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> [..] economic illogicality of an enterprise not being allowed to negotiate prices with its customers. See, that's where your argument makes no sense. ISPs do

> [..] economic illogicality of an enterprise not being allowed to negotiate prices with its customers. See, that's where your argument makes no sense. ISPs don't want to argue prices with their customers. They want to extort businesses that have never decided to be their customers. And you're assuming peoples' motives in the face of these people telling you that you're wrong: I actually don't have grudge with my local ISP. What is scaring me shitless is a future where the internet is just Cable TV, and where the chance to have an idea and get it out there essentially unhindered is dead, because selling your fun little game or whatever would require you to sign agreements with every single ISP in every single market that you want to target. This isn't about google. Google, Facebook, and Amazon are large enough that throttling them or blocking them would lead to a customer revolt. The large fish will be the last to ever pay. This is about the business you and I don't yet even know about, because it doesn't exist, or because it's small. No customer will ever complain if their ISP blocks your new idea, because they will never know about it.

benlorenzetti 9y ago
> See, that's where your argument makes no sense. ISPs don't want to argue prices with their customers. They want to extort businesses that have never decided to be their customers. In every willing exchange of data, both the transmitter and receiver are the ISPs' customer. > And you're assuming peoples' motives ... because selling your fun little game or whatever would require you to sign agreements with every single ISP in every single market that you want to target. > ...Google, Facebook, and Amazon are large enough that throttling them or blocking them would lead to a customer revolt. > This is about business you and I don't yet even know about, because it doesn't exist, or because it's small. This argument is clearly all about our mistrust of monopolies. You clearly don't trust ISPs as a whole, presumably because there is naturally no competition. If you and I don't know a small site exists yet, how is the ISP gonna know? And small businesses aren't going to be targets, for the same reason the IRS doesn't target the small fish with its big guns. Setting the economics aside, if one is worried about ISPs ability to target free speech by surcharging a particular site, then how is getting the federal government more involved the answer?
seanp2k2 9y ago
http://gizmodo.com/the-secret-deals-that-mean-you-have-to-wait-for-youtube-947766871/amp http://gizmodo.com/the-secret-deals-that-mean-you-have-to-wa... The big fish already do pay because ISPs hold their customers hostage. They've "opened new revenue channels" by realizing that they can just pay a small amount for lobbying efforts so FCC and friends will leave them alone to make a larger amount from content sources.
- deleted 9y ago
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- benlorenzetti 9y ago
  Thanks for finding this. This is exactly the point, we can reduce lobbying corruption by scrapping such economics-defying rules. This is completely orthogonal to real anti-trust legislation against the hardwired ISPs, which both parties seem to be incapable of. Net Neutrality didn't officially exist for the first 3 decades of the Internet; I never thought making it official policy fixed a big enough problem to make it worth the cost. A lot of data volume coming out of Google and Facebook are profitable ad images we didn't specifically request. Why shouldn't our ISPs be able charge them for this data? End user bills could fall as low as $0! But the mechanism for doing so has to be blunt and "discriminatory": you can't realistically tell what percentage of data from a domain is of a particular type nor can you keep track of, and contact, every tiny data serving domain out there.

benlorenzetti 9y ago

> See, that's where your argument makes no sense. ISPs don't want to argue prices with their customers. They want to extort businesses that have never decided to be their customers. In every willing exchange of data, both the transmitter and receiver are the ISPs' customer. > And you're assuming peoples' motives ... because selling your fun little game or whatever would require you to sign agreements with every single ISP in every single market that you want to target. > ...Google, Facebook, and Amazon are large enough that throttling them or blocking them would lead to a customer revolt. > This is about business you and I don't yet even know about, because it doesn't exist, or because it's small. This argument is clearly all about our mistrust of monopolies. You clearly don't trust ISPs as a whole, presumably because there is naturally no competition. If you and I don't know a small site exists yet, how is the ISP gonna know? And small businesses aren't going to be targets, for the same reason the IRS doesn't target the small fish with its big guns. Setting the economics aside, if one is worried about ISPs ability to target free speech by surcharging a particular site, then how is getting the federal government more involved the answer?

seanp2k2 9y ago

http://gizmodo.com/the-secret-deals-that-mean-you-have-to-wait-for-youtube-947766871/amp http://gizmodo.com/the-secret-deals-that-mean-you-have-to-wa... The big fish already do pay because ISPs hold their customers hostage. They've "opened new revenue channels" by realizing that they can just pay a small amount for lobbying efforts so FCC and friends will leave them alone to make a larger amount from content sources.

deleted 9y ago
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benlorenzetti 9y ago
Thanks for finding this. This is exactly the point, we can reduce lobbying corruption by scrapping such economics-defying rules. This is completely orthogonal to real anti-trust legislation against the hardwired ISPs, which both parties seem to be incapable of. Net Neutrality didn't officially exist for the first 3 decades of the Internet; I never thought making it official policy fixed a big enough problem to make it worth the cost. A lot of data volume coming out of Google and Facebook are profitable ad images we didn't specifically request. Why shouldn't our ISPs be able charge them for this data? End user bills could fall as low as $0! But the mechanism for doing so has to be blunt and "discriminatory": you can't realistically tell what percentage of data from a domain is of a particular type nor can you keep track of, and contact, every tiny data serving domain out there.