22 ms·

Join the Battle for Net Neutrality

1269 points by rayalez 9y ago

Clanan 9y ago
I'm on the fence regarding this issue. The scaremongering on both sides is absolutely ridiculous. The planned order hasn't even been released! On the one hand, I can see why monopolistic powers in the hands of ISPs would be bad, but I like that the order would restore "police" powers to the FTC instead of the FCC, and I can't blame ISPs for wanting a piece of the $ pie. And it's not like the internet was a horrible wasteland until 2015. But then again, Pai plan proponents keep saying this will spawn more innovation and improve utilities. That sounds pretty dubious and I haven't seen much proof. I don't recall any big innovation suddenly being stifled in 2015. In my perfect world, the regulatory power would go back to the FTC but it would at the same time release a plan for opening up internet utility access so small players can compete with the big ones.
- neuterlize 9y ago
  > The planned order hasn't even been released! Be that time it'll probably be too late. > On the one hand, I can see why monopolistic powers in the hands of ISPs would be bad, but I like that the order would restore "police" powers to the FTC instead of the FCC, The FTC is not the correct body to "police" broadband. > and I can't blame ISPs for wanting a piece of the $ pie. I can. They are already getting paid. They should not be able to go back for seconds. > And it's not like the internet was a horrible wasteland until 2015. That's because network neutrality was the default state before. It's only now that is becoming feasible both from a technical and business perspective to violate network neutrality. > But then again, Pai plan proponents keep saying this will spawn more innovation and improve utilities. That sounds pretty dubious and I haven't seen much proof. I don't recall any big innovation suddenly being stifled in 2015 Yeah, that's just a load of bullshit. CEOs have gone on record that NN will not affect business or investments. > In my perfect world, the regulatory power would go back to the FTC but it would at the same time release a plan for opening up internet utility access so small players can compete with the big ones. Too bad we already had that, minus the FTC part. Fat chance of getting it back.
wavesounds 9y ago
"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." - Robert F Kennedy
kpennell 9y ago
Oakland reporting, Barbara Lee's box is full. Will try again soon.
RIMR 9y ago
I am firmly in support of net neutrality, but I am also sick and tired of all the ridiculous misinformation about what it actually is. At least on Reddit, people would have you believe that the Internet is about to become Cable TV. Net Neutrality is very important to a free and open Internet, but the kind of scaremongering I see going on is absolutely insane. We won't win this fight with scary lies. Do your part and make sure your peers are educated as to the real consequences of this repeal. None of this "You must pay to view additional posts on this website" or "Imagine if EA were your ISP" nonsense.
- api 9y ago
  Look at what ISPs do in Portugal, which lacks any kind of net neutrality. They are already trying to bundle sites and protocols like cable channels. It's not far fetched at all.
  - tonyztan 9y ago
    Here's a screenshot from the Portuguese ISP's pricing page: https://twitter.com/RoKhanna/status/923701871092441088 https://twitter.com/RoKhanna/status/923701871092441088 Exactly like a cable bundle.
    - LastZactionHero 9y ago
      I'm all for net neutrality, but it feels important to note that this is for mobile service: https://www.meo.pt/internet/internet-movel/telemovel/pacotes-com-telemovel https://www.meo.pt/internet/internet-movel/telemovel/pacotes... Also, it looks like the same company provides gigabit internet for $50/mo: https://www.meo.pt/pacotes/mais-pacotes/fibra/net-voz https://www.meo.pt/pacotes/mais-pacotes/fibra/net-voz Again, I support net neutrality, but it's still technically better than my Comcast.
      - rory096 9y ago
        >I'm all for net neutrality, but it feels important to note that this is for mobile service: The current net neutrality regulations apply to both fixed and mobile broadband. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2015/04/13/2015-07841/protecting-and-promoting-the-open-internet https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2015/04/13/2015-07...
caburlingame 9y ago
Is anyone actually against net neutrality? I don't think I've ever seen a con argument.
- tonyztan 9y ago
  ISP-funded lobbyists seem to have a lot of sway. Ajit Pai's FCC is against net neutrality as a result. The fact that Pai was Verizon's top lawyer doesn't help, either.
- mlamat 9y ago
  I'm not convinced. Why am I supposed to take sides in a fight between two industries?
  - zackelan 9y ago
    If you're unconvinced, you should default to supporting net neutrality. It's the status quo, the null hypothesis. The burden of proof is on the people wishing to make this fundamental change to the structure of the internet.
    - adventured 9y ago
      Net neutrality has only existed in actual law for an extremely short amount of time. Or put another way, for about 90%+ of the Web-Internet combo's active existence in the US consumer market, net neutrality has not been law.
      - pritambaral 9y ago
        Even when it wasn't the law, Net Neutrality existed in practice, and there was little interest shown by then ISPs to break that. Now there is a lot of interest by current ISPs to not be neutral, which makes it necessary for Net Neutrality to be the law.
    - creaghpatr 9y ago
      It's not the null hypothesis the rules were implemented in 2015. The fact that some people assumed net neutrality when it did not legally exist makes NN the exact opposite of the null hypothesis, unless you discard the entire internet prior to 2014/2015
Nazzareno 9y ago
Internet money is made by the "over-the-top" (Google, Facebook & co.) leaving ISP to pay for the infrastructure. Net neutrality will allow ISP to bill users not only on bandwidth, but also based on what you do on the net. Ie: do you want a fast Youtube? Someone will have to pay (google or the users). They will be allowed to slow down some websites and speed up others, and that's really bad.
- ryan-allen 9y ago
  The US Government voted to bail out the corrupt bankers back in 2008, which I see as much more significant in terms of screwing over the general populace. I'm afraid that this is the inevitable future we're going to be living in in terms of net neutrality, I believe it's only a matter of time.
- uluyol 9y ago
  Net neutrality prevents your ISP from charging you based on the content you view, not the other way around. I don't see how Google or Facebook fit in. By paying Comcast, I pay for them to build out their network and connect me to the whole internet. Why does Google's profits matter?
- pritambaral 9y ago
  > Net neutrality will allow ISP to bill users not only on bandwidth, but also based on what you do on the net That is the opposite of Net Neutrality.
thisisit 9y ago
Playing the devil's advocate here - Don't all big media companies rely on some form of CDN providers who themselves have some form of deals and agreements with ISPs or Internet exchange. Example - Netflix in India: https://www.medianama.com/2017/05/223-netflix-begins-directly-peering-large-internet-exchange-india/ https://www.medianama.com/2017/05/223-netflix-begins-directl... In which case how does this law change anything? And what effect this might have on CDN providers?
- joantune 9y ago
  No, no, no. CDN is different than throttling your Internet. A CDN is like having a local power generator in your neighborhood, throttling your Internet is like charging your house more for electricity, because the electrical company prefers your neighbor.
cobbzilla 9y ago
Best argument for NN: Let's freeze things now (and saddle every startup/mom'n'pop ISP with Ma Bell-style regulation) so the oligarchs don't become ever more powerful Best argument against NN: Entrenching today's power brokers will not bode well for the future and will kill all of the smaller players.
- neuterlize 9y ago
  Your arguments don't make much sense. Network neutrality is not Ma Bell style regulation. NN will not freeze things. Don't know which oligarchs you are referring to, but any NN laws are unlikely to stop them 'garching. Killing NN is unlikely to kill all the small players. In fact they might rather thrive by using NN as a competitive tool.
  - cobbzilla 9y ago
    The "NN regulations" that the FCC adopted specifically classified Internet services as Title II "telecommunication services", subject to 1930s-style telecom regulations. Yes, these are "Ma Bell" style regulations. I presume you don't believe in the existence of selective enforcement in industries where the government holds massive regulatory power? Why does it seem somehow that the most powerful incumbents are never punished, but smaller upstarts are crushed (or not even started) due to the regulatory burden? NN makes this worse. Pai merely proposes to move things back to the way they were since the beginning of Internet Time to 2015, way back when the Internet was a Title I "information service", subject to much less formal regulation by the FCC. This is met with furious uproar.
    - unityByFreedom 9y ago
      > Pai merely proposes ... This is met with furious uproar His proposal would enable ISPs to make access to some content slower, or more expensive, than others. His proposal does nothing to resolve existing broadband monopolies. Many people like the way the internet works today and do not want Pai's policies to pass. We don't want more silos or limited access to content. People are making their voices heard because they feel strongly about this issue.
cooltechguy 9y ago
Thats good , on the contrary Facebook continues to steal data. One of former FB employees has confirmed that the social media giant cares more about data collection than safeguarding your information
fractalf 9y ago
Every two three years we have to do the same fight over and over again? :/
- Eupolemos 9y ago
  Well, not after you lose. I think this time is it. However, it is "merely" a symptom of the US political system not being sensitive to the citizens' wants and needs. Or no longer being a democracy by modern standards, if you want to be dramatic.
  - kadenshep 9y ago
    >However, it is "merely" a symptom of the US political system not being sensitive to the citizens' wants and needs. No. Stop saying this. It completely muddies the water on what's actually going on here. People DID vote for this. They voted for their reps. And they voted for reps of a very particular political bent. Elections have consequences. The electorate chose this. Freely and willingly. The electorate being completely unqualified to understand issues ranging from technology to healthcare to economics isn't really a fault of the U.S. political system at this point. Stop giving the people that vote for these reps (and the President) free passes and address the root issue. They have voted this way for decades and will continue to do so and no amount of changing or tweaking the political system is really going to have any noticeable effect on the policies they will support. The U.S. political system is listening to the electorate. Stop pretending it's not.
    - Eupolemos 9y ago
      > The electorate chose this. Freely and willingly. I disagree with you. In political systems that aren't effectively two party systems, parties that listen to what the population wants and needs emerge and get their share of the votes. These parties then get together and form a majority representing these needs in many ways. This makes listening to the population a winning strategy. The US system is how much can you accommodate corporations held up against how little can you listen to the population and still get away with it. In a two party system, that is a lot. I could write an example-scenario with two frozen pizza companies vs. 8 frozen pizza companies and which choices you'll end up with for dinner, but I think you get point. It's called fair competition and America seems to have forgotten its benefits for the general population, both in politics and in business. Pointing out people as idiots is not a solution. Pushing for systems that work, is.
propman 9y ago
This is all very confusing for me. Obviously I understand the NN arguments and I accept the Ajit Pai arguments though I think it's very naive to think that investments in infrastructure would be made without other significant incentives, all which seem unlikely to occur. My question is about 2015. Did we have NN before 2015? What changed then and how would it differ from before? I was always under the assumption we had NN.
- neuterlize 9y ago
  Yes, we had NN before 2015. It was the default state and how the Internet was originally built. We used to have competition for Internet services (dialup and DSL), now we don't (most people access the Internet through cable which is a monopoly). The reason why we are losing NN now is because it's become feasible from a technical and business perspective to violate NN. Pai's arguments are pure unadulterated bullshit. Abolishing NN will not increase investments or create competition. CEOs are on record that NN will not impact business or investments.
  - phaus 9y ago
    >We used to have competition for Internet services (dialup and DSL), now we don't (most people access the Internet through cable which is a monopoly). Calling Dial-Up and DSL "competition" is downplaying how shitty things were even in 2015. They are technically competition, but effectively and practically they aren't because the modern web doesn't even work with dial-up and in the many places stuck with the low-end of DSL it is next to worthless too.
    - IshKebab 9y ago
      I think he meant competition between different dialup providers, and different DSL providers.
narrator 9y ago
China does not have net neutrality. Almost everything coming into the country from outside is utterly filtered to hell and back. They do have a vibrant tech economy though. So they have their own Google (Baidu). They have their own Twitter (Weibo), WhatsApp(WeChat), Amazon(Tao Bao). So in the future of no net-neutrality, we'll see ISPs being value-added resellers of their own regionally partitioned versions of these services, probably developed by various ISVs. It will be a bit like the BBS days I imagine. It goes along with the Trump political theme of anti-globalization.
- colordrops 9y ago
  They have their own services in China, but it's not only about foreign traffic. Put up a site and you'l find that it doesn't work too well in other regions of the nation, with ISPs throttling each other's traffic.
  - unityByFreedom 9y ago
    So without net neutrality, the internet as we know it really is broken. Great.
- folknor 9y ago
  > It goes along with the Trump political theme of anti-globalization. I've never managed to connect anti-globalization with no net neutrality. Please explain how you made that connection.
  - nnneuter 9y ago
    With no NN, you need to make deals with every ISP for your online services. It is only cost effective to do such deals in your main markets. Thus we Balkanize the Internet.
    - folknor 9y ago
      I was not making myself clear; the top comment seems to imply that there's some sort of natural connection between anti-globalism (in the popular sense of the term) and a rejection of net neutrality laws. I am a fierce proponent of net neutrality, and I don't understand how you can reasonably conclude that I must therefore be pro-globalism. Or how you can say that someone who is anti-globalist is probably also anti net neutrality. That's the connection I don't understand. How do you make it?
cdevs 9y ago
These comments here from people in other countries are clear pictures of what Americans will face if this goes through.
ForFreedom 9y ago
Will users outside the US have to pay extra for netflix etc?
- nnneuter 9y ago
  No, it's not about that.
- eqtn 9y ago
  Probably not. But if passed, it will have a ripple effect.
- bananarepdev 9y ago
  If it passes in the US, other countries will follow.
unityByFreedom 9y ago
Pai's proposal will only restore freedom for corporations to charge more for content. There's no restoration of freedom to people. When we give up our rights to corporations and captured agencies, we lose the individual freedoms that agencies like the FCC were founded to protect. I think that, even if the FCC passes this proposal, we'll have been on record being massively against it. That will cost any representatives, republican or democrat, who support the current FCC. America isn't about to forget the sub-par quality of its internet services, and this proposal isn't going to fix that.
joantune 9y ago
Either: There are lots of fellow hacker news readers (with significant karma) that don't know a thing about Net Neutrality. Or: this thread is full of FUD bots to push against Net Neutrality
- kelnos 9y ago
  No, I think there are just a decent amount of people who actually do support less regulation here. I mean, they're naive and entirely wrong about the effects of deregulation in this case, but I don't detect much in the way of intellectually dishonest discussion.
zorta 9y ago
there is something we can do from Italy?
- unityByFreedom 9y ago
  I would keep a lookout for ISPs doing things like zero rating or other roundabout ways of breaking net neutrality. Arguably, net neutrality is already broken in the US since the current administration isn't going to enforce the current policy. As businesses find ways to make more short term profits here, others will probably follow the same tactics elsewhere.
- gervase 9y ago
  Although foreign nationals cannot (effectively) write to US politicians, you should feel free to donate to pro-neutrality organizations like the EFF[0]. [0]: https://www.eff.org/ https://www.eff.org/
ivarious 9y ago
https://i.imgur.com/DhL4vKq.jpg https://i.imgur.com/DhL4vKq.jpg Indonesia doesn't have net neutrality laws. That's the screenshot of Indosat (Internet Provider)'s app where you can buy data plan from. But as you can see, they sell data plans ala carte, per application in this case. If your favorite app is not there, you're shit out of luck and have to use the more expensive universal data plan. Not only that, last year, the biggest home internet provider (Indihome), and the biggest mobile internet provider (Telkomsel), which both are owned by the government, banned Netflix under the guise of "Netflix hasn't rated nor censored their contents based on our country's rules". The truth is that both of them are selling their own movie streaming service. Indihome has partnership with iflix, and Telkomsel with HOOQ. Now, if you buy new prepaid number from Telkomsel, this is the kind of data fuckery you will get. https://i.imgur.com/wb6gMBo.png https://i.imgur.com/wb6gMBo.png
- mediocrejoker 9y ago
  my first question would be how the prices of the unlimited plan compares to the regular plans of other ISPs. In other words, are these ‘walled garden’ plans aimed towards people who would otherwise buy a regular data plan or are they aimed at people for whom the choice is a walled plan or no plan.
  - donkeyd 9y ago
    The screenshot in OP's post and this[0] comment, make me think that cheap plans will mostly allow you to use apps/sites where the companies pay the ISP. These will be things like YouTube and Netflix, who need visitors for profit. Things that will be blocked by default are sites like HN, company websites, personal websites and anything else that isn't a huge company. So in the cheaper plans, the one being visited pays, in the expensive one, the one who visits pays. In the end, it's just another revenue stream where, if they play it right, the consumer still pays the same, but the content providers also start paying. This means more money from the same bandwidth. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15757190 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15757190
    - 9y ago
marcoperaza 9y ago
The US didn’t have Net Neutrality until two years ago, and somehow everything was just fine. There’s no need to preemptively impose heavy handed regulation to fix problems that have not yet occurred, and indeed may never occur, in the US. Bundling seems to be the boogeyman de jour. But consumers in the US are used to universal access to the internet and would probably not respond well to such practices. And if we wanted to preemptively ban any type of internet connection except a universal one, there is no need to apply much broader and constricting Title II regulation to it.
- quake 9y ago
  The US did have NN up until two years ago, it was the default the internet was designed upon.
ryandrake 9y ago
The site is technically pretty neat, but honestly does anyone think a bunch of low-effort automated calls to a Congressperson's voicemail is really going to change anything? The commoners' opinions about Net Neutrality (or any issue, really) is pretty low on the list of things our so-called representatives are worried about.
- nvr219 9y ago
  My thoughts exactly.
- snowmaker 9y ago
  Calls from real people to Congress do have a real impact. Calls from a site just like this are what killed the SOPA/PIPA legislation.
  - lucb1e 9y ago
    Source?
- int_19h 9y ago
  It might, if they're in a swing district. A person who is bothered enough to find the time and effort to call, is also that much more likely to turn up and vote. So their offices do keep track of how many callers there are on various issues, and prioritize accordingly.
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
  Make an appointment to meet with them in person. They're probably home for the holidays.
- snarf21 9y ago
  It has also been shown that direct negative publicity has an even bigger effect. Editorials in local papers calling out your representative are effective. Getting on the local news protesting outside your reps office is effective. Going viral on social with some kind of #MYREPisOwnedByComcast #theinternetISfreedom or something has a huge effect. Most reps have a huge ego, they don't like being in a constant spotlight of negativity. I think our biggest problem is that a lot of these issues don't have a leader a la the civil rights movement. Even Occupy, which built to some serious momentum, didn't have sustained vision and leadership to force the changes we might want. Plus, we (incl. me) are lazy and know it could be worse (NK, China) but we are slipping faster and faster and need to rally before it really is too late.
openthito 9y ago
Nepal also donot have net neutrality law . Ncell and NTC are biggest cellular networks. They sell facebook plan at cheap rate and rest is comparatively more
HighPlainsDrftr 9y ago
I wish I knew more about wireless/WISP? There has to be a way to provide reliable 1Gbps service to residential areas. If I could find a way to provide such a service, I would certainly look to do it and provide NN myself. Maybe I could even strike a deal with Netflix/Amazon/Hulu/etc and try to do my own double-play/triple-play sort of thing. Does anyone have any resources regarding getting 1Gbps bandwidth to the masses?
- BenjiWiebe 9y ago
  My cousin runs a WISP. I asked him about the feasibility of using wireless to get a 100Mbps connection of 10 miles. He basically laughed at me. He also said that interference is a huge issue; after all, who doesn't have WiFi? And are you going to spend tens of thousands* of dollars to reserve a chunk of spectrum for yourself? *I have no idea how much this would cost, probably more than I said.
amelius 9y ago
Apparently, it's quite difficult to maintain net neutrality, yet its advantages to the average citizen seem enormous. Therefore, shouldn't we fix something else instead? Like the way these laws are established?
- v4tab 9y ago
  Exactly. It is clear from this who lawmakers pay attention to and it is not the people.
- dm319 9y ago
  It's cultural. Both the people in charge and those who put them there worship the production of money. Policies are selected based on whatever provides maximum revenue without other considerations, with the belief that a thriving economy requires this strategy.
  - blktiger 9y ago
    The problem is that they think the best thing is to figure out how to make ISPs more money to increase the economy. However, what they aren't thinking about is how having net neutrality allows for companies like google and facebook to happen. Those companies are doing way more for the economy than ISPs ever have.
- api 9y ago
  There's a core misunderstanding around net neutrality. People see it as business-stifling regulation and its removal as deregulation. This is simply false. All last mile ISPs and wireless carriers are state-enforced oligopolies or monopolies. You can't build these things without some mix of federal, state, and local permission, and in many cases taxpayer funds helps subsidize the construction of these networks or tax breaks are provided. Telecom is not a free market and never has been. Telecoms are not really private companies in any unfettered free market sense. They're closer to the status of majority-of-revenue government contractors like Lockheed or Raytheon. Add the revolving door they have with representatives and they're almost like state-owned industries. Net neutrality is there to prevent a state-backed oligopoly from using its position to stifle competition in the free market. In other words it's a pro-free-market regulation that exists to protect the free market from interference by state monopolies. I personally think it would be just as good to eliminate barriers to entry for broadband and wireless competition, but unfortunately on a pragmatic level (at least in the USA) this is orders of magnitude more difficult politically. So net neutrality is the best solution for now.
ahgibby 9y ago
Stop with the a la carte comparisons. These plans i) show that the mobile market is competitive and ii) are a way for folks to use popular data hungry apps more than they otherwise without with just a regular data plan.
oldpond 9y ago
Without net neutrality, the internet will become just another source of TV where you only get to see what the advertising industry and the regulators want you to see. At that point the phone in your pocket will become just a tiny TV set, and cord-cutting will become internet-cutting.
sunnykgupta 9y ago
While we are on the topic, may I bring up John Oliver's June 1 2014 episode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpbOEoRrHyU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpbOEoRrHyU tl;dw - For those who want to understand how closely the government is related to those who benefit from NO net-neutrality.
idibidiart 9y ago
Why isn't Google fighting this? They have a backup plan?
- kadenshep 9y ago
  Google doesn't need to care. They can out purchase speed tiers/entire ISP's to make their services extremely favorable/speedy to use or just out right prevent competition in certain areas. They own the biggest ad network in the world. This will be in their favor. Funny how libertarian mythology doesn't really hold up to even the most basic of game theory applications.
  - idibidiart 9y ago
    Their biggest and most lucrative service is search. What if I click a link in google's search result and my ISP refuses to take me there? Or does it work differently?
    - kadenshep 9y ago
      Not really google's problem. You've done what they wanted you to do. Search! The problem will most likely exist on any other search engine at that point -- if you care to use them in the first place.
      - idibidiart 9y ago
        I don't buy that it isn't be there problem. The UX will be broke. What good is a search engine if I can't get anywhere. Just because you're sure of your opinion, it doesn't mean it's correct Yet you assert ... :)
        kadenshep 9y ago
        >Just because you're sure of your opinion It's not an opinion. Next time have a hard think about what you're actually saying when you have to resort to emoji filled platitudes.
Pharylon 9y ago
The battle is all but over, and Net Neutrality lost. Republicans control every branch of the government.
- ythn 9y ago
  I don't even understand how this became a bi-partisan issue. Everyone I know, republican and democrat, are for NN. The only people that are against NN are convinced it was introduced by Obama in order to "socialize the internet"
  - ikeboy 9y ago
    Do you know many economists? See http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/net-neutrality-ii http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/net-neutrality-ii
    - plandis 9y ago
      I’m ripping my hair out wanting to scream about monopolies to all of these people.
      - ikeboy 9y ago
        Someone should probably tell the Nobel Prize winner Richard Thaler about monopolies, he could use some education
  - rspeer 9y ago
    Do you know anyone who bought a T-Mobile plan that allows them to "binge on" unlimited Netflix while charging a per-gigabyte rate for other data? That's zero-rating, which is against net neutrality. The scary images of tiered Internet packages from Portugal and Indonesia that are being passed around are also about zero-rating. They are really no different from mobile plans we have in the US, except that their advertising happens to be more brutally honest. People like net neutrality as an abstract principle when it's described to them, but many people will gladly personally give it up to watch a TV series. To be clear, I think this is a bad thing. I think zero-rating is anti-competitive. But there are people who love it. That's what it means to be against net neutrality.
zengid 9y ago
If you'd like to make a public comment on the FCC's public forum (domain-link courtesy of John Oliver): www.gofccyourself.com
LoonyBalloony 9y ago
I browse voat because I want to see what conservative/trump supporters think and I came upon this thread here: https://voat.co/v/technology/2253983 https://voat.co/v/technology/2253983 I was wondering if you guys could address these guys concerns. We need everyone on the same side. We all want a free internet. Appreciate the help.
- Simon321 9y ago
  Wow, that thread is absolutely disgusting.
- Danihan 9y ago
  A+ concern trolling.
  - LoonyBalloony 9y ago
    If you're talking about me, I came here to understand the topic better before I commented there.
- totalrobe 9y ago
  I attempted to read some comments and address "these guys concerns" but it's just a cesspool of misinformation. They appear to think this is some authoritarian government doctrine and ignore the real world. Here's my argument. I would be fine without any form of net neutrality IF consumers had a true choice of ISP. BUT, I've lived in 4 different states and 6 different cities in the past 12 years and have only ONCE had a choice between different ISPs. Comcast and their ilk have created monopolies in the majority of markets, therefore to enforce the free market it is necessary to force them to provide equal access to internet traffic.
- wooter 9y ago
  good video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6txA3pI0xJI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6txA3pI0xJI short answer: These rules are 2 years old and did nothing good for the internet. the solution is to dissolve municipal monopolies. they do this all the time - everytime they corruptly assign a monopoly to provide a service like electricity, water, etc. The problem is too much government and the left just wants to pile on the beaurocracy and centralize the decision making regarding the global internet in washington. Stupid. Why shouldn't a medical monitoring company negotiate peering and higher guaranteed bandwidth so doctors can remotely with live data to ensure the safety of critical patients? [hint: ALL companies do this, it is physically impossible not to] Because the government is scaring stupid people with the thought of higher netflix prices to grab more control of the internet that they have been illegally surveiling already. Meanwhile, they also scramble to add idiotic things like netflix taxes because they are just too idiotic and greedy. Oh not to mention the government's backwards attempts to prosecute piracy and weaken/criminalize encryption. technical answer if you're up for some reading: As an engineer, net neutrality is a totally misguided and unattainable. Companies that provide things like realtime communication obviously need to negotiate and guarantee lower latencies. Anyways, just like with labor and healthcare, some people just want to pretend that internet service doesn't operate under economic laws. They're always looking for some savior/excuse to abolish free enterprise like internet, automation, altruism, etc. I like how reddit user /u/natermer puts part of it (link: https://www.reddit.com/r/GoldandBlack/comments/6mviva/whats_the_proper_stance_on_net_neutrality/dk670sd/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GoldandBlack/comments/6mviva/whats_... ): There are two major types of network traffic you tend to see on the internet. One is a 'elephant' type bulk transfers. These are big files, bittorrent, video streaming and such things. These types of things use a lot of the available bandwidth and can cause transfers that last many minutes to many hours. However they are latency sensitive.... It doesn't matter if it takes 1 or 10 or a 100 seconds for the packets to cross the internet just as long as you can move a LOT of packets at the same time. The other type of data transfer you see are things that are very latency sensitive. Remote controlling of mechanics, remote monitoring, remote desktop, video conferencing, gaming, VoIP, and other types of latency sensitive protocols. These things use relatively little bandwidth compared to the 'elephants' but are extremely latency sensitive... meaning you want the transfer to go as quick as possible, but don't really need to transfer that much. The modern Internet works based on peering agreements. ISPs have multiple connections with other ISPs. many times these connections are almost ad-hoc as it depends on geography and other variables that makes some connections 'less then ideal'. These connections vary in quality, performance, latency, and cost. If ISPs can route traffic based on protocol and provider then they can possibly save significant amount of money and improve performance for their customers. They can shuttle latency sensitive protocols over expensive links and allow bulk transfers to use massive amounts of cheap bandwidth to reduce their own and their customer's costs. If you go 'full network neutrality' and treat each packet the same then you can have your VoIP call stuck in a FIFO buffer queue behind your Xbox's game download.. making it impossible to have phone calls. For example: TCP/IP protocol is connection oriented and this is used for critical connections and there is a ack/nack response/reply conversation going on where clients validate and confirm packets. This means that every TCP/IP transfer is a two-way street... even if you are downloading you still have to upload some packets to confirm and continue the connection. Bulk uploads from your home network can interfere with the acknowledgements and cause massive latency spikes and other issues unless you have a router that intellegently manages buffers and gives priority to different types of packets. You have a very fast network connected to a very slow uplink and your TCP/IP acks can get stuck behind a massive queue of bulk transfers. This happens commonly when people are using bittorrent and they don't understand why they get fast downloads, then it throttles back to almost nothing, and then they get fast downloads again. This will continue in a saw-like fashion where you see fast performance, then massive latency spikes, and then slow performance, and then fast performance again.. repeating. Many people assume that this is caused by ISP throttling when in fact it's their own network equipment suffering from bad buffer/queue management. They will go out and buy new home routers only to see the problem get worse because the routers are as dumb as before, but now have even bigger queues and even more memory to (mis)manage. (there are VERY effective ways to fix this, btw) I could go on and on. Also keep in mind that the modern internet works through things called 'Content Delivery Networks' or CDNs for short. Bulk transfer of files from one side of the internet to the other side is expensive and high-latency. Co-located datacenters for webservers and small/medium business installations charge premium amounts for internet access and usage is metered on the server side. So most popular websites depend on CDNs to cache content and distribute it back out to the user in a way that is actually physically close to the user on the internet. This can dramatically lower costs, increase availability, and improve performance and user experience. One of the ways CDNs do this is by having private networks running in parrallel to the public internet. Sometimes they are logical networks like VPNs or they are entirely separate physical networks. Youtube, for example, depends on Google's private Fiber network for content delivery. When you are streaming videos Google uses as little as the public internet as possible. They have connections as local to you as possible that (ideally) connect directly to your ISP's network and streams data to you. Other CDNs depend on collocated servers in the ISP's datacenter to cache data, stream video, and other things. Thus if you take a very naive approach to network neutrality and try to say 'all packets are treated as equal' you not only possibly increase the costs for yourself and others, but also you destroy the suitability for the internet to be used for low-latency protocols AND you will do NOTHING to help start-ups be competitive with big names like Google.
soheil 9y ago
Is there a list of congressmen by state who are against Net Neutrality? It’d Be helpful to put that up somewhere easily accessible with their twitter handle etc. Also anyone can shed some light exactly on how much money the telecom companies paid in lobbying? Can we match that or double if it’s all just about money? I’d be glad to pay a payment of up to 1/10th of my monthly income if this is going to persuade law makers reject the lobbyists demands.
thecombjelly 9y ago
Why are we still making appeals to corrupt politicians? We might not control the cables but we do control the content. Why don't we shut it down until we get what is right? Why not another SOPA blackout and this time it doesn't stop until net neutrality is safe?
- myaso 9y ago
  Swartz is dead. Nobody to rally behind now, no real leaders. Online communities are older and more mainstream and are getting ossified. Much more brutal competition in the web space now, can't afford to voluntarily bleed + content is no longer special if someone doesn't get their fix in 5 minutes now they go somewhere else; ethics and values cost money and lots of people in this field have neither now. Lots of people running around in tech that don't share our views ever since 'tech' went mainstream around 2012/2013. What would a black out accomplish? The people in power don't give a fuck as far as I can tell regardless of how much public outage can be generated. Maybe we will finally get mesh networking out of this.
djhworld 9y ago
Can anyone in the US explain why the government/FCC is so eager to abandon net netrality laws? Was it demanded by the electorate? A promise in a manifesto or something? I remember the topic of NN coming up a few years ago and was largely defeated after public outcry - has public mood changed since then?
- mLuby 9y ago
  TL;DR: US companies stand to benefit from reduced regulation. This is a case where a few companies really want to be able to change their pricing structures to increase profits, and consumers in general don't want that but also aren't particularly involved. So there isn't a big public outcry (except among HN readers <3) and these companies are lobbying the FCC hard to make "business-friendly" changes. It's called concentrated benefits and diffuse costs.
- austincheney 9y ago
  In the most simple of terms the Trump Administration is pro capitalism and strongly anti-regulatory.
ken47 9y ago
For those who are anti net neutrality or "on the fence," if you are in tech, keep in mind that the removal of nn will likely put downward pressure on your compensation.
- austincheney 9y ago
  How so?
- ghrifter 9y ago
  How?
axl 9y ago
This is simply a disagreement between content publishers and content distributors. When a big satellite TV provider acted unfavorably toward a few major television networks during contract (re)-negotiation, those select few decided not to renew their license with the satellite TV company, causing viewers to ask why they can't get their favorite channel that their neighbor still gets. The internet works similarly in that an electronic contract is formed when an ISP attempts to access content on web server. The client/ISP "requests" the content, and the publisher agrees and serves it up. But there's nothing stopping a collective "big few" from denying access to the content based on the host name of the ISP requesting it. Ergo, if Verizon doesn't want to play "fair" with regards to content distribution, Facebook/Google/Twitter/Netflix/Reddit and whomever else could deny access to Verizon subscribers with an ol fashioned HTTP 403 or 401. Yes, traffic drops, people realize quickly that they can't access any of their favorite sites, things must be broken, and switch companies.
oliv__ 9y ago
Could this be the beginning of some kind of alt-Internet being created to bypass any kind of throttling?
imh 9y ago
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/21/fcc-net-neutrality-blocking-states-183468 https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/21/fcc-net-neutrality... Not only are they removing federal rules, they want to prevent states from making their own rules. That seems an extra special kind of awful. "Big Government is overstepping its bounds with regulation, so we're going to have big government step in and prevent local governments from making their own choices."
JonMontgo 9y ago
I staunchly support net neutrality, and believe stronger federal protections and intervention are necessary to protect the open internet and increase competition - perhaps a federal ISP run through post offices.
fyrstenberg 9y ago
In the mean time, and in related news (media all quiet) - the "USA Liberty Act of 2017" has passed meaning government is allowed to search our private data without a warrant: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/3989/actions https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/3989... Some more details here: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/10/usa-liberty-act-wont-fix-whats-most-broken-nsa-internet-surveillance https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/10/usa-liberty-act-wont-f...
MadWombat 9y ago
Hmm... they want name, address and phone number. And they require all the fields before they allow submitting the form. No.

1269 points by rayalez 9y ago

I'm on the fence regarding this issue. The scaremongering on both sides is absolutely ridiculous. The planned order hasn't even been released! On the one hand, I can see why monopolistic powers in the hands of ISPs would be bad, but I like that the order would restore "police" powers to the FTC instead of the FCC, and I can't blame ISPs for wanting a piece of the $ pie. And it's not like the internet was a horrible wasteland until 2015. But then again, Pai plan proponents keep saying this will spawn more innovation and improve utilities. That sounds pretty dubious and I haven't seen much proof. I don't recall any big innovation suddenly being stifled in 2015. In my perfect world, the regulatory power would go back to the FTC but it would at the same time release a plan for opening up internet utility access so small players can compete with the big ones.

neuterlize 9y ago
> The planned order hasn't even been released! Be that time it'll probably be too late. > On the one hand, I can see why monopolistic powers in the hands of ISPs would be bad, but I like that the order would restore "police" powers to the FTC instead of the FCC, The FTC is not the correct body to "police" broadband. > and I can't blame ISPs for wanting a piece of the $ pie. I can. They are already getting paid. They should not be able to go back for seconds. > And it's not like the internet was a horrible wasteland until 2015. That's because network neutrality was the default state before. It's only now that is becoming feasible both from a technical and business perspective to violate network neutrality. > But then again, Pai plan proponents keep saying this will spawn more innovation and improve utilities. That sounds pretty dubious and I haven't seen much proof. I don't recall any big innovation suddenly being stifled in 2015 Yeah, that's just a load of bullshit. CEOs have gone on record that NN will not affect business or investments. > In my perfect world, the regulatory power would go back to the FTC but it would at the same time release a plan for opening up internet utility access so small players can compete with the big ones. Too bad we already had that, minus the FTC part. Fat chance of getting it back.

wavesounds 9y ago

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." - Robert F Kennedy

kpennell 9y ago

Oakland reporting, Barbara Lee's box is full. Will try again soon.

RIMR 9y ago

I am firmly in support of net neutrality, but I am also sick and tired of all the ridiculous misinformation about what it actually is. At least on Reddit, people would have you believe that the Internet is about to become Cable TV. Net Neutrality is very important to a free and open Internet, but the kind of scaremongering I see going on is absolutely insane. We won't win this fight with scary lies. Do your part and make sure your peers are educated as to the real consequences of this repeal. None of this "You must pay to view additional posts on this website" or "Imagine if EA were your ISP" nonsense.

api 9y ago
Look at what ISPs do in Portugal, which lacks any kind of net neutrality. They are already trying to bundle sites and protocols like cable channels. It's not far fetched at all.
- tonyztan 9y ago
  Here's a screenshot from the Portuguese ISP's pricing page: https://twitter.com/RoKhanna/status/923701871092441088 https://twitter.com/RoKhanna/status/923701871092441088 Exactly like a cable bundle.
  - LastZactionHero 9y ago
    I'm all for net neutrality, but it feels important to note that this is for mobile service: https://www.meo.pt/internet/internet-movel/telemovel/pacotes-com-telemovel https://www.meo.pt/internet/internet-movel/telemovel/pacotes... Also, it looks like the same company provides gigabit internet for $50/mo: https://www.meo.pt/pacotes/mais-pacotes/fibra/net-voz https://www.meo.pt/pacotes/mais-pacotes/fibra/net-voz Again, I support net neutrality, but it's still technically better than my Comcast.
    - rory096 9y ago
      >I'm all for net neutrality, but it feels important to note that this is for mobile service: The current net neutrality regulations apply to both fixed and mobile broadband. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2015/04/13/2015-07841/protecting-and-promoting-the-open-internet https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2015/04/13/2015-07...

caburlingame 9y ago

Is anyone actually against net neutrality? I don't think I've ever seen a con argument.

tonyztan 9y ago
ISP-funded lobbyists seem to have a lot of sway. Ajit Pai's FCC is against net neutrality as a result. The fact that Pai was Verizon's top lawyer doesn't help, either.
mlamat 9y ago
I'm not convinced. Why am I supposed to take sides in a fight between two industries?
- zackelan 9y ago
  If you're unconvinced, you should default to supporting net neutrality. It's the status quo, the null hypothesis. The burden of proof is on the people wishing to make this fundamental change to the structure of the internet.
  - adventured 9y ago
    Net neutrality has only existed in actual law for an extremely short amount of time. Or put another way, for about 90%+ of the Web-Internet combo's active existence in the US consumer market, net neutrality has not been law.
    - pritambaral 9y ago
      Even when it wasn't the law, Net Neutrality existed in practice, and there was little interest shown by then ISPs to break that. Now there is a lot of interest by current ISPs to not be neutral, which makes it necessary for Net Neutrality to be the law.
  - creaghpatr 9y ago
    It's not the null hypothesis the rules were implemented in 2015. The fact that some people assumed net neutrality when it did not legally exist makes NN the exact opposite of the null hypothesis, unless you discard the entire internet prior to 2014/2015

Nazzareno 9y ago

Internet money is made by the "over-the-top" (Google, Facebook & co.) leaving ISP to pay for the infrastructure. Net neutrality will allow ISP to bill users not only on bandwidth, but also based on what you do on the net. Ie: do you want a fast Youtube? Someone will have to pay (google or the users). They will be allowed to slow down some websites and speed up others, and that's really bad.

ryan-allen 9y ago
The US Government voted to bail out the corrupt bankers back in 2008, which I see as much more significant in terms of screwing over the general populace. I'm afraid that this is the inevitable future we're going to be living in in terms of net neutrality, I believe it's only a matter of time.
uluyol 9y ago
Net neutrality prevents your ISP from charging you based on the content you view, not the other way around. I don't see how Google or Facebook fit in. By paying Comcast, I pay for them to build out their network and connect me to the whole internet. Why does Google's profits matter?
pritambaral 9y ago
> Net neutrality will allow ISP to bill users not only on bandwidth, but also based on what you do on the net That is the opposite of Net Neutrality.

thisisit 9y ago

Playing the devil's advocate here - Don't all big media companies rely on some form of CDN providers who themselves have some form of deals and agreements with ISPs or Internet exchange. Example - Netflix in India: https://www.medianama.com/2017/05/223-netflix-begins-directly-peering-large-internet-exchange-india/ https://www.medianama.com/2017/05/223-netflix-begins-directl... In which case how does this law change anything? And what effect this might have on CDN providers?

joantune 9y ago
No, no, no. CDN is different than throttling your Internet. A CDN is like having a local power generator in your neighborhood, throttling your Internet is like charging your house more for electricity, because the electrical company prefers your neighbor.

cobbzilla 9y ago

Best argument for NN: Let's freeze things now (and saddle every startup/mom'n'pop ISP with Ma Bell-style regulation) so the oligarchs don't become ever more powerful Best argument against NN: Entrenching today's power brokers will not bode well for the future and will kill all of the smaller players.

neuterlize 9y ago
Your arguments don't make much sense. Network neutrality is not Ma Bell style regulation. NN will not freeze things. Don't know which oligarchs you are referring to, but any NN laws are unlikely to stop them 'garching. Killing NN is unlikely to kill all the small players. In fact they might rather thrive by using NN as a competitive tool.
- cobbzilla 9y ago
  The "NN regulations" that the FCC adopted specifically classified Internet services as Title II "telecommunication services", subject to 1930s-style telecom regulations. Yes, these are "Ma Bell" style regulations. I presume you don't believe in the existence of selective enforcement in industries where the government holds massive regulatory power? Why does it seem somehow that the most powerful incumbents are never punished, but smaller upstarts are crushed (or not even started) due to the regulatory burden? NN makes this worse. Pai merely proposes to move things back to the way they were since the beginning of Internet Time to 2015, way back when the Internet was a Title I "information service", subject to much less formal regulation by the FCC. This is met with furious uproar.
  - unityByFreedom 9y ago
    > Pai merely proposes ... This is met with furious uproar His proposal would enable ISPs to make access to some content slower, or more expensive, than others. His proposal does nothing to resolve existing broadband monopolies. Many people like the way the internet works today and do not want Pai's policies to pass. We don't want more silos or limited access to content. People are making their voices heard because they feel strongly about this issue.

cooltechguy 9y ago

Thats good , on the contrary Facebook continues to steal data. One of former FB employees has confirmed that the social media giant cares more about data collection than safeguarding your information

fractalf 9y ago

Every two three years we have to do the same fight over and over again? :/

Eupolemos 9y ago
Well, not after you lose. I think this time is it. However, it is "merely" a symptom of the US political system not being sensitive to the citizens' wants and needs. Or no longer being a democracy by modern standards, if you want to be dramatic.
- kadenshep 9y ago
  >However, it is "merely" a symptom of the US political system not being sensitive to the citizens' wants and needs. No. Stop saying this. It completely muddies the water on what's actually going on here. People DID vote for this. They voted for their reps. And they voted for reps of a very particular political bent. Elections have consequences. The electorate chose this. Freely and willingly. The electorate being completely unqualified to understand issues ranging from technology to healthcare to economics isn't really a fault of the U.S. political system at this point. Stop giving the people that vote for these reps (and the President) free passes and address the root issue. They have voted this way for decades and will continue to do so and no amount of changing or tweaking the political system is really going to have any noticeable effect on the policies they will support. The U.S. political system is listening to the electorate. Stop pretending it's not.
  - Eupolemos 9y ago
    > The electorate chose this. Freely and willingly. I disagree with you. In political systems that aren't effectively two party systems, parties that listen to what the population wants and needs emerge and get their share of the votes. These parties then get together and form a majority representing these needs in many ways. This makes listening to the population a winning strategy. The US system is how much can you accommodate corporations held up against how little can you listen to the population and still get away with it. In a two party system, that is a lot. I could write an example-scenario with two frozen pizza companies vs. 8 frozen pizza companies and which choices you'll end up with for dinner, but I think you get point. It's called fair competition and America seems to have forgotten its benefits for the general population, both in politics and in business. Pointing out people as idiots is not a solution. Pushing for systems that work, is.

propman 9y ago

This is all very confusing for me. Obviously I understand the NN arguments and I accept the Ajit Pai arguments though I think it's very naive to think that investments in infrastructure would be made without other significant incentives, all which seem unlikely to occur. My question is about 2015. Did we have NN before 2015? What changed then and how would it differ from before? I was always under the assumption we had NN.

neuterlize 9y ago
Yes, we had NN before 2015. It was the default state and how the Internet was originally built. We used to have competition for Internet services (dialup and DSL), now we don't (most people access the Internet through cable which is a monopoly). The reason why we are losing NN now is because it's become feasible from a technical and business perspective to violate NN. Pai's arguments are pure unadulterated bullshit. Abolishing NN will not increase investments or create competition. CEOs are on record that NN will not impact business or investments.
- phaus 9y ago
  >We used to have competition for Internet services (dialup and DSL), now we don't (most people access the Internet through cable which is a monopoly). Calling Dial-Up and DSL "competition" is downplaying how shitty things were even in 2015. They are technically competition, but effectively and practically they aren't because the modern web doesn't even work with dial-up and in the many places stuck with the low-end of DSL it is next to worthless too.
  - IshKebab 9y ago
    I think he meant competition between different dialup providers, and different DSL providers.

narrator 9y ago

China does not have net neutrality. Almost everything coming into the country from outside is utterly filtered to hell and back. They do have a vibrant tech economy though. So they have their own Google (Baidu). They have their own Twitter (Weibo), WhatsApp(WeChat), Amazon(Tao Bao). So in the future of no net-neutrality, we'll see ISPs being value-added resellers of their own regionally partitioned versions of these services, probably developed by various ISVs. It will be a bit like the BBS days I imagine. It goes along with the Trump political theme of anti-globalization.

colordrops 9y ago
They have their own services in China, but it's not only about foreign traffic. Put up a site and you'l find that it doesn't work too well in other regions of the nation, with ISPs throttling each other's traffic.
- unityByFreedom 9y ago
  So without net neutrality, the internet as we know it really is broken. Great.
folknor 9y ago
> It goes along with the Trump political theme of anti-globalization. I've never managed to connect anti-globalization with no net neutrality. Please explain how you made that connection.
- nnneuter 9y ago
  With no NN, you need to make deals with every ISP for your online services. It is only cost effective to do such deals in your main markets. Thus we Balkanize the Internet.
  - folknor 9y ago
    I was not making myself clear; the top comment seems to imply that there's some sort of natural connection between anti-globalism (in the popular sense of the term) and a rejection of net neutrality laws. I am a fierce proponent of net neutrality, and I don't understand how you can reasonably conclude that I must therefore be pro-globalism. Or how you can say that someone who is anti-globalist is probably also anti net neutrality. That's the connection I don't understand. How do you make it?

cdevs 9y ago

These comments here from people in other countries are clear pictures of what Americans will face if this goes through.

ForFreedom 9y ago

Will users outside the US have to pay extra for netflix etc?

nnneuter 9y ago
No, it's not about that.
eqtn 9y ago
Probably not. But if passed, it will have a ripple effect.
bananarepdev 9y ago
If it passes in the US, other countries will follow.

unityByFreedom 9y ago

Pai's proposal will only restore freedom for corporations to charge more for content. There's no restoration of freedom to people. When we give up our rights to corporations and captured agencies, we lose the individual freedoms that agencies like the FCC were founded to protect. I think that, even if the FCC passes this proposal, we'll have been on record being massively against it. That will cost any representatives, republican or democrat, who support the current FCC. America isn't about to forget the sub-par quality of its internet services, and this proposal isn't going to fix that.

joantune 9y ago

Either: There are lots of fellow hacker news readers (with significant karma) that don't know a thing about Net Neutrality. Or: this thread is full of FUD bots to push against Net Neutrality

kelnos 9y ago
No, I think there are just a decent amount of people who actually do support less regulation here. I mean, they're naive and entirely wrong about the effects of deregulation in this case, but I don't detect much in the way of intellectually dishonest discussion.

zorta 9y ago

there is something we can do from Italy?

unityByFreedom 9y ago
I would keep a lookout for ISPs doing things like zero rating or other roundabout ways of breaking net neutrality. Arguably, net neutrality is already broken in the US since the current administration isn't going to enforce the current policy. As businesses find ways to make more short term profits here, others will probably follow the same tactics elsewhere.
gervase 9y ago
Although foreign nationals cannot (effectively) write to US politicians, you should feel free to donate to pro-neutrality organizations like the EFF[0]. [0]: https://www.eff.org/ https://www.eff.org/

ivarious 9y ago

https://i.imgur.com/DhL4vKq.jpg https://i.imgur.com/DhL4vKq.jpg Indonesia doesn't have net neutrality laws. That's the screenshot of Indosat (Internet Provider)'s app where you can buy data plan from. But as you can see, they sell data plans ala carte, per application in this case. If your favorite app is not there, you're shit out of luck and have to use the more expensive universal data plan. Not only that, last year, the biggest home internet provider (Indihome), and the biggest mobile internet provider (Telkomsel), which both are owned by the government, banned Netflix under the guise of "Netflix hasn't rated nor censored their contents based on our country's rules". The truth is that both of them are selling their own movie streaming service. Indihome has partnership with iflix, and Telkomsel with HOOQ. Now, if you buy new prepaid number from Telkomsel, this is the kind of data fuckery you will get. https://i.imgur.com/wb6gMBo.png https://i.imgur.com/wb6gMBo.png

mediocrejoker 9y ago
my first question would be how the prices of the unlimited plan compares to the regular plans of other ISPs. In other words, are these ‘walled garden’ plans aimed towards people who would otherwise buy a regular data plan or are they aimed at people for whom the choice is a walled plan or no plan.
- donkeyd 9y ago
  The screenshot in OP's post and this[0] comment, make me think that cheap plans will mostly allow you to use apps/sites where the companies pay the ISP. These will be things like YouTube and Netflix, who need visitors for profit. Things that will be blocked by default are sites like HN, company websites, personal websites and anything else that isn't a huge company. So in the cheaper plans, the one being visited pays, in the expensive one, the one who visits pays. In the end, it's just another revenue stream where, if they play it right, the consumer still pays the same, but the content providers also start paying. This means more money from the same bandwidth. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15757190 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15757190
  - 9y ago

marcoperaza 9y ago

The US didn’t have Net Neutrality until two years ago, and somehow everything was just fine. There’s no need to preemptively impose heavy handed regulation to fix problems that have not yet occurred, and indeed may never occur, in the US. Bundling seems to be the boogeyman de jour. But consumers in the US are used to universal access to the internet and would probably not respond well to such practices. And if we wanted to preemptively ban any type of internet connection except a universal one, there is no need to apply much broader and constricting Title II regulation to it.

quake 9y ago
The US did have NN up until two years ago, it was the default the internet was designed upon.

ryandrake 9y ago

The site is technically pretty neat, but honestly does anyone think a bunch of low-effort automated calls to a Congressperson's voicemail is really going to change anything? The commoners' opinions about Net Neutrality (or any issue, really) is pretty low on the list of things our so-called representatives are worried about.

nvr219 9y ago
My thoughts exactly.
snowmaker 9y ago
Calls from real people to Congress do have a real impact. Calls from a site just like this are what killed the SOPA/PIPA legislation.
- lucb1e 9y ago
  Source?
int_19h 9y ago
It might, if they're in a swing district. A person who is bothered enough to find the time and effort to call, is also that much more likely to turn up and vote. So their offices do keep track of how many callers there are on various issues, and prioritize accordingly.
Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
Make an appointment to meet with them in person. They're probably home for the holidays.
snarf21 9y ago
It has also been shown that direct negative publicity has an even bigger effect. Editorials in local papers calling out your representative are effective. Getting on the local news protesting outside your reps office is effective. Going viral on social with some kind of #MYREPisOwnedByComcast #theinternetISfreedom or something has a huge effect. Most reps have a huge ego, they don't like being in a constant spotlight of negativity. I think our biggest problem is that a lot of these issues don't have a leader a la the civil rights movement. Even Occupy, which built to some serious momentum, didn't have sustained vision and leadership to force the changes we might want. Plus, we (incl. me) are lazy and know it could be worse (NK, China) but we are slipping faster and faster and need to rally before it really is too late.

openthito 9y ago

Nepal also donot have net neutrality law . Ncell and NTC are biggest cellular networks. They sell facebook plan at cheap rate and rest is comparatively more

HighPlainsDrftr 9y ago

I wish I knew more about wireless/WISP? There has to be a way to provide reliable 1Gbps service to residential areas. If I could find a way to provide such a service, I would certainly look to do it and provide NN myself. Maybe I could even strike a deal with Netflix/Amazon/Hulu/etc and try to do my own double-play/triple-play sort of thing. Does anyone have any resources regarding getting 1Gbps bandwidth to the masses?

BenjiWiebe 9y ago
My cousin runs a WISP. I asked him about the feasibility of using wireless to get a 100Mbps connection of 10 miles. He basically laughed at me. He also said that interference is a huge issue; after all, who doesn't have WiFi? And are you going to spend tens of thousands* of dollars to reserve a chunk of spectrum for yourself? *I have no idea how much this would cost, probably more than I said.

amelius 9y ago

Apparently, it's quite difficult to maintain net neutrality, yet its advantages to the average citizen seem enormous. Therefore, shouldn't we fix something else instead? Like the way these laws are established?

v4tab 9y ago
Exactly. It is clear from this who lawmakers pay attention to and it is not the people.
dm319 9y ago
It's cultural. Both the people in charge and those who put them there worship the production of money. Policies are selected based on whatever provides maximum revenue without other considerations, with the belief that a thriving economy requires this strategy.
- blktiger 9y ago
  The problem is that they think the best thing is to figure out how to make ISPs more money to increase the economy. However, what they aren't thinking about is how having net neutrality allows for companies like google and facebook to happen. Those companies are doing way more for the economy than ISPs ever have.
api 9y ago
There's a core misunderstanding around net neutrality. People see it as business-stifling regulation and its removal as deregulation. This is simply false. All last mile ISPs and wireless carriers are state-enforced oligopolies or monopolies. You can't build these things without some mix of federal, state, and local permission, and in many cases taxpayer funds helps subsidize the construction of these networks or tax breaks are provided. Telecom is not a free market and never has been. Telecoms are not really private companies in any unfettered free market sense. They're closer to the status of majority-of-revenue government contractors like Lockheed or Raytheon. Add the revolving door they have with representatives and they're almost like state-owned industries. Net neutrality is there to prevent a state-backed oligopoly from using its position to stifle competition in the free market. In other words it's a pro-free-market regulation that exists to protect the free market from interference by state monopolies. I personally think it would be just as good to eliminate barriers to entry for broadband and wireless competition, but unfortunately on a pragmatic level (at least in the USA) this is orders of magnitude more difficult politically. So net neutrality is the best solution for now.

ahgibby 9y ago

Stop with the a la carte comparisons. These plans i) show that the mobile market is competitive and ii) are a way for folks to use popular data hungry apps more than they otherwise without with just a regular data plan.

oldpond 9y ago

Without net neutrality, the internet will become just another source of TV where you only get to see what the advertising industry and the regulators want you to see. At that point the phone in your pocket will become just a tiny TV set, and cord-cutting will become internet-cutting.

sunnykgupta 9y ago

While we are on the topic, may I bring up John Oliver's June 1 2014 episode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpbOEoRrHyU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpbOEoRrHyU tl;dw - For those who want to understand how closely the government is related to those who benefit from NO net-neutrality.

idibidiart 9y ago

Why isn't Google fighting this? They have a backup plan?

kadenshep 9y ago
Google doesn't need to care. They can out purchase speed tiers/entire ISP's to make their services extremely favorable/speedy to use or just out right prevent competition in certain areas. They own the biggest ad network in the world. This will be in their favor. Funny how libertarian mythology doesn't really hold up to even the most basic of game theory applications.
- idibidiart 9y ago
  Their biggest and most lucrative service is search. What if I click a link in google's search result and my ISP refuses to take me there? Or does it work differently?
  - kadenshep 9y ago
    Not really google's problem. You've done what they wanted you to do. Search! The problem will most likely exist on any other search engine at that point -- if you care to use them in the first place.
    - idibidiart 9y ago
      I don't buy that it isn't be there problem. The UX will be broke. What good is a search engine if I can't get anywhere. Just because you're sure of your opinion, it doesn't mean it's correct Yet you assert ... :)
      - kadenshep 9y ago
        >Just because you're sure of your opinion It's not an opinion. Next time have a hard think about what you're actually saying when you have to resort to emoji filled platitudes.

Pharylon 9y ago

The battle is all but over, and Net Neutrality lost. Republicans control every branch of the government.

ythn 9y ago
I don't even understand how this became a bi-partisan issue. Everyone I know, republican and democrat, are for NN. The only people that are against NN are convinced it was introduced by Obama in order to "socialize the internet"
- ikeboy 9y ago
  Do you know many economists? See http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/net-neutrality-ii http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/net-neutrality-ii
  - plandis 9y ago
    I’m ripping my hair out wanting to scream about monopolies to all of these people.
    - ikeboy 9y ago
      Someone should probably tell the Nobel Prize winner Richard Thaler about monopolies, he could use some education
- rspeer 9y ago
  Do you know anyone who bought a T-Mobile plan that allows them to "binge on" unlimited Netflix while charging a per-gigabyte rate for other data? That's zero-rating, which is against net neutrality. The scary images of tiered Internet packages from Portugal and Indonesia that are being passed around are also about zero-rating. They are really no different from mobile plans we have in the US, except that their advertising happens to be more brutally honest. People like net neutrality as an abstract principle when it's described to them, but many people will gladly personally give it up to watch a TV series. To be clear, I think this is a bad thing. I think zero-rating is anti-competitive. But there are people who love it. That's what it means to be against net neutrality.

zengid 9y ago

If you'd like to make a public comment on the FCC's public forum (domain-link courtesy of John Oliver): www.gofccyourself.com

LoonyBalloony 9y ago

I browse voat because I want to see what conservative/trump supporters think and I came upon this thread here: https://voat.co/v/technology/2253983 https://voat.co/v/technology/2253983 I was wondering if you guys could address these guys concerns. We need everyone on the same side. We all want a free internet. Appreciate the help.

Simon321 9y ago
Wow, that thread is absolutely disgusting.
Danihan 9y ago
A+ concern trolling.
- LoonyBalloony 9y ago
  If you're talking about me, I came here to understand the topic better before I commented there.
totalrobe 9y ago
I attempted to read some comments and address "these guys concerns" but it's just a cesspool of misinformation. They appear to think this is some authoritarian government doctrine and ignore the real world. Here's my argument. I would be fine without any form of net neutrality IF consumers had a true choice of ISP. BUT, I've lived in 4 different states and 6 different cities in the past 12 years and have only ONCE had a choice between different ISPs. Comcast and their ilk have created monopolies in the majority of markets, therefore to enforce the free market it is necessary to force them to provide equal access to internet traffic.
wooter 9y ago
good video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6txA3pI0xJI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6txA3pI0xJI short answer: These rules are 2 years old and did nothing good for the internet. the solution is to dissolve municipal monopolies. they do this all the time - everytime they corruptly assign a monopoly to provide a service like electricity, water, etc. The problem is too much government and the left just wants to pile on the beaurocracy and centralize the decision making regarding the global internet in washington. Stupid. Why shouldn't a medical monitoring company negotiate peering and higher guaranteed bandwidth so doctors can remotely with live data to ensure the safety of critical patients? [hint: ALL companies do this, it is physically impossible not to] Because the government is scaring stupid people with the thought of higher netflix prices to grab more control of the internet that they have been illegally surveiling already. Meanwhile, they also scramble to add idiotic things like netflix taxes because they are just too idiotic and greedy. Oh not to mention the government's backwards attempts to prosecute piracy and weaken/criminalize encryption. technical answer if you're up for some reading: As an engineer, net neutrality is a totally misguided and unattainable. Companies that provide things like realtime communication obviously need to negotiate and guarantee lower latencies. Anyways, just like with labor and healthcare, some people just want to pretend that internet service doesn't operate under economic laws. They're always looking for some savior/excuse to abolish free enterprise like internet, automation, altruism, etc. I like how reddit user /u/natermer puts part of it (link: https://www.reddit.com/r/GoldandBlack/comments/6mviva/whats_the_proper_stance_on_net_neutrality/dk670sd/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GoldandBlack/comments/6mviva/whats_... ): There are two major types of network traffic you tend to see on the internet. One is a 'elephant' type bulk transfers. These are big files, bittorrent, video streaming and such things. These types of things use a lot of the available bandwidth and can cause transfers that last many minutes to many hours. However they are latency sensitive.... It doesn't matter if it takes 1 or 10 or a 100 seconds for the packets to cross the internet just as long as you can move a LOT of packets at the same time. The other type of data transfer you see are things that are very latency sensitive. Remote controlling of mechanics, remote monitoring, remote desktop, video conferencing, gaming, VoIP, and other types of latency sensitive protocols. These things use relatively little bandwidth compared to the 'elephants' but are extremely latency sensitive... meaning you want the transfer to go as quick as possible, but don't really need to transfer that much. The modern Internet works based on peering agreements. ISPs have multiple connections with other ISPs. many times these connections are almost ad-hoc as it depends on geography and other variables that makes some connections 'less then ideal'. These connections vary in quality, performance, latency, and cost. If ISPs can route traffic based on protocol and provider then they can possibly save significant amount of money and improve performance for their customers. They can shuttle latency sensitive protocols over expensive links and allow bulk transfers to use massive amounts of cheap bandwidth to reduce their own and their customer's costs. If you go 'full network neutrality' and treat each packet the same then you can have your VoIP call stuck in a FIFO buffer queue behind your Xbox's game download.. making it impossible to have phone calls. For example: TCP/IP protocol is connection oriented and this is used for critical connections and there is a ack/nack response/reply conversation going on where clients validate and confirm packets. This means that every TCP/IP transfer is a two-way street... even if you are downloading you still have to upload some packets to confirm and continue the connection. Bulk uploads from your home network can interfere with the acknowledgements and cause massive latency spikes and other issues unless you have a router that intellegently manages buffers and gives priority to different types of packets. You have a very fast network connected to a very slow uplink and your TCP/IP acks can get stuck behind a massive queue of bulk transfers. This happens commonly when people are using bittorrent and they don't understand why they get fast downloads, then it throttles back to almost nothing, and then they get fast downloads again. This will continue in a saw-like fashion where you see fast performance, then massive latency spikes, and then slow performance, and then fast performance again.. repeating. Many people assume that this is caused by ISP throttling when in fact it's their own network equipment suffering from bad buffer/queue management. They will go out and buy new home routers only to see the problem get worse because the routers are as dumb as before, but now have even bigger queues and even more memory to (mis)manage. (there are VERY effective ways to fix this, btw) I could go on and on. Also keep in mind that the modern internet works through things called 'Content Delivery Networks' or CDNs for short. Bulk transfer of files from one side of the internet to the other side is expensive and high-latency. Co-located datacenters for webservers and small/medium business installations charge premium amounts for internet access and usage is metered on the server side. So most popular websites depend on CDNs to cache content and distribute it back out to the user in a way that is actually physically close to the user on the internet. This can dramatically lower costs, increase availability, and improve performance and user experience. One of the ways CDNs do this is by having private networks running in parrallel to the public internet. Sometimes they are logical networks like VPNs or they are entirely separate physical networks. Youtube, for example, depends on Google's private Fiber network for content delivery. When you are streaming videos Google uses as little as the public internet as possible. They have connections as local to you as possible that (ideally) connect directly to your ISP's network and streams data to you. Other CDNs depend on collocated servers in the ISP's datacenter to cache data, stream video, and other things. Thus if you take a very naive approach to network neutrality and try to say 'all packets are treated as equal' you not only possibly increase the costs for yourself and others, but also you destroy the suitability for the internet to be used for low-latency protocols AND you will do NOTHING to help start-ups be competitive with big names like Google.

soheil 9y ago

Is there a list of congressmen by state who are against Net Neutrality? It’d Be helpful to put that up somewhere easily accessible with their twitter handle etc. Also anyone can shed some light exactly on how much money the telecom companies paid in lobbying? Can we match that or double if it’s all just about money? I’d be glad to pay a payment of up to 1/10th of my monthly income if this is going to persuade law makers reject the lobbyists demands.

thecombjelly 9y ago

Why are we still making appeals to corrupt politicians? We might not control the cables but we do control the content. Why don't we shut it down until we get what is right? Why not another SOPA blackout and this time it doesn't stop until net neutrality is safe?

myaso 9y ago
Swartz is dead. Nobody to rally behind now, no real leaders. Online communities are older and more mainstream and are getting ossified. Much more brutal competition in the web space now, can't afford to voluntarily bleed + content is no longer special if someone doesn't get their fix in 5 minutes now they go somewhere else; ethics and values cost money and lots of people in this field have neither now. Lots of people running around in tech that don't share our views ever since 'tech' went mainstream around 2012/2013. What would a black out accomplish? The people in power don't give a fuck as far as I can tell regardless of how much public outage can be generated. Maybe we will finally get mesh networking out of this.

djhworld 9y ago

Can anyone in the US explain why the government/FCC is so eager to abandon net netrality laws? Was it demanded by the electorate? A promise in a manifesto or something? I remember the topic of NN coming up a few years ago and was largely defeated after public outcry - has public mood changed since then?

mLuby 9y ago
TL;DR: US companies stand to benefit from reduced regulation. This is a case where a few companies really want to be able to change their pricing structures to increase profits, and consumers in general don't want that but also aren't particularly involved. So there isn't a big public outcry (except among HN readers <3) and these companies are lobbying the FCC hard to make "business-friendly" changes. It's called concentrated benefits and diffuse costs.
austincheney 9y ago
In the most simple of terms the Trump Administration is pro capitalism and strongly anti-regulatory.

ken47 9y ago

For those who are anti net neutrality or "on the fence," if you are in tech, keep in mind that the removal of nn will likely put downward pressure on your compensation.

austincheney 9y ago
How so?
ghrifter 9y ago
How?

axl 9y ago

This is simply a disagreement between content publishers and content distributors. When a big satellite TV provider acted unfavorably toward a few major television networks during contract (re)-negotiation, those select few decided not to renew their license with the satellite TV company, causing viewers to ask why they can't get their favorite channel that their neighbor still gets. The internet works similarly in that an electronic contract is formed when an ISP attempts to access content on web server. The client/ISP "requests" the content, and the publisher agrees and serves it up. But there's nothing stopping a collective "big few" from denying access to the content based on the host name of the ISP requesting it. Ergo, if Verizon doesn't want to play "fair" with regards to content distribution, Facebook/Google/Twitter/Netflix/Reddit and whomever else could deny access to Verizon subscribers with an ol fashioned HTTP 403 or 401. Yes, traffic drops, people realize quickly that they can't access any of their favorite sites, things must be broken, and switch companies.

oliv__ 9y ago

Could this be the beginning of some kind of alt-Internet being created to bypass any kind of throttling?

imh 9y ago

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/21/fcc-net-neutrality-blocking-states-183468 https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/21/fcc-net-neutrality... Not only are they removing federal rules, they want to prevent states from making their own rules. That seems an extra special kind of awful. "Big Government is overstepping its bounds with regulation, so we're going to have big government step in and prevent local governments from making their own choices."

JonMontgo 9y ago

I staunchly support net neutrality, and believe stronger federal protections and intervention are necessary to protect the open internet and increase competition - perhaps a federal ISP run through post offices.

fyrstenberg 9y ago

In the mean time, and in related news (media all quiet) - the "USA Liberty Act of 2017" has passed meaning government is allowed to search our private data without a warrant: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/3989/actions https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/3989... Some more details here: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/10/usa-liberty-act-wont-fix-whats-most-broken-nsa-internet-surveillance https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/10/usa-liberty-act-wont-f...

MadWombat 9y ago

Hmm... they want name, address and phone number. And they require all the fields before they allow submitting the form. No.