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> The argument is that your carrier can now block you from getting information relevant to your rights That's not an argument. > So you may no longer be able

> The argument is that your carrier can now block you from getting information relevant to your rights That's not an argument. > So you may no longer be able to search for an abortion clinic, or newspapers that have negative articles about the government could be blocked, internet services in poor black neighborhoods may have their access to educational materials limited, etc. None of these hypotheticals are being seriously contemplated as potential outcomes of the FCC relinquishing its Title II authority over ISPs. Let's focus on the likely outcomes, not the unlikely ones.

dragonwriter 9y ago
> None of these hypotheticals are being seriously contemplated as potential outcomes of the FCC relinquishing its Title II authority over ISPs. Yes, an internet version of Verizon’s “controversial and unsavory” text message policy it's blocking of NARAL is definitely a serious concern.
- smsm42 9y ago
  Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. are blocking controversial content all the time. Any major content hoster and social network does it. Cloudflare does it. Hosting providers do it. If it were serious concern now, which it hasn't been serious concern in 2016? Or 2014?
  - todayiamme 9y ago
    That's a flawed argument as the level of abstraction matters. We can route around FB and Google. Direct message each other through Signal, Telegram, or just setup our own email servers. We can't do that if the ISP inspects our packets and refuses to send them no matter how we send them. What are you going to do when Comcast decides that hey let's charge $50 more for VPNs and another $4.99 for messaging apps (pre-approved of course)? What will you do when Signal or Telegram aren't on that list due to "security" concerns? What will you do if an ISP decides that all encrypted traffic is bad and decides to create whitelisted exceptions? Where will you go then?
    - smsm42 9y ago
      > We can't do that if the ISP inspects our packets and refuses to send them no matter how we send them. VPN > What are you going to do when Comcast decides that hey let's charge $50 more for VPNs You can't charge "for VPNs" - VPN traffic is just encrypted traffic. Comcast can charge more for encrypted traffic, but that would be completely insane, ruinous for business and Comcast won't ever do it because that would be insane. And of course, it didn't do it until 2015, because it'd be insane. And if they were insane enough to do this, I'd just use AT&T or Verizon or T-Mobile or whatever there would be around. Of course, I won't actually have to do any of that because Comcast is not going to do this insane thing. > and another $4.99 for messaging apps (pre-approved of course) Comcast doesn't approve apps, in fact Comcast has no idea what am I running and whether there are such thing as "apps" on the OS that I am running. But many mobile providers do provide free traffic for certain messaging apps. I've used it when traveling overseas, very useful to send my wife a message "I've landed, everything's fine" without having to pay for a whole daily internet package that I am not going to use. Of course, from NN point of view it is an outrage that must be banned. I fail to see why. And of course, 2015 regulations didn't prevent that from happening either. > What will you do if an ISP decides that all encrypted traffic is bad Wake up? Why invent scenarios that everybody knows would never happen? ISPs had 30 years until 2015 to do it, and we were fine. But now of course suddenly they all go crazy and start destroying their own business because they want $4.99 from you.
      - todayiamme 9y ago
        > Wake up? Why invent scenarios that everybody knows would never happen? ISPs had 30 years until 2015 to do it, and we were fine. But now of course suddenly they all go crazy and start destroying their own business because they want $4.99 from you. Some form of the scenarios I've outlined have indeed happened in the past. From folks trying to ban competitor's emails to attempts to block specific applications and traffic types at every level. Also if China can block VPNs then I'm sure Comcast can figure it out too; Here's a quick timeline; """ MADISON RIVER: In 2005, North Carolina ISP Madison River Communications blocked the voice-over-internet protocol (VOIP) service Vonage. Vonage filed a complaint with the FCC after receiving a slew of customer complaints. The FCC stepped in to sanction Madison River and prevent further blocking, but it lacks the authority to stop this kind of abuse today. http://news.cnet.com/Telco-agrees-to-stop-blocking-VoIP-calls/2100-7352_3-5598633.html http://news.cnet.com/Telco-agrees-to-stop-blocking-VoIP-call... COMCAST: In 2005, the nation’s largest ISP, Comcast, began secretly blocking peer-to-peer technologies that its customers were using over its network. Users of services like BitTorrent and Gnutella were unable to connect to these services. 2007 investigations from the Associated Press, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others confirmed that Comcast was indeed blocking or slowing file-sharing applications without disclosing this fact to its customers. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/10/eff-tests-agree-ap-comcast-forging-packets-to-interfere https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/10/eff-tests-agree-ap-com... TELUS: In 2005, Canada’s second-largest telecommunications company, Telus, began blocking access to a server that hosted a website supporting a labor strike against the company. Researchers at Harvard and the University of Toronto found that this action resulted in Telus blocking an additional 766 unrelated sites. http://thetyee.ca/News/2005/08/04/TelusCensor/ http://thetyee.ca/News/2005/08/04/TelusCensor/ AT&T: From 2007–2009, AT&T forced Apple to block Skype and other competing VOIP phone services on the iPhone. The wireless provider wanted to prevent iPhone users from using any application that would allow them to make calls on such “over-the-top” voice services. The Google Voice app received similar treatment from carriers like AT&T when it came on the scene in 2009. http://fortune.com/2009/04/03/group-asks-fcc-to-probe-iphone-skype-restrictions/ http://fortune.com/2009/04/03/group-asks-fcc-to-probe-iphone... WINDSTREAM: In 2010, Windstream Communications, a DSL provider with more than 1 million customers at the time, copped to hijacking user-search queries made using the Google toolbar within Firefox. Users who believed they had set the browser to the search engine of their choice were redirected to Windstream’s own search portal and results. http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/10/04/05/phone-company-helps-make-case-net-neutrality http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/10/04/05/phone-company-h... MetroPCS: In 2011, MetroPCS, at the time one of the top-five U.S. wireless carriers, announced plans to block streaming video over its 4G network from all sources except YouTube. MetroPCS then threw its weight behind Verizon’s court challenge against the FCC’s 2010 open internet ruling, hoping that rejection of the agency’s authority would allow the company to continue its anti-consumer practices. http://www.wired.com/2011/01/metropcs-net-neutrality-challenge/ http://www.wired.com/2011/01/metropcs-net-neutrality-challen... PAXFIRE: In 2011, the Electronic Frontier Foundation found that several small ISPs were redirecting search queries via the vendor Paxfire. The ISPs identified in the initial Electronic Frontier Foundation report included Cavalier, Cogent, Frontier, Fuse, DirecPC, RCN and Wide Open West. Paxfire would intercept a person’s search request at Bing and Yahoo and redirect it to another page. By skipping over the search service’s results, the participating ISPs would collect referral fees for delivering users to select websites. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/08/update-paxfire-and-search-redirection https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/08/update-paxfire-and-sea... AT&T, SPRINT and VERIZON: From 2011–2013, AT&T, Sprint and Verizon blocked Google Wallet, a mobile-payment system that competed with a similar service called Isis, which all three companies had a stake in developing. http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/11/12/15/top-10-ways-carriers-tried-screw-us-2011 http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/11/12/15/top-10-ways-car... - https://www.freepress.net/blog/2017/04/25/net-neutrality-violations-brief-history https://www.freepress.net/blog/2017/04/25/net-neutrality-vio... """ These are just some of the abuses that the FCC has interfered with and circumvented in the past. I can't predict the future but I do believe that past behavior is indicative of future results. Again, do you want to take the gamble that the honorable ISPs won't abuse their position of power to make everyone in the value chain pay out of their nose and threaten our industry's future growth? I don't.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. are blocking controversial content all the time. That's a concern, too, for many people, but edge provider censorship is a different problem (and much easier to work around) than censorship on the pipe connecting you to every edge provider.
    - smsm42 9y ago
      Somehow those "many people" do not run around screaming "internet is doomed, dooooooomed I say! the end is nigh!" like they do about NN. Despite not having one single example where what the doom prophets predict and having many, many examples of "different problem" happening all the time. > much easier to work around Being banned by hosting providers, CDNs and Google is easy to work around? I wonder how you conclude it's easy? > than censorship on the pipe connecting you to every edge provider. Except there's no single instance of such censorship I've heard so far happening before 2015, and NN not being about censorship at all. And many, many cases of censorship happening on all major sites, which people just shrug off "well, it's a private site, what do you expect?"
      - dragonwriter 9y ago
        > Somehow those "many people" do not run around screaming "internet is doomed, dooooooomed I say! the end is nigh!" Yes, the people for whom edge provider censorship is a concern frequently do exactly that, and complain that regulatory intervention is necessary. It's true that the people concerned about edge provider censorship and those concerned about access provider censorship are often different people. > Except there's no single instance of such censorship I've heard so far happening before 2015 https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/1998-99/nuremberg-files/censorship.html https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/1998-... > and NN not being about censorship at all. The prohibition against blocking, etc., any lawful content or applications found in both the 2010 and 2015 regs is exactly about censorship, whether or not it is ideological.
        smsm42 9y ago
        The link you provided talks about censorship on forums etc. That happens on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. every day. ISPs no longer own most of the social media, but I'm not sure how the same kind of censorship is ok now (in fact, Congress just severely criticized Facebook and Twitter for doing not enough of it and allowing Russians to publish their opinions about US matters on these sites) but exactly the same censorship was not ok then? Cases of ISPs refusing hosting and other similar services are known and widely lauded. Of course, that was not because it was about censorship, but because Nazis were the ones being censored, but censorship as a principle has been accepted, and the question now is only who you can censor. And as you can know, there's no shortage of people who would declare everybody who doesn't agree with them literally Hitler and demand to censor them. Either we accept this is ok and the competition will take care of it, or we say the state must intervene and stop it - but we can't say both depending on how the company doing it is called.
Broken_Hippo 9y ago
" Let's focus on the likely outcomes, not the unlikely ones." Ok. Porn, Facebook, Netflix, Wikipedia, and General informational browsing. Facebook is likely to become more cemented in their social media spot. Good luck to the competition - Facebook doesn't count towards data limits. Now, this could go many ways, but we already have issues with this walled garden and folks getting all their news from here. I suspect it is reasonable that such a thing will become worse. Wikipedia could easily be included, which doesn't have some of the scaryness of facebook being free from data caps. Netflix draws customers, and some will offer hulu instead. This could be good or bad. But general information to verify things from facebook or wikipedia? Want to browse porn? Forum for that autoimmune disease you have? Now you are going against your plan, going to look at sites that don't especially work with your ISP. Not if you've gotten over your cap. Maybe you are just throttled? Yup, the doctor's office page won't load quickly enough for you to fill it out and neither will your bank's. Oops. Welcome to dial-up speeds on today's internet. There aren't enough people on some of these niche websites to matter to the near-monopoly you call an ISP so folks can't make enough of a stink to get it changed. And that's really the point. It isn't so much that they will automatically do such things - but the fact that we are so powerless to stop it, when it really shouldn't matter to the ISP whether I watch 5 minutes of cat videos on Youtube or 5 minutes of porn. I don't trust the companies to do the "right" thing without minimally basic regulations outlining things.

dragonwriter 9y ago

> None of these hypotheticals are being seriously contemplated as potential outcomes of the FCC relinquishing its Title II authority over ISPs. Yes, an internet version of Verizon’s “controversial and unsavory” text message policy it's blocking of NARAL is definitely a serious concern.

smsm42 9y ago
Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. are blocking controversial content all the time. Any major content hoster and social network does it. Cloudflare does it. Hosting providers do it. If it were serious concern now, which it hasn't been serious concern in 2016? Or 2014?
- todayiamme 9y ago
  That's a flawed argument as the level of abstraction matters. We can route around FB and Google. Direct message each other through Signal, Telegram, or just setup our own email servers. We can't do that if the ISP inspects our packets and refuses to send them no matter how we send them. What are you going to do when Comcast decides that hey let's charge $50 more for VPNs and another $4.99 for messaging apps (pre-approved of course)? What will you do when Signal or Telegram aren't on that list due to "security" concerns? What will you do if an ISP decides that all encrypted traffic is bad and decides to create whitelisted exceptions? Where will you go then?
  - smsm42 9y ago
    > We can't do that if the ISP inspects our packets and refuses to send them no matter how we send them. VPN > What are you going to do when Comcast decides that hey let's charge $50 more for VPNs You can't charge "for VPNs" - VPN traffic is just encrypted traffic. Comcast can charge more for encrypted traffic, but that would be completely insane, ruinous for business and Comcast won't ever do it because that would be insane. And of course, it didn't do it until 2015, because it'd be insane. And if they were insane enough to do this, I'd just use AT&T or Verizon or T-Mobile or whatever there would be around. Of course, I won't actually have to do any of that because Comcast is not going to do this insane thing. > and another $4.99 for messaging apps (pre-approved of course) Comcast doesn't approve apps, in fact Comcast has no idea what am I running and whether there are such thing as "apps" on the OS that I am running. But many mobile providers do provide free traffic for certain messaging apps. I've used it when traveling overseas, very useful to send my wife a message "I've landed, everything's fine" without having to pay for a whole daily internet package that I am not going to use. Of course, from NN point of view it is an outrage that must be banned. I fail to see why. And of course, 2015 regulations didn't prevent that from happening either. > What will you do if an ISP decides that all encrypted traffic is bad Wake up? Why invent scenarios that everybody knows would never happen? ISPs had 30 years until 2015 to do it, and we were fine. But now of course suddenly they all go crazy and start destroying their own business because they want $4.99 from you.
    - todayiamme 9y ago
      > Wake up? Why invent scenarios that everybody knows would never happen? ISPs had 30 years until 2015 to do it, and we were fine. But now of course suddenly they all go crazy and start destroying their own business because they want $4.99 from you. Some form of the scenarios I've outlined have indeed happened in the past. From folks trying to ban competitor's emails to attempts to block specific applications and traffic types at every level. Also if China can block VPNs then I'm sure Comcast can figure it out too; Here's a quick timeline; """ MADISON RIVER: In 2005, North Carolina ISP Madison River Communications blocked the voice-over-internet protocol (VOIP) service Vonage. Vonage filed a complaint with the FCC after receiving a slew of customer complaints. The FCC stepped in to sanction Madison River and prevent further blocking, but it lacks the authority to stop this kind of abuse today. http://news.cnet.com/Telco-agrees-to-stop-blocking-VoIP-calls/2100-7352_3-5598633.html http://news.cnet.com/Telco-agrees-to-stop-blocking-VoIP-call... COMCAST: In 2005, the nation’s largest ISP, Comcast, began secretly blocking peer-to-peer technologies that its customers were using over its network. Users of services like BitTorrent and Gnutella were unable to connect to these services. 2007 investigations from the Associated Press, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others confirmed that Comcast was indeed blocking or slowing file-sharing applications without disclosing this fact to its customers. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/10/eff-tests-agree-ap-comcast-forging-packets-to-interfere https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/10/eff-tests-agree-ap-com... TELUS: In 2005, Canada’s second-largest telecommunications company, Telus, began blocking access to a server that hosted a website supporting a labor strike against the company. Researchers at Harvard and the University of Toronto found that this action resulted in Telus blocking an additional 766 unrelated sites. http://thetyee.ca/News/2005/08/04/TelusCensor/ http://thetyee.ca/News/2005/08/04/TelusCensor/ AT&T: From 2007–2009, AT&T forced Apple to block Skype and other competing VOIP phone services on the iPhone. The wireless provider wanted to prevent iPhone users from using any application that would allow them to make calls on such “over-the-top” voice services. The Google Voice app received similar treatment from carriers like AT&T when it came on the scene in 2009. http://fortune.com/2009/04/03/group-asks-fcc-to-probe-iphone-skype-restrictions/ http://fortune.com/2009/04/03/group-asks-fcc-to-probe-iphone... WINDSTREAM: In 2010, Windstream Communications, a DSL provider with more than 1 million customers at the time, copped to hijacking user-search queries made using the Google toolbar within Firefox. Users who believed they had set the browser to the search engine of their choice were redirected to Windstream’s own search portal and results. http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/10/04/05/phone-company-helps-make-case-net-neutrality http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/10/04/05/phone-company-h... MetroPCS: In 2011, MetroPCS, at the time one of the top-five U.S. wireless carriers, announced plans to block streaming video over its 4G network from all sources except YouTube. MetroPCS then threw its weight behind Verizon’s court challenge against the FCC’s 2010 open internet ruling, hoping that rejection of the agency’s authority would allow the company to continue its anti-consumer practices. http://www.wired.com/2011/01/metropcs-net-neutrality-challenge/ http://www.wired.com/2011/01/metropcs-net-neutrality-challen... PAXFIRE: In 2011, the Electronic Frontier Foundation found that several small ISPs were redirecting search queries via the vendor Paxfire. The ISPs identified in the initial Electronic Frontier Foundation report included Cavalier, Cogent, Frontier, Fuse, DirecPC, RCN and Wide Open West. Paxfire would intercept a person’s search request at Bing and Yahoo and redirect it to another page. By skipping over the search service’s results, the participating ISPs would collect referral fees for delivering users to select websites. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/08/update-paxfire-and-search-redirection https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/08/update-paxfire-and-sea... AT&T, SPRINT and VERIZON: From 2011–2013, AT&T, Sprint and Verizon blocked Google Wallet, a mobile-payment system that competed with a similar service called Isis, which all three companies had a stake in developing. http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/11/12/15/top-10-ways-carriers-tried-screw-us-2011 http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/11/12/15/top-10-ways-car... - https://www.freepress.net/blog/2017/04/25/net-neutrality-violations-brief-history https://www.freepress.net/blog/2017/04/25/net-neutrality-vio... """ These are just some of the abuses that the FCC has interfered with and circumvented in the past. I can't predict the future but I do believe that past behavior is indicative of future results. Again, do you want to take the gamble that the honorable ISPs won't abuse their position of power to make everyone in the value chain pay out of their nose and threaten our industry's future growth? I don't.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. are blocking controversial content all the time. That's a concern, too, for many people, but edge provider censorship is a different problem (and much easier to work around) than censorship on the pipe connecting you to every edge provider.
  - smsm42 9y ago
    Somehow those "many people" do not run around screaming "internet is doomed, dooooooomed I say! the end is nigh!" like they do about NN. Despite not having one single example where what the doom prophets predict and having many, many examples of "different problem" happening all the time. > much easier to work around Being banned by hosting providers, CDNs and Google is easy to work around? I wonder how you conclude it's easy? > than censorship on the pipe connecting you to every edge provider. Except there's no single instance of such censorship I've heard so far happening before 2015, and NN not being about censorship at all. And many, many cases of censorship happening on all major sites, which people just shrug off "well, it's a private site, what do you expect?"
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > Somehow those "many people" do not run around screaming "internet is doomed, dooooooomed I say! the end is nigh!" Yes, the people for whom edge provider censorship is a concern frequently do exactly that, and complain that regulatory intervention is necessary. It's true that the people concerned about edge provider censorship and those concerned about access provider censorship are often different people. > Except there's no single instance of such censorship I've heard so far happening before 2015 https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/1998-99/nuremberg-files/censorship.html https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/1998-... > and NN not being about censorship at all. The prohibition against blocking, etc., any lawful content or applications found in both the 2010 and 2015 regs is exactly about censorship, whether or not it is ideological.
      - smsm42 9y ago
        The link you provided talks about censorship on forums etc. That happens on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. every day. ISPs no longer own most of the social media, but I'm not sure how the same kind of censorship is ok now (in fact, Congress just severely criticized Facebook and Twitter for doing not enough of it and allowing Russians to publish their opinions about US matters on these sites) but exactly the same censorship was not ok then? Cases of ISPs refusing hosting and other similar services are known and widely lauded. Of course, that was not because it was about censorship, but because Nazis were the ones being censored, but censorship as a principle has been accepted, and the question now is only who you can censor. And as you can know, there's no shortage of people who would declare everybody who doesn't agree with them literally Hitler and demand to censor them. Either we accept this is ok and the competition will take care of it, or we say the state must intervene and stop it - but we can't say both depending on how the company doing it is called.

Broken_Hippo 9y ago

" Let's focus on the likely outcomes, not the unlikely ones." Ok. Porn, Facebook, Netflix, Wikipedia, and General informational browsing. Facebook is likely to become more cemented in their social media spot. Good luck to the competition - Facebook doesn't count towards data limits. Now, this could go many ways, but we already have issues with this walled garden and folks getting all their news from here. I suspect it is reasonable that such a thing will become worse. Wikipedia could easily be included, which doesn't have some of the scaryness of facebook being free from data caps. Netflix draws customers, and some will offer hulu instead. This could be good or bad. But general information to verify things from facebook or wikipedia? Want to browse porn? Forum for that autoimmune disease you have? Now you are going against your plan, going to look at sites that don't especially work with your ISP. Not if you've gotten over your cap. Maybe you are just throttled? Yup, the doctor's office page won't load quickly enough for you to fill it out and neither will your bank's. Oops. Welcome to dial-up speeds on today's internet. There aren't enough people on some of these niche websites to matter to the near-monopoly you call an ISP so folks can't make enough of a stink to get it changed. And that's really the point. It isn't so much that they will automatically do such things - but the fact that we are so powerless to stop it, when it really shouldn't matter to the ISP whether I watch 5 minutes of cat videos on Youtube or 5 minutes of porn. I don't trust the companies to do the "right" thing without minimally basic regulations outlining things.