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I want to downvote you because of how intensely I disagree with everything you're saying, but you're saying it nicely so I won't. Instead - The major concern

I want to downvote you because of how intensely I disagree with everything you're saying, but you're saying it nicely so I won't. Instead - The major concern about losing NN is that instead of just paying for volume of data, I'll also be required to pay based on type and/or source of that data, and that the entities providing the data will also be required to pay based on type and/or destination. Do you think this concern is not valid? Why? Do you think this concern and there is a better way to address it? What? If defending it using law is wrong, what would be a right way to defend it? And if "free market" is part of you answer, can you talk about the handling of last-mile connections? Finally, I just straight up don't understand what you mean by "defend it using... force". Can you explain?

fiatjaf 9y ago
Thank you for not downvoting me. Free market would be part of my answer if I had one. I'm not well-informed enough to say much, but imagine you have a local link in a small rural town that only support some absolute number of packets or whatever: if you have one big consumer that is eating the major part of that every day, making the others miserable, isn't it reasonable to limit that consumer's bandwidth somehow? Then if some law is enacted to prevent you from limiting that consumer, then you'll either make the lives of the others miserable or you'll be forced to spend more on your link and luckily pass the cost down to all your consumers. Right? Please correct me if I'm assuming things wrong (I'm likely doing it). > The major concern about losing NN is that instead of just paying for volume of data, I'll also be required to pay based on type and/or source of that data, and that the entities providing the data will also be required to pay based on type and/or destination. I don't understand what is the problem of that. In every other situation of life you pay for the "type" of the thing you're consuming. When you go to a restaurant you don't pay for volume of food, but for the types of food you're asking. There are indeed restaurants where you pay for mass of food, but you don't have all the expensive options available. I can see a world where you would have to pay a little more for Netflix and a little less for sshing to your VPS.
- steego 9y ago
  I apologize for calling your opinion vapid in my other post. Thank you for taking the time to articulate your ideas in this post. I too am a proponent for free markets, but I have to point out that the telecommunications industry could care less about free market principles. For the last hundred years telcos have consistently lobbied the federal government for regulations that lock out competition. They pretend regulation prevents them from performing as well as they could, but the last thing they want is a minimally regulated market with a low barrier to entry. The only reason we're even having this conversation is because there was a small window of opportunity in the 90's to pass smart Telco laws that both regulated and deregulated divergent aspects of the industry. First, because the incumbent telcos enjoyed monopolies for nearly 50 years, they were obligated to lease parts of their networks to resellers like local ISPs. Had this not happened, the larger telcos and service providers could have choked the early Internet and giving us networks like AOL/MSN instead. If you truly believe in the virtue of free markets, you need to understand that powerful politically connected companies do not and they can be some of the biggest opponents of free markets while they pretend they are.
  - fiatjaf 9y ago
    Right, I understand that the telecommunications industry is not a free market in any sense. But imagine that you think NN is wrong (I no longer believe that), but since it is better than the current state of non-free-markets-plus-telcos-doing-anything-they-want, you defend NN. That just makes things worse, since it shifts the focus out of the real underlying problem (markets aren't free) and tells everybody the problem is this other one (no NN being enforced). Since imposing NN will not solve all the problems, and may as well create some new problems, the next time a problem appears the State will be prompted to introduce a new regulation, and we'll be each time farther from the free markets. Regulation brings regulation. I don't know if the above applies to this situation in particular or if we should oppose a measure that looks better just because in principle it is not the best measure.
    - steego 9y ago
      First, thank you for stepping up the level of discourse. > Since imposing NN will not solve all the problems, and may as well create some new problems, the next time a problem appears the State will be prompted to introduce a new regulation, and we'll be each time farther from the free markets. Regulation brings regulation. You bring up a good point. It too bothers me that we've resorted to NN. We shouldn't have too, and we wouldn't if we didn't already have a nearly 100 year history of corporate socialism in the telco industry, where for nearly 50 of those years, the federal government literally picked one winner. The problem is this: Money is really good at influencing politics and policy. You claim regulation brings more regulation. That's not untrue, but I suspect money in politics creates more regulation because nothing protects a market from competition than regulatory capture. Not only that, it cultivates entire industries that specialize in sucking on the government teat and rent-seeking politicians who make sure they contribute to their campaigns. Our extremely polarized voting base (I don't blame the politicians) is current incapable of sending a common coherent message to their representatives based on common American values because they can't agree on a single fucking thing. These polarized idiots are simply too emotionally immature to realize they're being emotionally manipulated. Not only that, they're too clueless to tell their politicians that they want a telecommunications industry that's based on free-market principles because they're too busy parroting talking points rather than understanding how they're being played an manipulated by special interests. Because there's not one fucking thing these right-wing and left-wing assholes can agree on, I'm not convinced we'll ever have a coherent telecommunications policy, let alone a solution to our growing problem of the influence of money in politics. NN isn't ideal, but it's a lot better giving the telcos everything and asking for nothing in return. It will only embolden them to come back and ask for more. They literally have a history of asking for federal dollars to build next generation networks and then not following through on their promises. They are trolls who live under bridges. Don't empower them. Provide incentives for them to be competitive and opportunities for new companies to challenge them.
weberc2 9y ago
I'm not opposed to NN, but your phrasing piqued my curiosity: Why is it bad that ISPs charge us based on type/source of data? Should grocery stores charge us by volume (mass?) of food instead of by type/source/etc? If aggregating costs is indeed more moral, why should it be enforced by law (as opposed to the food example)? Providing robust answers to these questions should strengthen the NN position.
- redial 9y ago
  It is not bad per se, but it is not what the internet is. The moment they start charging based on content is the moment that it becomes something different. Right now is like a public road, with free and equal access for every body, and thus, an economy can be built around it. If you change it to the store model, it morphs from an economy to a business, and businesses are not capable of supporting an entire economy built on top, so it won't.
  - drdaeman 9y ago
    Ahem. I think public roads sometimes have, e.g., limits for heavy vehicles or various dedicated lanes. ;) My actual point is, analogies just don't work.
    - redial 9y ago
      Roads have the limits of the infrastructure and the law, not "limits" determined by the current operator of the road (that can be bypassed with payments, and thus not limits in the same sense). The grocery store analogy doesn't work. The road or electric grid analogies are perfectly apt.
      - weberc2 9y ago
        The "because I say so" argument isn't very compelling. I probably agree with your conclusion, but the argument is lazy.
        9y ago
PhasmaFelis 9y ago
> Finally, I just straight up don't understand what you mean by "defend it using... force". Can you explain? It's a common refrain from some types of libertarians. The basic logic is that all laws are morally equivalent to holding a gun to someone's head, therefore it's immoral to pass laws regarding anything that's not worth killing over.
- BearGoesChirp 9y ago
  It isn't that the law is morally equivalent to holding a gun to someone's head, but that the law has penalties that are enforced on pain of greater penalties, which will eventually lead back to violence being used. Say you get a fine over some law. Doesn't matter what, but let's say it is a minor fine over a law you disagree with. So you refuse to pay it. Now perhaps it ends there, with the law not being fully enforced (with sometimes does happen). But what else could happen is that you are summoned to court concerning the fine. Now the punishment for the fine includes a court summon. So in protest of the fine being wrong, you choose to not go to court or go to court and refuse to court order to pay the fine. Either way, the court will either drop it (unlikely at this point) or you could be arrested for refusing a court order (you don't go to prison for a debt, you go to prison for refusing a court order to pay a debt, which seems to be an important distinction for some reason I can't see). Now you either submit to being arrested, or violence will be used against you. Under this reasoning, that original law is backed by violence. Either a law ends up not being enforced or being enforced with an eventual threat of violence. There are cases where there is little chance of it ever having someone protest it. One example people use to counter with that seems to work at first is government restrictions on limiting licensing. For example, take a law that says government has to approve a license for some activity if it doesn't given a definite disapproval within a week of application. In this case, breaking the law would be done by someone at the government either refusing to give approval at all or giving a no after the deadline to give a no has passed. One likely result is someone who didn't follow the law getting fired, but in this case it is the government overriding itself and eventually following the law. But assuming that every manager approved of violating the law such that no one was fired and the office in question maintained its stance, then the party that requested approval will have cause to sue the government. At which point the court will make specific orders (such as demanding testimony or demanding certain actions be performed), and any person directly disobeying those will now face possibly being arrested, which is when violence comes into play. Or the court could choose to not make any demands, at which point the government is choosing to not enforce the law. A practical example of this is to look at the individuals who refused to give marriage license to same sex couples. Either someone higher overrode them and someone else (representing the government) gave out the license or they were sent to jail (with the threat of violence if they did not obey).

fiatjaf 9y ago

Thank you for not downvoting me. Free market would be part of my answer if I had one. I'm not well-informed enough to say much, but imagine you have a local link in a small rural town that only support some absolute number of packets or whatever: if you have one big consumer that is eating the major part of that every day, making the others miserable, isn't it reasonable to limit that consumer's bandwidth somehow? Then if some law is enacted to prevent you from limiting that consumer, then you'll either make the lives of the others miserable or you'll be forced to spend more on your link and luckily pass the cost down to all your consumers. Right? Please correct me if I'm assuming things wrong (I'm likely doing it). > The major concern about losing NN is that instead of just paying for volume of data, I'll also be required to pay based on type and/or source of that data, and that the entities providing the data will also be required to pay based on type and/or destination. I don't understand what is the problem of that. In every other situation of life you pay for the "type" of the thing you're consuming. When you go to a restaurant you don't pay for volume of food, but for the types of food you're asking. There are indeed restaurants where you pay for mass of food, but you don't have all the expensive options available. I can see a world where you would have to pay a little more for Netflix and a little less for sshing to your VPS.

steego 9y ago
I apologize for calling your opinion vapid in my other post. Thank you for taking the time to articulate your ideas in this post. I too am a proponent for free markets, but I have to point out that the telecommunications industry could care less about free market principles. For the last hundred years telcos have consistently lobbied the federal government for regulations that lock out competition. They pretend regulation prevents them from performing as well as they could, but the last thing they want is a minimally regulated market with a low barrier to entry. The only reason we're even having this conversation is because there was a small window of opportunity in the 90's to pass smart Telco laws that both regulated and deregulated divergent aspects of the industry. First, because the incumbent telcos enjoyed monopolies for nearly 50 years, they were obligated to lease parts of their networks to resellers like local ISPs. Had this not happened, the larger telcos and service providers could have choked the early Internet and giving us networks like AOL/MSN instead. If you truly believe in the virtue of free markets, you need to understand that powerful politically connected companies do not and they can be some of the biggest opponents of free markets while they pretend they are.
- fiatjaf 9y ago
  Right, I understand that the telecommunications industry is not a free market in any sense. But imagine that you think NN is wrong (I no longer believe that), but since it is better than the current state of non-free-markets-plus-telcos-doing-anything-they-want, you defend NN. That just makes things worse, since it shifts the focus out of the real underlying problem (markets aren't free) and tells everybody the problem is this other one (no NN being enforced). Since imposing NN will not solve all the problems, and may as well create some new problems, the next time a problem appears the State will be prompted to introduce a new regulation, and we'll be each time farther from the free markets. Regulation brings regulation. I don't know if the above applies to this situation in particular or if we should oppose a measure that looks better just because in principle it is not the best measure.
  - steego 9y ago
    First, thank you for stepping up the level of discourse. > Since imposing NN will not solve all the problems, and may as well create some new problems, the next time a problem appears the State will be prompted to introduce a new regulation, and we'll be each time farther from the free markets. Regulation brings regulation. You bring up a good point. It too bothers me that we've resorted to NN. We shouldn't have too, and we wouldn't if we didn't already have a nearly 100 year history of corporate socialism in the telco industry, where for nearly 50 of those years, the federal government literally picked one winner. The problem is this: Money is really good at influencing politics and policy. You claim regulation brings more regulation. That's not untrue, but I suspect money in politics creates more regulation because nothing protects a market from competition than regulatory capture. Not only that, it cultivates entire industries that specialize in sucking on the government teat and rent-seeking politicians who make sure they contribute to their campaigns. Our extremely polarized voting base (I don't blame the politicians) is current incapable of sending a common coherent message to their representatives based on common American values because they can't agree on a single fucking thing. These polarized idiots are simply too emotionally immature to realize they're being emotionally manipulated. Not only that, they're too clueless to tell their politicians that they want a telecommunications industry that's based on free-market principles because they're too busy parroting talking points rather than understanding how they're being played an manipulated by special interests. Because there's not one fucking thing these right-wing and left-wing assholes can agree on, I'm not convinced we'll ever have a coherent telecommunications policy, let alone a solution to our growing problem of the influence of money in politics. NN isn't ideal, but it's a lot better giving the telcos everything and asking for nothing in return. It will only embolden them to come back and ask for more. They literally have a history of asking for federal dollars to build next generation networks and then not following through on their promises. They are trolls who live under bridges. Don't empower them. Provide incentives for them to be competitive and opportunities for new companies to challenge them.

weberc2 9y ago

I'm not opposed to NN, but your phrasing piqued my curiosity: Why is it bad that ISPs charge us based on type/source of data? Should grocery stores charge us by volume (mass?) of food instead of by type/source/etc? If aggregating costs is indeed more moral, why should it be enforced by law (as opposed to the food example)? Providing robust answers to these questions should strengthen the NN position.

redial 9y ago
It is not bad per se, but it is not what the internet is. The moment they start charging based on content is the moment that it becomes something different. Right now is like a public road, with free and equal access for every body, and thus, an economy can be built around it. If you change it to the store model, it morphs from an economy to a business, and businesses are not capable of supporting an entire economy built on top, so it won't.
- drdaeman 9y ago
  Ahem. I think public roads sometimes have, e.g., limits for heavy vehicles or various dedicated lanes. ;) My actual point is, analogies just don't work.
  - redial 9y ago
    Roads have the limits of the infrastructure and the law, not "limits" determined by the current operator of the road (that can be bypassed with payments, and thus not limits in the same sense). The grocery store analogy doesn't work. The road or electric grid analogies are perfectly apt.
    - weberc2 9y ago
      The "because I say so" argument isn't very compelling. I probably agree with your conclusion, but the argument is lazy.
      - 9y ago

PhasmaFelis 9y ago

> Finally, I just straight up don't understand what you mean by "defend it using... force". Can you explain? It's a common refrain from some types of libertarians. The basic logic is that all laws are morally equivalent to holding a gun to someone's head, therefore it's immoral to pass laws regarding anything that's not worth killing over.

BearGoesChirp 9y ago
It isn't that the law is morally equivalent to holding a gun to someone's head, but that the law has penalties that are enforced on pain of greater penalties, which will eventually lead back to violence being used. Say you get a fine over some law. Doesn't matter what, but let's say it is a minor fine over a law you disagree with. So you refuse to pay it. Now perhaps it ends there, with the law not being fully enforced (with sometimes does happen). But what else could happen is that you are summoned to court concerning the fine. Now the punishment for the fine includes a court summon. So in protest of the fine being wrong, you choose to not go to court or go to court and refuse to court order to pay the fine. Either way, the court will either drop it (unlikely at this point) or you could be arrested for refusing a court order (you don't go to prison for a debt, you go to prison for refusing a court order to pay a debt, which seems to be an important distinction for some reason I can't see). Now you either submit to being arrested, or violence will be used against you. Under this reasoning, that original law is backed by violence. Either a law ends up not being enforced or being enforced with an eventual threat of violence. There are cases where there is little chance of it ever having someone protest it. One example people use to counter with that seems to work at first is government restrictions on limiting licensing. For example, take a law that says government has to approve a license for some activity if it doesn't given a definite disapproval within a week of application. In this case, breaking the law would be done by someone at the government either refusing to give approval at all or giving a no after the deadline to give a no has passed. One likely result is someone who didn't follow the law getting fired, but in this case it is the government overriding itself and eventually following the law. But assuming that every manager approved of violating the law such that no one was fired and the office in question maintained its stance, then the party that requested approval will have cause to sue the government. At which point the court will make specific orders (such as demanding testimony or demanding certain actions be performed), and any person directly disobeying those will now face possibly being arrested, which is when violence comes into play. Or the court could choose to not make any demands, at which point the government is choosing to not enforce the law. A practical example of this is to look at the individuals who refused to give marriage license to same sex couples. Either someone higher overrode them and someone else (representing the government) gave out the license or they were sent to jail (with the threat of violence if they did not obey).