speech. SOPA would have made internet publishers liable for the content they publish via user submission. The result is that a content owner could then sue the publisher, who currently hides behind DMCA, instead of needing to perform the more extensive discovery to sue to violating user who submitted the work. Internet publishers are still liable, even without SOPA, if they fail to respond and take necessary action against a violating user in response to a DCMA take down notice. By equating net neutrality, an almost absolute good, with SOPA this looks much more like an excuse to protest something instead of actual substance.
umatrixvictim 9y ago
It's frustrating I have to enable umpteen domains in UMatrix to even attempt to sign up. Why did you need JavaScript for a basic form submission?
skrebbel 9y ago
Maybe I'm stupid, but what's the point of internet-wide action for a national bill? I'm not represented in any US politician. I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to do here..
- clishem 9y ago
  It's not internet-wide. They mention the FCC as if non-US citizens are supposed to know what that is. They ask for a zip code, without asking for a country. The phone number they listed will not work anywhere but in the US. The address listed in their privacy policy does not name a country. All this leads me to believe that the people behind this think the Internet only exists in the US, or that they are not even aware there are other countries besides the US. Don't worry, you're not the one that's stupid here.
cddotdotslash 9y ago
Putting banners on the site or small statements at the top urging users to call their representatives is helpful, but if they really wanted to get the point across, Google, Amazon, etc could intentionally slow the traffic of representatives from DC involved in this bill. Better yet, Google should push their pages to the fifth page of search results or just delist them all together. Imagine the outcry if all the sudden, the Facebook and Twitter pages for these reps got "deprioritized." Tech companies have the ability to make an impactful statement like that, but instead we'll get a little blurb at the top of the site and business as usual.
- pvnick 9y ago
  Something about large corporations bullying government officials into enacting their preferred legislation doesn't sit right with me.
  - inetknght 9y ago
    Honestly, I think that's rather the point though.
  - coolgeek 9y ago
    Not disagreeing with you, but something about large corporations buying government officials to enact their preferred legislation doesn't sit right with me.

160 points by btrask 9y ago

Am I the only one who has started to feel like a useful idiot defending the big 5's riches? What we have now isn't a neutral net. We're complaining about traffic shaping by ISPs, while big 5 are shaping it already, deciding what we read, what we can download, and who we mingle with.

sigmar 9y ago
>We're complaining about traffic shaping by ISPs, while big 5 are shaping it already, deciding what we read, what we can download, and who we mingle with. What? I'm not sure I understand your position, but removing all FCC rules on Net Neutrality are not going to make any of that stuff better.
- danjoc 9y ago
  >removing all FCC rules on Net Neutrality are not going to make any of that stuff better I'm saying I'm not sure it makes it worse. The current rules seem to make the big 5 as winners at the expense of the ISPs. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/opinion/is-big-tech-too-powerful-ask-google.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/opinion/is-big-tech-too-p...
  - wfo 9y ago
    The monopolist ISPs that are regularly voted by far the most hated companies in the country are making plenty of money and doing just fine. If you want to talk about antitrust action against the big 5, I'm absolutely with you -- they are monopolists and they need to be broken up. But your solution is to redistribute ultimate power back to the most hated monopolists in the country? Who have a physical monopoly, often enforced by law and physical reality, not because people of mindshare and some unpleasant anti competitive bundling? The gilded age was worse than the 90s. Then 90s was not great, but we punished Microsoft and moved on to something better. The solution is NOT to return to the gilded age with ISPs as modern monopolist robber barons which is what removing NN does. At this point, I'm glad the big 5 are ultra powerful -- they are the only entities with the power to support consumers (the government won't) if they choose to do so. And sometimes, they do. Amazon is, for example.
plandis 9y ago
> We're complaining about traffic shaping by ISPs, while big 5 are shaping it already, deciding what we read, what we can download, and who we mingle with. What companies are you including in your "big 5"? I don't think any of the typical big tech companies have monopolies in the same way that I only have 1 and only 1 ISP from which to chose.
- danjoc 9y ago
  >What companies are you including in your "big 5"? Google/Amazon/Facebook/Microsoft/Apple. >I don't think any of the typical big tech companies have monopolies in the same way If you buy a Google Home, you're basically fighting an uphill battle to use something other than Google Play music, right? If you have Comcast, then they make using Netflix a battle vs Comcast's own on demand video, how is that different? >I only have 1 and only 1 ISP from which to chose. You don't consider AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint an ISP? Those four are pretty universally available in the US, and for a lot of people, mobile carriers are their primary ISP.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - AlexB138 9y ago
    > If you buy a Google Home, you're basically fighting an uphill battle to use something other than Google Play music, right? If you have Comcast, then they make using Netflix a battle vs Comcast's own on demand video, how is that different? It's different both because I can easily live without a Google Home in modern society, but not without the internet, and because there is actual competition in the Home assistant/automation market, where there is none in the ISP market in much of the US. The necessity of the underlying service being controlled is significantly different, to the point many see the Internet as a utility, and the actual ability of a consumer to make a decision is wildly different.
    - danjoc 9y ago
      >there is actual competition in the Home assistant/automation market, where there is none in the ISP market in much of the US. What is your definition of an ISP? A cable company? Dish is an ISP, the four major mobile operators are ISPs, Verizon even has fiber service in some areas. In most of the US, you have about as many choices in ISPs as you have in Google Home/Alexa/iWhatevers.
bogomipz 9y ago
The "neutral" part of Net Neutrality refers to the delivery of the bits by the ISPs not the sender of those bits. If Net Neutrality goes away wouldn't it actually strengthen the position of the current dominant players? They are the ones who can more easily afford to pay for preferred delivery no?
- danjoc 9y ago
  >If Net Neutrality goes away wouldn't it actually strengthen the position of the current dominant players? Would it? I'm under the impression, many of the companies big enough to muster some form of competition against the Big 5 are the ISPs who would be negatively impacted by Title 2 rules. >They are the ones who can more easily afford to pay for preferred delivery no? I suppose the ISP could cut them off and offer their own versions of the services. It wouldn't be very much different than how Apple dictates what you can and can't do on their mobile devices.
  - bogomipz 9y ago
    >"I'm under the impression, many of the companies big enough to muster some form of competition against the Big 5 are the ISPs" So you believe that those ISPs that are mostly local monopolies(maybe part of a duopoly at best)are going to provide competition? How as has that been working out so far? The average American now pays $103.00 a month for crap cable service and crap equipment[1]. And that price is only increasing[2]. In fact cable TV price increases have outpaced inflation every year for the last 20 years[3]. Also it's not just video and music streaming bits that could be de-prioritized in the absence of Net Neutrality, its all bits. The last time I checked none of these ISPs operated all the other things I use the internet for like reading news, shopping, checking email and making travel arrangements. Do you imagine they will offer competition there too as soon as they aren't bound by Title II? Look at any Cable provider's on-screen interface for the channel guide or the plastic remote that hasn't changed in 20 years that you need to use to navigate it. Do these give you the impression these are innovative companies capable of building good software and competing? Lastly there are other ISPs besides the eye ball/last mile networks(Comcast/Time Warner/Charter etc.) There are also the Tier 1 ISPs[4] that internet companies buy transit from in order to deliver their service to end users. If Net Neutrality goes away those Tier 1 ISPs that own national backbones and are upstream from all the eye ball/last mile networks are free to "play games" with delivering bits as well. [1] http://www.leichtmanresearch.com/press/092316release.html http://www.leichtmanresearch.com/press/092316release.html [2] http://www.consumerreports.org/tv-services/your-cable-bill-is-going-up-more-than-you-think-this-year/ http://www.consumerreports.org/tv-services/your-cable-bill-i... [3] http://www.businessinsider.com/cable-tv-prices-inflation-chart-2016-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/cable-tv-prices-inflation-cha... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network
FullMtlAlcoholc 9y ago
That may be, but it is a vastly better outcome than giving comcast, att et al more power.
- danjoc 9y ago
  Not enacting Title 2 does nothing. It doesn't give Comcast, AT&T, or any other company any power they don't already have. Net Neutrality is currently an argument against status quo as I understand it.
jcastro 9y ago
If you don't like incumbent internet companies then not having net neutrality will ensure that no competitors ever displace them.
laughingman2 9y ago
It will become even more monopolised without protection in isp level. Assholes at Netflix who supported it now turn their backs because they have become big company that now no longer needs net neutrality to grow..

protomyth 9y ago

Is there an actual technical definition of what Net Neutrality means with some document a Representative or Senator could put in a bill and a network engineer could look at the network setup and say if it conforms or doesn't? I've heard some definitions that don't square with what I believe the statement means.

erentz 9y ago
I'd define true net neutrality quite simply as delivering the same performance to all traffic regardless of source or content of that traffic. That said QoS and other more complicated traffic engineering mechanisms are widely implemented and seems kind of hard to get rid of. Google for example makes use of egress peer engineering techniques to ensure certain applications of theirs will take lower latency paths to customers, while they may shed other traffic from customer VMs in Google cloud to higher latency paths. Or we might move Skype traffic onto low latency backbone paths and give it lower latency over some other traffic that we can't identify. Does this count as non-neutral? If so, that's a really-really big deal for all the cloud providers, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google who do this.
- _red 9y ago
  >I'd define true net neutrality quite simply as delivering the same performance to all traffic regardless of source or content of that traffic. That requires bending the laws of physics to implement. Google fiber will always be able to deliver Youtube content faster than anyone else, the speed of light being what it is and all....or perhaps you are suggesting they should be forced to house their servers in Comcast Data Centers? >QoS and other more complicated traffic engineering mechanisms are widely implemented and seems kind of hard to get rid of. Its more than just that. The entire communications infrastructure -- not just internet but nearly all form of comms -- embed within themselves the notion of over-subscription. The phone company, internet ISP, postal service all have more potential demand than they have available bandwidth. QoS must be implemented otherwise these services would simply collapse. Moreover, If I pay for 1Gb internet and you pay for dial-up is that "neutral"? Is it legal for me to pay you extra to route my VOIP traffic with priority? Or should that be banned? NN was a very very clever name for a political regulatory move. Unfortunately when people try to get to the task of defining it they uncover that its basically a solution in search of a problem.

clishem 9y ago

It asks for my ZIP so this action is not Internet-wide.

bogomipz 9y ago
The zip code field is optional as is phone number. Note the absence of asterisks.

austincheney 9y ago

They are equating this with SOPA... I just lost interest.

mekarpeles 9y ago
Why did you lose interest? Both SOPA and Docket 17-108 fundamentally address freedom of speech on the Internet. The outcome of the SOPA fight was the 2015 Open Internet Order (which ostensibly treats the Internet as a public utility and protects against both government and corporate attempts at censorship). Docket 17-108 (what this is about) reverses the 2015 outcome and gives ISPs discretion to regulate the web and slow down or block companies with competing services, which is what they did in 2011 and a reason why the Open Internet Order was crafted[1]. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/verizon-blocking-google-wallet-2011-12?IR=T http://www.businessinsider.com/verizon-blocking-google-walle...
- austincheney 9y ago
  Neither issue is directly related to freedom of speech. Net Neutrality is indirectly (extremely indirectly) due to throttling based upon bandwidth and content factors that could influence the types of content a user prefers to receive. SOPA had absolutely no bearing on freedom of speech. SOPA would have made internet publishers liable for the content they publish via user submission. The result is that a content owner could then sue the publisher, who currently hides behind DMCA, instead of needing to perform the more extensive discovery to sue to violating user who submitted the work. Internet publishers are still liable, even without SOPA, if they fail to respond and take necessary action against a violating user in response to a DCMA take down notice. By equating net neutrality, an almost absolute good, with SOPA this looks much more like an excuse to protest something instead of actual substance.

umatrixvictim 9y ago

It's frustrating I have to enable umpteen domains in UMatrix to even attempt to sign up. Why did you need JavaScript for a basic form submission?

skrebbel 9y ago

Maybe I'm stupid, but what's the point of internet-wide action for a national bill? I'm not represented in any US politician. I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to do here..

clishem 9y ago
It's not internet-wide. They mention the FCC as if non-US citizens are supposed to know what that is. They ask for a zip code, without asking for a country. The phone number they listed will not work anywhere but in the US. The address listed in their privacy policy does not name a country. All this leads me to believe that the people behind this think the Internet only exists in the US, or that they are not even aware there are other countries besides the US. Don't worry, you're not the one that's stupid here.

cddotdotslash 9y ago

Putting banners on the site or small statements at the top urging users to call their representatives is helpful, but if they really wanted to get the point across, Google, Amazon, etc could intentionally slow the traffic of representatives from DC involved in this bill. Better yet, Google should push their pages to the fifth page of search results or just delist them all together. Imagine the outcry if all the sudden, the Facebook and Twitter pages for these reps got "deprioritized." Tech companies have the ability to make an impactful statement like that, but instead we'll get a little blurb at the top of the site and business as usual.

pvnick 9y ago
Something about large corporations bullying government officials into enacting their preferred legislation doesn't sit right with me.
- inetknght 9y ago
  Honestly, I think that's rather the point though.
- coolgeek 9y ago
  Not disagreeing with you, but something about large corporations buying government officials to enact their preferred legislation doesn't sit right with me.