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Democrats Unveil New Bill to Fully Restore Net Neutrality

97 points by turtlegrids 8y ago

Cicada2026 8y ago
I think treating the internet connection as a casual "product" is irresponsible and outright wrong. It provides access to education, news, communication, and entertainment. I mean when Russia blocked LinkedIn the response was that authoritarian government is limiting its citizens freedom but when American businesses are throttling firefighters connection it's a healthy competition... "Verizon admitted that the throttling of first responders was in violation of Verizon’s own policies, but in a statement to Motherboard denied that the fracas had anything to do with net neutrality. " Yes it does.
- freeone3000 8y ago
  No, it doesn't. Net neutrality is the idea that all content should be treated identically. The idea that you should have unlimited data, or that data should be billed monthly, or any of these other things that are nice are not the same. An easy way to picture it is common carrier. The postal service does not ask what you are sending. It asks you how big it is. It charges you based on when it needs to arrive. There is no mention of the contents - a dimensional pound of feathers and a dimensional pound of lead cost the same to ship Express Post. Net Neutrality is the expansion of the same idea to the internet - that Spotify, Netflix, my cat blog, and Hacker News cost the same, and are charged the same, per "standard reliability" kilobyte.
  - wool_gather 8y ago
    Another good analogy, I think, is to electricity. Should your electric usage be differentiated between your alarm clock and your toaster? https://github.com/ryanpcmcquen/ryanpcmcquen.github.io/blob/master/assets/a_net_neutrality_analogy.png https://github.com/ryanpcmcquen/ryanpcmcquen.github.io/blob/...
    - Junk_Collector 8y ago
      Both of these analogies are against net neutrality though. The postal service has special requirements and costs for shipping packages that could impact it's services or employees such as Ord-D and Hazmat. Electrical services differentiate between loads that have an impact on the service in the form of power factor correction fees. You just don't see these as a typical homeowner because nothing you run has enough impact to warrant it. There are two major parts/ideologies in Net Neutrality centered around the idea that traffic should be treated equal no matter what it is, and that traffic should be treated equal no matter where it is from or two. Both of these stances lead to interesting and nuanced technical discussion or at least used to before they became a broader public platform.
      - hannasanarion 8y ago
        But a package is still a package, and electricity is still electricity. Neither the post nor the power company care what you're using your electricity for or what you're sending in your packages as long as you pay an appropriate cost for your usage. A byte from Netflix takes exactly the same number of packets on the wire as a byte from Hulu or a byte from fcc.gov. Charging more for transferring one of these over the others is pure rent seeking.
        tengbretson 8y ago
        > A byte from Netflix takes exactly the same number of packets on the wire as a byte from Hulu or a byte from fcc.gov. This may be true, but its irrelevant unless the COGs for an ISP is measured in packets. It's almost certainly not.
        hannasanarion 8y ago
        It pretty much is. That's what customers pay for: how many bytes they can get per unit time. How much the ISP needs to spend on infrastructure is exactly proportional to the total bandwidth customers in an area are using at peak. More usage means they need to install more switches. What label is on the return address of the traffic makes no difference to the expense on the ISP.
  - mlindner 8y ago
    No it's not. Net Neutrality is the idea that large bandwidth users should not be charged when they cause most of the cost of the ISPs. Netflix and similar countries want to be able to grow forever and not be billed for the required hardware growth that ISPs need to put out to support those companies products. ISPs should be able to charge for that. An ISP doesn't bill you for how many bits you download because data traffic is extremely peaky, way more peaky than water or electricity. If they build their network assuming a certain amount of peakiness and then everyone suddenly massively blows out those estimates because some new company comes along that massively uses more data, someone needs to get charged for that. That cost should fall on the company causing that so they can properly set the price of their product to how much data traffic they drive.
cjslep 8y ago
Instead we should revisit the Communications Act of 1934 and rethink the classification structure in the digital age. 1996 didn't do enough, in my opinion.
- andrewla 8y ago
  Disappointing -- the text of the legislation is just "hey, take it back! Also, no double-backsies". Having a comprehensive revisiting that directly addresses the needs and requirements for large-scale packet-switched networks rather than bolting it on to legislation aimed at switched networks would make it a lot clearer. The original rule that the FCC removed had a ton of exceptions, "ignore this because it doesn't apply" and had to shoehorn a lot of other definitions. It would be good for Congress to explicitly lay out what the FCC's responsibilities in this area are (or to allow the FTC to enforce instead, since that was largely okay except for the regulatory scope problems).
  - apple4ever 8y ago
    While I'm opposed to "Net Neutrality" (partially due its shifting definitions), I'd much rather this be debated in Congress properly than the FCC. And as both of you stated, its shouldn't just be "Do this from the 1934 Act!" but a complete review and a proper implementation. This biggest problem I saw with the 2015 FCC order is it just said "while we could have this power over the internet, we promise we will never use it!" for a couple different things. If we are going to do something about "Net Neutrality", I'd much rather Congress just remove that power completely and permanently than letting it up to an administration who decides they no longer want to keep that promise.
psychometry 8y ago
Good. It'll pass the House and then the Senate is forced to vote on it. It's necessary to get Republicans' positions on issues on the record so that voters can see just how reprehensible they are.
- Spivak 8y ago
  I don't really see this affecting much in the way of reputation. NN stopped being about the actual policy once it went mainstream and is now entirely tribal signaling. Nobody outside of a tiny tiny group of policymakers and a few ISP level network engineers can claim to really actually understand RIFA. Anyone who is arguing that eliminating NN is reprehensible and not "I understand the positions of the stakeholders and the current FCC administration's policy goals but disagree that the bill will have the desired effect because..." isn't really helping anything. Please, we can do better than this. Read the actual text and disagree with it on its merit, not because the people involved are evil. https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-347927A1.pdf https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-347927A1.pdf
  - aaomidi 8y ago
    You understand that policymakers regularly consult professionals in respective fields before making a decision? Policymaker regularly delegate the understanding of specific pieces of technology/etc to professionals they trust and have worked with over their tenure.
  - blotter_paper 8y ago
    >Anyone who is arguing that eliminating NN is reprehensible and not "I understand the positions of the stakeholders and the current FCC administration's policy goals but disagree that the bill will have the desired effect because..." isn't really helping anything. Strongly disagree; people can also disagree with the desirability of the effect, not just whether the bill will have the effect that the stakeholders and FCC administration desire. Note that I have not stated any opinion on NN in this comment, just the meta-discussion on what is an acceptable point of disagreement
hnruss 8y ago
Given that a large majority of the public supports this, why is it the responsibility of Democrats to advance this bill?
- creaghpatr 8y ago
  Because Republicans are too popular on other issues to swing the Senate.
  - vibrio 8y ago
    Agreed, but "too popular" within certain geographies, which the structure of the senate favors. If I recall, at least by the numbers a majority in the Senate can be elected by something less than 20% of the US population.
- hannasanarion 8y ago
  Because Republicans have given up all pretenses of governing based on the will of the people and now openly strive to protect their own power and wealth forever at all costs.
  - ratsmack 8y ago
    And you say that as if the Democrats are concerned about the will of the people. The problem is that Congress, in general, is bought and paid for by their favorite special interests and no one in congress really cares about what the people think.
    - balabaster 8y ago
      You can be supported all you like by special interest groups. If people don't vote for you, you're ejected from office. So at some point, they have to keep up the appearance of standing for the people.
      - ratsmack 8y ago

97 points by turtlegrids 8y ago

Cicada2026 8y ago

I think treating the internet connection as a casual "product" is irresponsible and outright wrong. It provides access to education, news, communication, and entertainment. I mean when Russia blocked LinkedIn the response was that authoritarian government is limiting its citizens freedom but when American businesses are throttling firefighters connection it's a healthy competition... "Verizon admitted that the throttling of first responders was in violation of Verizon’s own policies, but in a statement to Motherboard denied that the fracas had anything to do with net neutrality. " Yes it does.

freeone3000 8y ago
No, it doesn't. Net neutrality is the idea that all content should be treated identically. The idea that you should have unlimited data, or that data should be billed monthly, or any of these other things that are nice are not the same. An easy way to picture it is common carrier. The postal service does not ask what you are sending. It asks you how big it is. It charges you based on when it needs to arrive. There is no mention of the contents - a dimensional pound of feathers and a dimensional pound of lead cost the same to ship Express Post. Net Neutrality is the expansion of the same idea to the internet - that Spotify, Netflix, my cat blog, and Hacker News cost the same, and are charged the same, per "standard reliability" kilobyte.
- wool_gather 8y ago
  Another good analogy, I think, is to electricity. Should your electric usage be differentiated between your alarm clock and your toaster? https://github.com/ryanpcmcquen/ryanpcmcquen.github.io/blob/master/assets/a_net_neutrality_analogy.png https://github.com/ryanpcmcquen/ryanpcmcquen.github.io/blob/...
  - Junk_Collector 8y ago
    Both of these analogies are against net neutrality though. The postal service has special requirements and costs for shipping packages that could impact it's services or employees such as Ord-D and Hazmat. Electrical services differentiate between loads that have an impact on the service in the form of power factor correction fees. You just don't see these as a typical homeowner because nothing you run has enough impact to warrant it. There are two major parts/ideologies in Net Neutrality centered around the idea that traffic should be treated equal no matter what it is, and that traffic should be treated equal no matter where it is from or two. Both of these stances lead to interesting and nuanced technical discussion or at least used to before they became a broader public platform.
    - hannasanarion 8y ago
      But a package is still a package, and electricity is still electricity. Neither the post nor the power company care what you're using your electricity for or what you're sending in your packages as long as you pay an appropriate cost for your usage. A byte from Netflix takes exactly the same number of packets on the wire as a byte from Hulu or a byte from fcc.gov. Charging more for transferring one of these over the others is pure rent seeking.
      - tengbretson 8y ago
        > A byte from Netflix takes exactly the same number of packets on the wire as a byte from Hulu or a byte from fcc.gov. This may be true, but its irrelevant unless the COGs for an ISP is measured in packets. It's almost certainly not.
        hannasanarion 8y ago
        It pretty much is. That's what customers pay for: how many bytes they can get per unit time. How much the ISP needs to spend on infrastructure is exactly proportional to the total bandwidth customers in an area are using at peak. More usage means they need to install more switches. What label is on the return address of the traffic makes no difference to the expense on the ISP.
- mlindner 8y ago
  No it's not. Net Neutrality is the idea that large bandwidth users should not be charged when they cause most of the cost of the ISPs. Netflix and similar countries want to be able to grow forever and not be billed for the required hardware growth that ISPs need to put out to support those companies products. ISPs should be able to charge for that. An ISP doesn't bill you for how many bits you download because data traffic is extremely peaky, way more peaky than water or electricity. If they build their network assuming a certain amount of peakiness and then everyone suddenly massively blows out those estimates because some new company comes along that massively uses more data, someone needs to get charged for that. That cost should fall on the company causing that so they can properly set the price of their product to how much data traffic they drive.

cjslep 8y ago

Instead we should revisit the Communications Act of 1934 and rethink the classification structure in the digital age. 1996 didn't do enough, in my opinion.

andrewla 8y ago
Disappointing -- the text of the legislation is just "hey, take it back! Also, no double-backsies". Having a comprehensive revisiting that directly addresses the needs and requirements for large-scale packet-switched networks rather than bolting it on to legislation aimed at switched networks would make it a lot clearer. The original rule that the FCC removed had a ton of exceptions, "ignore this because it doesn't apply" and had to shoehorn a lot of other definitions. It would be good for Congress to explicitly lay out what the FCC's responsibilities in this area are (or to allow the FTC to enforce instead, since that was largely okay except for the regulatory scope problems).
- apple4ever 8y ago
  While I'm opposed to "Net Neutrality" (partially due its shifting definitions), I'd much rather this be debated in Congress properly than the FCC. And as both of you stated, its shouldn't just be "Do this from the 1934 Act!" but a complete review and a proper implementation. This biggest problem I saw with the 2015 FCC order is it just said "while we could have this power over the internet, we promise we will never use it!" for a couple different things. If we are going to do something about "Net Neutrality", I'd much rather Congress just remove that power completely and permanently than letting it up to an administration who decides they no longer want to keep that promise.

psychometry 8y ago

Good. It'll pass the House and then the Senate is forced to vote on it. It's necessary to get Republicans' positions on issues on the record so that voters can see just how reprehensible they are.

Spivak 8y ago
I don't really see this affecting much in the way of reputation. NN stopped being about the actual policy once it went mainstream and is now entirely tribal signaling. Nobody outside of a tiny tiny group of policymakers and a few ISP level network engineers can claim to really actually understand RIFA. Anyone who is arguing that eliminating NN is reprehensible and not "I understand the positions of the stakeholders and the current FCC administration's policy goals but disagree that the bill will have the desired effect because..." isn't really helping anything. Please, we can do better than this. Read the actual text and disagree with it on its merit, not because the people involved are evil. https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-347927A1.pdf https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-347927A1.pdf
- aaomidi 8y ago
  You understand that policymakers regularly consult professionals in respective fields before making a decision? Policymaker regularly delegate the understanding of specific pieces of technology/etc to professionals they trust and have worked with over their tenure.
- blotter_paper 8y ago
  >Anyone who is arguing that eliminating NN is reprehensible and not "I understand the positions of the stakeholders and the current FCC administration's policy goals but disagree that the bill will have the desired effect because..." isn't really helping anything. Strongly disagree; people can also disagree with the desirability of the effect, not just whether the bill will have the effect that the stakeholders and FCC administration desire. Note that I have not stated any opinion on NN in this comment, just the meta-discussion on what is an acceptable point of disagreement

hnruss 8y ago

Given that a large majority of the public supports this, why is it the responsibility of Democrats to advance this bill?

creaghpatr 8y ago
Because Republicans are too popular on other issues to swing the Senate.
- vibrio 8y ago
  Agreed, but "too popular" within certain geographies, which the structure of the senate favors. If I recall, at least by the numbers a majority in the Senate can be elected by something less than 20% of the US population.
hannasanarion 8y ago
Because Republicans have given up all pretenses of governing based on the will of the people and now openly strive to protect their own power and wealth forever at all costs.
- ratsmack 8y ago
  And you say that as if the Democrats are concerned about the will of the people. The problem is that Congress, in general, is bought and paid for by their favorite special interests and no one in congress really cares about what the people think.
  - balabaster 8y ago
    You can be supported all you like by special interest groups. If people don't vote for you, you're ejected from office. So at some point, they have to keep up the appearance of standing for the people.
    - ratsmack 8y ago