9 ms·

TorrentFreak: Don't bash Google for Net Neutrality, it never existed anyway

137 points by nervechannel 16y ago

jacquesm 16y ago
Anything that inspects packets past the transport layers should be illegal unless a warrant has been served. Just like in the good old post days you should be able to rely on all your packets arriving without 'inspection' by any carriers. The obvious solution to the whole net neutrality problem is to encrypt everything and to run the various protocols on every port imaginable after some form of handshaking. I think that would work.
- alecco 16y ago
  Yes, but that wouldn't be enough. The DNS system is also controlled by an oligopoly and ISPs. With DNS server data ISPs can easily deduce what is a packet doing. AFAIK, the DNSSEC system doesn't solve this, either. The stakes are high, I'd love to see a change of paradigm. But it's very hard given the immense economic and political interests against anything fair.
  - PidGin128 16y ago
    I first thought of a solution, whereby we share distributed lists of hostnames, in the same way torrents are tracked. I then remembered that you can switch to alternative DNS providers. Google's comes to mind, because its 8.8.8.8 address is easy to remember.
    - alecco 16y ago
      Google is the largest advertising and user-tracking system online. I would only use those DNS servers as last resource. Also your DNS request travels unencrypted through your ISP and a likely drop-in solution to packet inspection would just be a passive listener (typical solution with 0 configuration). So in this case, alternative servers don't help.
      - bitskits 16y ago
        While the Google argument is an easy argument to make, it happens to not have merit. From: http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy.html http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy.html We don't correlate or combine your information from the temporary or permanent logs with any other data that Google might have about your use of other services, such as data from Web Search and data from advertising on the Google content network.
        alecco 16y ago
        You are diverting the discussion. The main point of that comment is the ISP can inspect those packets just like if you use their servers (and probably by exactly the planned way to do it in the first place.) With regards of privacy, Google's definition of what's identifying or not is very dodgy. From your own link, the permanent record includes the timestamp, domain, geolocation and ISP. That's a lot of information if you aggregate it.
        bitskits 16y ago
        Down-voted for posting a link to a privacy policy? Hmm. Ok. My point had nothing to do with your ISP packet inspection argument (notice I didn't address it). I was providing a counter-point to the "Google is the largest advertising and user-tracking system online. I would only use those DNS servers as last resource." My comment was simply to refute your indication that Google might be associating DNS with advertising or user tracking. They don't. Edit: Can someone explain why the down-votes? Do you just disagree?
        alecco 16y ago
        Yep, down-voting isn't cool and I think bitskits has a valid opinion (even though I don't agree.)
        alecco 16y ago
        > My point had nothing to do with your ISP packet inspection argument That's why my comment said you were diverting the point of the discussion. We are discussing ways to hide content from ISPs.
    - amalcon 16y ago
      The old UUNet IPs (now maintained by level 3) work as well: 4.2.2.[1,6] As does running your own DNS.
- ewams 16y ago
  Do you think that more people are going to start encrypting their traffic because of events like this?
- lsc 16y ago
  what about looking for active abuse? Assuming I tell you on account signup, is running your traffic through an IDS to alert me when your system is compromised unacceptable? what if I only look at your traffic after I get an abuse report? what if I get an abuse report... can I use tcpdump? I mean, these are all possibilities. my concern is that if, for example, you make running an inward facing IDS illegal, selling (nearly) anonymous accounts on the cheap will be ah, more difficult. In theory, a good enough inward-facing IDS, if implemented by more ISPs, could largely mitigate the botnet problem we have now, where almost any site can be wiped off the internet by IRC kids. (now, my IDS system never got past 'experimental' and has been down for several years now. But when it was active, I think it was pretty neat; customers could see incoming attacks, and I could see outgoing attacks. Of course, like any ids, it had a huge false positive rate, so honestly, it wasn't all that useful, which is part of why it's currently down. I'm just interested in why people think that sort of technology is inherently a bad idea- a bad enough idea that there should be a law, even.) Now, I think it's important that providers are very clear about what they do with a customer's packets... but I worry that codifying what a provider can do to a packet /with the consent of the customer/ into law will eliminate services I like.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    That's a good point and a fine line to walk. I'm going to have to think about that for a bit, it's a tricky enough situation you sketch that there shouldn't be some kind of exception for it. First thing to come to mind is maybe an electronic way of securing permission from the 'endpoint' of the traffic, since they benefit from not having their hardware and their connection abused as well. The key is 'with the consent of the customer', and I think that such instances should be the exception rather than the rule. So if there is no specific reason why a certain customers packets are inspected and it is done without their knowledge and consent it should be illegal. Also, it may very well be possible to correlate enough transport layer data to figure out which packets are part of an attack and which are legit, but that might be computationally very expensive to do.
    - lsc 16y ago
      well, I'm actually /really interested/ in what people think about this. I mean, laws aside, privacy policies[1] are pretty important to some people. But the thing is, by looking at (and sometimes mucking with) your traffic, I can provide you a better service. So it's important for me to know where the line is for different people. [1] note: this isn't final, but it's my latest working draft: http://wiki.xen.prgmr.com/xenophilia/2010/06/please-comment-on-the-first-dr.html http://wiki.xen.prgmr.com/xenophilia/2010/06/please-comment-...
loewenskind 16y ago
Talk about throw the baby out with the bath water. "We weren't allowed to have our service sent mostly illegal data without being blocked, so net neutrality was obviously a myth!". Does the author think that Google's "courageous attempt at net neutrality" would be favorable to torrents on wired networks? Google betrayed the trust of everyone who believed "Don't do evil". Full stop. How ISPs dealt with illegal traffic on their networks has nothing to do with any of this.
- sp332 16y ago
  It's a complete non-sequitur to charge more money for tiered service and claim it's because of piracy. Most of the people on the highway on my way to work are speeding. That doesn't mean the government should allow different cars to go different speeds depending how much the manufacturer pays.
- alecco 16y ago
  Who is down-voting this comment? lowenskind didn't break HNs rules and disagreement shouldn't be expressed by down-voting. This site's etiquette would be a reply with a counter-argument. If you join any community, try to learn its rules first. And don't hide behind the anonymity of down-voting. Edit 1: rephrasing. Edit 2: lowenskind comment was in the negative side when I wrote this, requiring at least 2 down-voting accounts.
  - chc 16y ago
    It is no less reasonable than accusing Google of having "betrayed … everyone" by still fighting harder for network neutrality than anyone else but not doing it in the exact way that you'd prefer. There's no real counterargument to be made against what basically amounts to unsubstantiated smack talk.
- zephyrfalcon 16y ago
  Nowhere does it say that torrents are blocked because of illegal content. The AT&T terms of service that are quoted in the article mention "certain uses that cause extreme network capacity issues" as a reason. Given that torrents are often huge, and that wireless networks usually are not as fast as wired ones yet, that does not seem completely unreasonable. Of course, it does mean that I cannot download, say, a Linux ISO via torrent... now that is throwing out the baby with the bath water. (That said, AT&T did stop offering Usenet last year, supposedly because there was too much illegal content.)
alecco 16y ago
> Even the most troubling part of Google’s proposal – that wireless networks > would be excluded for the time being – is not much different from > what the FCC suggested. That doesn't make it right. I'm sure P2P voice providers like Skype are very upset about this agreement. And customers should be, too. If my 3G/4G provider selectively blocks my voice calls they should state it very clearly on the marketing material. Something like "X GB per month for everything but voice, peer-to-peer, and any other service that competes with our own services." Of course they will never say that because they don't want the public to be aware they are being deceived. Even for the rest of the corporations the wireless situation is very bad. They won't be able to have inexpensive communications over IP if it goes through wireless, like conference calls. They'll be forced to use oligopolistic and overpriced services for something already paid for. This isn't bad just for end users and I think Torrentfreak missed the point. This proposal initiates a terrible false dichotomy of wired vs. wireless. It helps current use of peer-to-peer (the bait) crippling wireless (the real deal in the very near future.) Google doesn't care, or even worse, is against P2P services (private or commercial) because their core business is at odds with it. In som ways Google CEO want it to be the new IBM, the new central mainframe. [Don't get me wrong, I love the technical people behind Google including its founders, but their higher management is out of control, and IMHO, "evil".]
- ZeroGravitas 16y ago
  How can it initiate that dichotomy when it's the basically the same as a) the FCC proposal and b) reality as we've lived it for the last few years? TorrentFreak aren't saying it's great, they're saying it sucks just as much as the status quo, so piling onto Google is stupid because you're attacking the one person pushing for progress in one area because they aren't making progress in a more difficult area, double that stupid if you're acting like Google is dismantling something that doesn't exist, rather than just not fighting to have it created.
  - alecco 16y ago
    Perhaps I shouldn't have used "initiate." But the proposal by Google/Verizon states a position while the FCC document "seek[s] comment." It's new that Google, a content provider, answers that question jointly with the 2nd largest telecom. And both companies are partners in the mobile business. http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-09-93A1.pdf http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-09-93A...
spinchange 16y ago
It's refreshing to read more of reality-based examination of last week's announcement.
- alecco 16y ago
  I'm sorry, but who said the current situation is network neutral? There have been plenty of crazy situations related to throttling (like Comcast) and deep packet inspection and content modification (like the big case in UK.) It's a legally grey area where different groups are asking different things. EFF, EPIC, and other civil rights related groups worldwide want content non-discrimination and permission of tethering for wireless devices. The telcos want carte blanche to block or throttle as they please. And I bet 3 letter agencies (and their counter-parties in other countries) are siding with the telcos for their own reasons. Google changed their stance at least on content discrimination on wireless. A very meaningful example Skype calls or competing video distribution platforms. Google can't represent those competitors on this discussion. In particular if they are partners with telcos with their Android system. That's where the outrage comes from.
  - nervechannel 16y ago
    "I'm sorry, but who said the current situation is network neutral?" Err, that's exactly the point. Net neutrality already doesn't exist in a lot of ways, the Google proposal is seen by some (e.g. TorrentFreak) as an attempt to regulate something that can already be arbitrarily done in an unregulated way. You can't take away a freedom or right that doesn't already exist.
    - alecco 16y ago
      As I said in another comment, if my 3G/4G service provider sold me the service as "X GB per month" without clarifying it can't carry voice or competing services currently it's unlawful and other companies affected could sue them. Or a class action for deceitful advertising. Telcos want to have legal cover for that. That's new.
      - 16y ago
rquesada 16y ago
People complain against google because: - It has a "don't be evil" mantra, wich is deprecated right now - A few years ago Google was promoting the net neutrality Many people feel betrayed by the new Google behavior.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
yanw 16y ago
"We can’t help but note that Google’s proposal is in essence very similar to the (widely praised) Net Neutrality regulations that were suggested a few month ago by the FCC. On several points it’s actually an improvement, as the EFF also noted." I Wonder why none of the bigger news outlets tried to compare between the two proposals.
- wmf 16y ago
  The media has very little memory. Anything past last week might as well have never happened.
- alecco 16y ago
  FCC didn't make a proposal on Wireless, at least on the document they sent on Oct 2009. http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-09-93A1.pdf http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-09-93A...
  - yanw 16y ago
    How about the more recent "third way" proposition?
    - alecco 16y ago
      Even less clear: > [...] will seek input on important questions such as whether wired > and wireless broadband access should be treated differently > in this context, and will invite new ideas. http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-297944A1.pdf http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-297944...
antics 16y ago
Not inspecting packets is only the beginning. I for one don't just want people to not snoop around my data, I want more or less unbiased service. Remember, Comcast would throttle users who were constantly uploading a lot of information, which by the way, actually is a pretty good indicator of torrenting. This is the reason you can't just encrypt everything (edit: as other users here suggest). It goes deeper than that. It's not about people looking into your content, it's about ISPs having to provide the internet as it is, and not simply as they want you to see it.
benbeltran 16y ago
Hey, but don't you know it's chic to hate google right now? People love complaining, but not so much helping. I see a lot of people saying why it's wrong but I dont' see fewer people making proposals. And I think the general message in the article is "hey, it's not perfect but at least google is doing something".
- jacquesm 16y ago
  I don't think that's what's driving this. The major powers behind this are two-fold, the first google's apparent about face, the second that they seem to act against their self applied motto. So they're being held to the standards that they themselves set in the past, hating google has nothing to do with it. Net neutrality simply translates in to 'pipes are supposed to be dumb for regular traffic'. Anything other than that and the net is no longer neutral, and that's both what drove it to become what it is today and what will continue to drive that growth in the future. Turning it in to a series of ISP guarded walled gardens is not to anybodies benefit. Especially not the wireless portion, since that is where the future growth will be, so the current battle will draw the lines for one of the most important portions of the net in the near future. And I think we all hoped that Google would stay on the right side in this, and feel disappointed that they didn't. Hate doesn't enter in to it.
rickmb 16y ago
I find it interesting to see how so many people try to sound "reasonable" and find value in "compromise". Which is a good thing, 99% of the time. Except when the issue falls into "you can't be a little bit pregnant" category. IMHO, that is the case where Net Neutrality concerned. You can debate how to enforce it, or even if you should enforce it, how important it is, if it should be law, the ethics of it, whatever, but there is no such thing as "a bit of" or "an improvement in" Net Neutrality. Any law or proposal that leaves gaping holes to manipulate traffic at will is against Net Neutrality. And so, apparently, is Google. And btw, Net Neutrality did exist, for the longest time in the Internet's history. That's kind of the whole damn point, it brought us to where we are today. The fact that it wasn't enshrined in the law doesn't mean it didn't exist. All of which means that Google's proposal is a proposal to bury it, not defend it.
- antics 16y ago
  So your proposal to fight one of the biggest lobbying forces in the world [http://www.freepress.net/node/62059 http://www.freepress.net/node/62059] is to demand that everything just be fixed all at once? You are out of your mind.
  - gamble 16y ago
    Yeah, who would ever do something that crazy? It would be like demanding automakers build safe cars or telling the tobacco industry not to market their product to children.
    - jokermatt999 16y ago
      Both those examples had a nice emotional component to them: automobile deaths and cancer patients. Try showing someone the harm of non-neutral networks without resorting to hypothetical situations or abstracts. I don't mean someone on HN, I mean the "average Joe" voter.
    - antics 16y ago
      Funny you should mention that, because both of those things took DECADES to enact, through massive policy overhauls, with millions of man-hours of deliberation. Thank you for demonstrating my point.
andreyf 16y ago
Getting rid of terrenting is what net neutrality is about for a lot of players: it's a significant part of backbone traffic that can be eliminated (de-prioritized to the point of being useless) overnight, given the right legal setting. Frankly, the interests looking to get rid of peer-to-peer bandwidth are so powerful and around invested long-term, I don't think there's much anyone can do.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  What goes on in my packets is nobodies business but me and my 'peer', whether it's a web server, a phone, an internet connected appliance, an ftp site or a torrent server. De-prioritizing (what a word anyway) is not what it is all about it is about limiting. Prioritizing all the traffic is like selecting a volunteer by having someone step backwards. ISPs sell bandwidth, so bandwidth is what they should deliver. They don't sell quality of service, at least, I've yet to see an ISP that offered me 250K down for torrents, 32K for voice and 128K for web traffic as a single package. They'll sell me 1, 4, 8, 10 or even 20 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up for X credits per time unit. So that's what I expect to receive. And once they start doing deep packet inspection where does it end? Some websites have a deal with the ISP to prioritize their traffic at the expense of others?
  - antics 16y ago
    I'm for net neutrality, but the argument that they are "selling bandwidth" is ridiculous -- in fact that's the very argument ISPs have for disallowing it! [Pete Ashdown is the president of a Utah ISP called Xmission: http://peteashdown.org/journal/2006/05/04/net-neutrality/ http://peteashdown.org/journal/2006/05/04/net-neutrality/] As providers of a service, they argue that they should be able to "deprioritize" garbage traffic so that all their customers don't suffer, and you might argue that this is not the real reason they de-prioritize, but regardless, your argument is just as easily turned in the opposite direction. Bottom line, is that net neutrality is about having an accurate picture of the internet, and not a picture that Comcast (or whoever) decides I get. THAT, as well as maintaining user privacy, is the goal here. EDIT: I should also add that ISPs have throttled upload-heavy traffic WITHOUT inspecting the packets for a long time, so even if you didn't inspect packets, the issue of net neutrality persists.
gamble 16y ago
This is BS. Net neutrality has been the status quo for the last 30 years, if only because the network providers didn't have the ability to throttle traffic they didn't like, and weren't concerned about squeezing every cent out of their oligopoly position. Only in the last few years have the providers possessed the network hardware and the concern about becoming dumb pipes that they've actively attacked net neutrality. Also, I think he's deluding himself if he thinks the Google/Verizon deal is going to protect Bittorrent on wired networks.
petercooper 16y ago
And it's not just BitTorrent. Net neutrality hasn't existed in a broad sense for SMTP for years now. Anyone's who maintained a mail server will know of seemingly arbitrary IP filtering between data centers, network wide tarpitting and throttling, and all sorts of hoops you need to jump through to reliably deliver mail. Further, many ISPs over the years have blocked port 80 in or transparently proxied port 25 (or even port 80) through their own servers. I'm not necessarily against this but I think it should be a legal requirement for ISPs to share information about what they're doing so we can choose ISPs that fit in with our requirements.

137 points by nervechannel 16y ago

Anything that inspects packets past the transport layers should be illegal unless a warrant has been served. Just like in the good old post days you should be able to rely on all your packets arriving without 'inspection' by any carriers. The obvious solution to the whole net neutrality problem is to encrypt everything and to run the various protocols on every port imaginable after some form of handshaking. I think that would work.

alecco 16y ago
Yes, but that wouldn't be enough. The DNS system is also controlled by an oligopoly and ISPs. With DNS server data ISPs can easily deduce what is a packet doing. AFAIK, the DNSSEC system doesn't solve this, either. The stakes are high, I'd love to see a change of paradigm. But it's very hard given the immense economic and political interests against anything fair.
- PidGin128 16y ago
  I first thought of a solution, whereby we share distributed lists of hostnames, in the same way torrents are tracked. I then remembered that you can switch to alternative DNS providers. Google's comes to mind, because its 8.8.8.8 address is easy to remember.
  - alecco 16y ago
    Google is the largest advertising and user-tracking system online. I would only use those DNS servers as last resource. Also your DNS request travels unencrypted through your ISP and a likely drop-in solution to packet inspection would just be a passive listener (typical solution with 0 configuration). So in this case, alternative servers don't help.
    - bitskits 16y ago
      While the Google argument is an easy argument to make, it happens to not have merit. From: http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy.html http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy.html We don't correlate or combine your information from the temporary or permanent logs with any other data that Google might have about your use of other services, such as data from Web Search and data from advertising on the Google content network.
      - alecco 16y ago
        You are diverting the discussion. The main point of that comment is the ISP can inspect those packets just like if you use their servers (and probably by exactly the planned way to do it in the first place.) With regards of privacy, Google's definition of what's identifying or not is very dodgy. From your own link, the permanent record includes the timestamp, domain, geolocation and ISP. That's a lot of information if you aggregate it.
        bitskits 16y ago
        Down-voted for posting a link to a privacy policy? Hmm. Ok. My point had nothing to do with your ISP packet inspection argument (notice I didn't address it). I was providing a counter-point to the "Google is the largest advertising and user-tracking system online. I would only use those DNS servers as last resource." My comment was simply to refute your indication that Google might be associating DNS with advertising or user tracking. They don't. Edit: Can someone explain why the down-votes? Do you just disagree?
        alecco 16y ago
        Yep, down-voting isn't cool and I think bitskits has a valid opinion (even though I don't agree.)
        alecco 16y ago
        > My point had nothing to do with your ISP packet inspection argument That's why my comment said you were diverting the point of the discussion. We are discussing ways to hide content from ISPs.
  - amalcon 16y ago
    The old UUNet IPs (now maintained by level 3) work as well: 4.2.2.[1,6] As does running your own DNS.
ewams 16y ago
Do you think that more people are going to start encrypting their traffic because of events like this?
lsc 16y ago
what about looking for active abuse? Assuming I tell you on account signup, is running your traffic through an IDS to alert me when your system is compromised unacceptable? what if I only look at your traffic after I get an abuse report? what if I get an abuse report... can I use tcpdump? I mean, these are all possibilities. my concern is that if, for example, you make running an inward facing IDS illegal, selling (nearly) anonymous accounts on the cheap will be ah, more difficult. In theory, a good enough inward-facing IDS, if implemented by more ISPs, could largely mitigate the botnet problem we have now, where almost any site can be wiped off the internet by IRC kids. (now, my IDS system never got past 'experimental' and has been down for several years now. But when it was active, I think it was pretty neat; customers could see incoming attacks, and I could see outgoing attacks. Of course, like any ids, it had a huge false positive rate, so honestly, it wasn't all that useful, which is part of why it's currently down. I'm just interested in why people think that sort of technology is inherently a bad idea- a bad enough idea that there should be a law, even.) Now, I think it's important that providers are very clear about what they do with a customer's packets... but I worry that codifying what a provider can do to a packet /with the consent of the customer/ into law will eliminate services I like.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  That's a good point and a fine line to walk. I'm going to have to think about that for a bit, it's a tricky enough situation you sketch that there shouldn't be some kind of exception for it. First thing to come to mind is maybe an electronic way of securing permission from the 'endpoint' of the traffic, since they benefit from not having their hardware and their connection abused as well. The key is 'with the consent of the customer', and I think that such instances should be the exception rather than the rule. So if there is no specific reason why a certain customers packets are inspected and it is done without their knowledge and consent it should be illegal. Also, it may very well be possible to correlate enough transport layer data to figure out which packets are part of an attack and which are legit, but that might be computationally very expensive to do.
  - lsc 16y ago
    well, I'm actually /really interested/ in what people think about this. I mean, laws aside, privacy policies[1] are pretty important to some people. But the thing is, by looking at (and sometimes mucking with) your traffic, I can provide you a better service. So it's important for me to know where the line is for different people. [1] note: this isn't final, but it's my latest working draft: http://wiki.xen.prgmr.com/xenophilia/2010/06/please-comment-on-the-first-dr.html http://wiki.xen.prgmr.com/xenophilia/2010/06/please-comment-...

loewenskind 16y ago

Talk about throw the baby out with the bath water. "We weren't allowed to have our service sent mostly illegal data without being blocked, so net neutrality was obviously a myth!". Does the author think that Google's "courageous attempt at net neutrality" would be favorable to torrents on wired networks? Google betrayed the trust of everyone who believed "Don't do evil". Full stop. How ISPs dealt with illegal traffic on their networks has nothing to do with any of this.

sp332 16y ago
It's a complete non-sequitur to charge more money for tiered service and claim it's because of piracy. Most of the people on the highway on my way to work are speeding. That doesn't mean the government should allow different cars to go different speeds depending how much the manufacturer pays.
alecco 16y ago
Who is down-voting this comment? lowenskind didn't break HNs rules and disagreement shouldn't be expressed by down-voting. This site's etiquette would be a reply with a counter-argument. If you join any community, try to learn its rules first. And don't hide behind the anonymity of down-voting. Edit 1: rephrasing. Edit 2: lowenskind comment was in the negative side when I wrote this, requiring at least 2 down-voting accounts.
- chc 16y ago
  It is no less reasonable than accusing Google of having "betrayed … everyone" by still fighting harder for network neutrality than anyone else but not doing it in the exact way that you'd prefer. There's no real counterargument to be made against what basically amounts to unsubstantiated smack talk.
zephyrfalcon 16y ago
Nowhere does it say that torrents are blocked because of illegal content. The AT&T terms of service that are quoted in the article mention "certain uses that cause extreme network capacity issues" as a reason. Given that torrents are often huge, and that wireless networks usually are not as fast as wired ones yet, that does not seem completely unreasonable. Of course, it does mean that I cannot download, say, a Linux ISO via torrent... now that is throwing out the baby with the bath water. (That said, AT&T did stop offering Usenet last year, supposedly because there was too much illegal content.)

alecco 16y ago

> Even the most troubling part of Google’s proposal – that wireless networks > would be excluded for the time being – is not much different from > what the FCC suggested. That doesn't make it right. I'm sure P2P voice providers like Skype are very upset about this agreement. And customers should be, too. If my 3G/4G provider selectively blocks my voice calls they should state it very clearly on the marketing material. Something like "X GB per month for everything but voice, peer-to-peer, and any other service that competes with our own services." Of course they will never say that because they don't want the public to be aware they are being deceived. Even for the rest of the corporations the wireless situation is very bad. They won't be able to have inexpensive communications over IP if it goes through wireless, like conference calls. They'll be forced to use oligopolistic and overpriced services for something already paid for. This isn't bad just for end users and I think Torrentfreak missed the point. This proposal initiates a terrible false dichotomy of wired vs. wireless. It helps current use of peer-to-peer (the bait) crippling wireless (the real deal in the very near future.) Google doesn't care, or even worse, is against P2P services (private or commercial) because their core business is at odds with it. In som ways Google CEO want it to be the new IBM, the new central mainframe. [Don't get me wrong, I love the technical people behind Google including its founders, but their higher management is out of control, and IMHO, "evil".]

ZeroGravitas 16y ago
How can it initiate that dichotomy when it's the basically the same as a) the FCC proposal and b) reality as we've lived it for the last few years? TorrentFreak aren't saying it's great, they're saying it sucks just as much as the status quo, so piling onto Google is stupid because you're attacking the one person pushing for progress in one area because they aren't making progress in a more difficult area, double that stupid if you're acting like Google is dismantling something that doesn't exist, rather than just not fighting to have it created.
- alecco 16y ago
  Perhaps I shouldn't have used "initiate." But the proposal by Google/Verizon states a position while the FCC document "seek[s] comment." It's new that Google, a content provider, answers that question jointly with the 2nd largest telecom. And both companies are partners in the mobile business. http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-09-93A1.pdf http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-09-93A...

spinchange 16y ago

It's refreshing to read more of reality-based examination of last week's announcement.

alecco 16y ago
I'm sorry, but who said the current situation is network neutral? There have been plenty of crazy situations related to throttling (like Comcast) and deep packet inspection and content modification (like the big case in UK.) It's a legally grey area where different groups are asking different things. EFF, EPIC, and other civil rights related groups worldwide want content non-discrimination and permission of tethering for wireless devices. The telcos want carte blanche to block or throttle as they please. And I bet 3 letter agencies (and their counter-parties in other countries) are siding with the telcos for their own reasons. Google changed their stance at least on content discrimination on wireless. A very meaningful example Skype calls or competing video distribution platforms. Google can't represent those competitors on this discussion. In particular if they are partners with telcos with their Android system. That's where the outrage comes from.
- nervechannel 16y ago
  "I'm sorry, but who said the current situation is network neutral?" Err, that's exactly the point. Net neutrality already doesn't exist in a lot of ways, the Google proposal is seen by some (e.g. TorrentFreak) as an attempt to regulate something that can already be arbitrarily done in an unregulated way. You can't take away a freedom or right that doesn't already exist.
  - alecco 16y ago
    As I said in another comment, if my 3G/4G service provider sold me the service as "X GB per month" without clarifying it can't carry voice or competing services currently it's unlawful and other companies affected could sue them. Or a class action for deceitful advertising. Telcos want to have legal cover for that. That's new.
    - 16y ago

rquesada 16y ago

People complain against google because: - It has a "don't be evil" mantra, wich is deprecated right now - A few years ago Google was promoting the net neutrality Many people feel betrayed by the new Google behavior.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

yanw 16y ago

"We can’t help but note that Google’s proposal is in essence very similar to the (widely praised) Net Neutrality regulations that were suggested a few month ago by the FCC. On several points it’s actually an improvement, as the EFF also noted." I Wonder why none of the bigger news outlets tried to compare between the two proposals.

wmf 16y ago
The media has very little memory. Anything past last week might as well have never happened.
alecco 16y ago
FCC didn't make a proposal on Wireless, at least on the document they sent on Oct 2009. http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-09-93A1.pdf http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-09-93A...
- yanw 16y ago
  How about the more recent "third way" proposition?
  - alecco 16y ago
    Even less clear: > [...] will seek input on important questions such as whether wired > and wireless broadband access should be treated differently > in this context, and will invite new ideas. http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-297944A1.pdf http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-297944...

antics 16y ago

Not inspecting packets is only the beginning. I for one don't just want people to not snoop around my data, I want more or less unbiased service. Remember, Comcast would throttle users who were constantly uploading a lot of information, which by the way, actually is a pretty good indicator of torrenting. This is the reason you can't just encrypt everything (edit: as other users here suggest). It goes deeper than that. It's not about people looking into your content, it's about ISPs having to provide the internet as it is, and not simply as they want you to see it.

benbeltran 16y ago

Hey, but don't you know it's chic to hate google right now? People love complaining, but not so much helping. I see a lot of people saying why it's wrong but I dont' see fewer people making proposals. And I think the general message in the article is "hey, it's not perfect but at least google is doing something".

jacquesm 16y ago
I don't think that's what's driving this. The major powers behind this are two-fold, the first google's apparent about face, the second that they seem to act against their self applied motto. So they're being held to the standards that they themselves set in the past, hating google has nothing to do with it. Net neutrality simply translates in to 'pipes are supposed to be dumb for regular traffic'. Anything other than that and the net is no longer neutral, and that's both what drove it to become what it is today and what will continue to drive that growth in the future. Turning it in to a series of ISP guarded walled gardens is not to anybodies benefit. Especially not the wireless portion, since that is where the future growth will be, so the current battle will draw the lines for one of the most important portions of the net in the near future. And I think we all hoped that Google would stay on the right side in this, and feel disappointed that they didn't. Hate doesn't enter in to it.

rickmb 16y ago

I find it interesting to see how so many people try to sound "reasonable" and find value in "compromise". Which is a good thing, 99% of the time. Except when the issue falls into "you can't be a little bit pregnant" category. IMHO, that is the case where Net Neutrality concerned. You can debate how to enforce it, or even if you should enforce it, how important it is, if it should be law, the ethics of it, whatever, but there is no such thing as "a bit of" or "an improvement in" Net Neutrality. Any law or proposal that leaves gaping holes to manipulate traffic at will is against Net Neutrality. And so, apparently, is Google. And btw, Net Neutrality did exist, for the longest time in the Internet's history. That's kind of the whole damn point, it brought us to where we are today. The fact that it wasn't enshrined in the law doesn't mean it didn't exist. All of which means that Google's proposal is a proposal to bury it, not defend it.

antics 16y ago
So your proposal to fight one of the biggest lobbying forces in the world [http://www.freepress.net/node/62059 http://www.freepress.net/node/62059] is to demand that everything just be fixed all at once? You are out of your mind.
- gamble 16y ago
  Yeah, who would ever do something that crazy? It would be like demanding automakers build safe cars or telling the tobacco industry not to market their product to children.
  - jokermatt999 16y ago
    Both those examples had a nice emotional component to them: automobile deaths and cancer patients. Try showing someone the harm of non-neutral networks without resorting to hypothetical situations or abstracts. I don't mean someone on HN, I mean the "average Joe" voter.
  - antics 16y ago
    Funny you should mention that, because both of those things took DECADES to enact, through massive policy overhauls, with millions of man-hours of deliberation. Thank you for demonstrating my point.

andreyf 16y ago

Getting rid of terrenting is what net neutrality is about for a lot of players: it's a significant part of backbone traffic that can be eliminated (de-prioritized to the point of being useless) overnight, given the right legal setting. Frankly, the interests looking to get rid of peer-to-peer bandwidth are so powerful and around invested long-term, I don't think there's much anyone can do.

jacquesm 16y ago
What goes on in my packets is nobodies business but me and my 'peer', whether it's a web server, a phone, an internet connected appliance, an ftp site or a torrent server. De-prioritizing (what a word anyway) is not what it is all about it is about limiting. Prioritizing all the traffic is like selecting a volunteer by having someone step backwards. ISPs sell bandwidth, so bandwidth is what they should deliver. They don't sell quality of service, at least, I've yet to see an ISP that offered me 250K down for torrents, 32K for voice and 128K for web traffic as a single package. They'll sell me 1, 4, 8, 10 or even 20 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up for X credits per time unit. So that's what I expect to receive. And once they start doing deep packet inspection where does it end? Some websites have a deal with the ISP to prioritize their traffic at the expense of others?
- antics 16y ago
  I'm for net neutrality, but the argument that they are "selling bandwidth" is ridiculous -- in fact that's the very argument ISPs have for disallowing it! [Pete Ashdown is the president of a Utah ISP called Xmission: http://peteashdown.org/journal/2006/05/04/net-neutrality/ http://peteashdown.org/journal/2006/05/04/net-neutrality/] As providers of a service, they argue that they should be able to "deprioritize" garbage traffic so that all their customers don't suffer, and you might argue that this is not the real reason they de-prioritize, but regardless, your argument is just as easily turned in the opposite direction. Bottom line, is that net neutrality is about having an accurate picture of the internet, and not a picture that Comcast (or whoever) decides I get. THAT, as well as maintaining user privacy, is the goal here. EDIT: I should also add that ISPs have throttled upload-heavy traffic WITHOUT inspecting the packets for a long time, so even if you didn't inspect packets, the issue of net neutrality persists.

gamble 16y ago

This is BS. Net neutrality has been the status quo for the last 30 years, if only because the network providers didn't have the ability to throttle traffic they didn't like, and weren't concerned about squeezing every cent out of their oligopoly position. Only in the last few years have the providers possessed the network hardware and the concern about becoming dumb pipes that they've actively attacked net neutrality. Also, I think he's deluding himself if he thinks the Google/Verizon deal is going to protect Bittorrent on wired networks.

petercooper 16y ago

And it's not just BitTorrent. Net neutrality hasn't existed in a broad sense for SMTP for years now. Anyone's who maintained a mail server will know of seemingly arbitrary IP filtering between data centers, network wide tarpitting and throttling, and all sorts of hoops you need to jump through to reliably deliver mail. Further, many ISPs over the years have blocked port 80 in or transparently proxied port 25 (or even port 80) through their own servers. I'm not necessarily against this but I think it should be a legal requirement for ISPs to share information about what they're doing so we can choose ISPs that fit in with our requirements.