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In reality the whole debacle was astroturfed from both sides, one side just did it better. The pro “net neutrality” movement was funded by google and Netflix an

In reality the whole debacle was astroturfed from both sides, one side just did it better. The pro “net neutrality” movement was funded by google and Netflix and promoted laughable propaganda such as: What. If. Every. Thing. You. Did. On. The. Internet. Took. This. Long. Give me a break. There were no “good guys” in this debate, just corporations scrambling to control the popular narrative to suit their business interests.

bombcar 5y ago
It amazes me that "we don't want to pay for peering" became such a popular "grassroots" movement.
- advisedwang 5y ago
  Net neutrality is not not just the fight over peering. It's also: * Can an ISP have charge for access to Spotify but not YouTube Music (and presumably get a kickback from YT) * Can an Mobile phone forbid you tethering on you unlimited use plan? * Can an ISP ban you using bittorrent?
  - badmadrad 5y ago
    Your questions are making the assumption that this would cost more and limit choice. This is not how markets work, this is exactly what government regulation and crony capitalism does. Even in the case of your Spotify but not YT music example, what if there was a 5/month offer for 15mb internet with spotify streaming. Because spotify and your provider made a deal that subsidized the plan? At the end of the day, partnerships are not bad for the consumer. YT music could make a competing for deal for less money with more Google offerings. Also, this wouldn't eliminate an unlimited option across the board. When has competition made something more expensive? Its regulations like NN which pour amber over a system and make it impossible to be cheaper or better.
    - advisedwang 5y ago
      The questions simply state the scope of the debate.
- danaris 5y ago
  Perhaps the reason it's so amazing is because that's not actually what net neutrality is about, and never has been, despite a massive propaganda campaign to trick you into believing it is. Peering is for fellow ISPs. Netflix, as you may or may not be aware, is not, in fact, an ISP. They already pay for their internet access. Do they pay enough? That's between them and their provider. Does their provider need to pay more for peering with its fellow ISPs? That's between the provider and its fellow ISPs. What we do not need is for me to need to pay for my internet access and a Netflix subscription, and then pay extra just to let Netflix's internet traffic actually reach me.
- lazide 5y ago
  That is definitely not the argument - everyone pays for peering regardless (one way or another). The argument was that Comcast, despite peering agreements, should not make Netflix traffic on their own network slower while prioritizing their own video services traffic on top of it unless Netflix or their customers paid them for the privilege of not being slow - regardless of actual bandwidth. Net neutrality would say no - they are a defacto utility and need to treat the traffic objectively and fairly without prioritizing their own at the expense of others. Reprioritizing say ALL video traffic? Perfectly fine. Peering arrangements at the network link layer that would benefit some players due to locality and not others? Perfectly fine as long as they don’t do it explicitly to penalize a competitor (and even then probably fine). Targeting certain services or protocols because they are a threat to their own products? Or asking for upsell money to get useful speeds for certain protocols not due to network management/bandwidth and handled objectively, but for revenue extraction? Not fine. Would you like USPS or UPS to be able to charge you extra (the package recipient) to ACTUALLY deliver Amazon’s packages at the rate Amazon paid those companies already to deliver them, since they know you’re buying expensive things a lot and obviously have money? The extra load on their trucks from these packages is awfully expensive after all. Surely once a week deliveries will be fine for now unless you want to kick in? Don’t worry, the spam mailers will still be free.
  - monocasa 5y ago
    There's also the fact that Comcast isn't a tier 1 ISP. The only netflix traffic going across their network is traffic specifically requested by Comcast customers. It's not like Netflix (even indirectly through their ISP) is somehow using Comcast's network for non Comcast uses. Most of the peering talk was leaving that part out, trying to pretend that Netflix was using Comcast's network to reach third parties like is the model being addressed by peering agreements between tier 1 ISPs.
    - lazide 5y ago
      Correct - it’s blatant double dipping combined with anticompetitive practices against competitors of their own related services.
- sagarm 5y ago
  The fight is over whether ISPs should be able to leverage their position in the uncompetitive infrastructure space to extract rents from the very competitive internet application space.
dexen 5y ago
It is strange to see the correct reply in the gray. Let's re-emphasize: the dire predictions of removal of net neutrality didn't come to bear. They didn't pass the sniff test either. The dire predictions were fake news - however they are now the official record in the media, and won't get corrected.
- jgwil2 5y ago
  That's specious reasoning: perhaps the dire predictions didn't come to pass precisely because of the amount of controversy that was generated. The telecoms didn't want to rock the boat; they knew that it was only a matter of another administration change for the policy to get reversed anyway.
  - Fellshard 5y ago
    No way for you to prove your assertions, either. There's a ton of presumption that goes on regarding this topic instead of examining NN from first principles and seeing what its consequences would actually be.
  - ertian 5y ago
    All the disastrous things that proponents of NN said would surely happen without it haven't happened since it was repealed, and also never happened before it was implemented. It really does beg the question why it was ever needed in the first place.
    - jgwil2 5y ago
      As I stated above, there was (a) a massive public outcry against repeal and (b) a strong possibility that it would be put back in place in ~4 years if a Democratic administration came in. These both surely must have been taken under consideration by ISPs. Just because certain practices became legal for them does not mean that it would have been good business to implement them.
  - dexen 5y ago
    Perhaps it is as you are saying. Nonetheless, the very charitable "perhaps the dire predictions didn't come to pass precisely because of the amount of controversy that was generated" would be neutrally described as "fake news must be published so that bad things don't happen". That's not a valid civilizational setup: it's both ripe for abuse, and also teaches people to dabble in double-think for sake of the greater good.
boardwaalk 5y ago
I like how “both sides” here are clearly the corporations and special interests. And since “both sides” here did the lobbying and propaganda we’re now at a place where there’s no value in the comments collected or the debate at all. I could give a —- expletive — about what the corporations think. What about normal people? It feels like we need a better audio mix for public policy discourse.
- CyberRabbi 5y ago
  “Both sides” are solely composed of corporations and their benefactors debating the parameters of a business relationship that has a relatively large fiscal impact on their respective operations. This is not a public issue that concerns normal people at all. The fact that so many normal people think the decision on net neutrality will have a meaningful impact on their lives, the products they use, or even democracy shows how successful these corporations have been in astroturfing this issue. It’s another nothingburger fake political debate of the kind that pervades and rots actual public discourse.
  - badmadrad 5y ago
    Correct, this is merely a fight between corporations on who controls the flow of information. As we have seen edge providers are also information monopolies who can censor and limit who use their platforms based on subjective whims.
teachingassist 5y ago
I wouldn't expect Google and Netflix to make any particular effort against net neutrality, since they stand to benefit most from regulatory capture. (If anyone in their respective industries is in a position to benefit over their competition by making deals with ISPs, it is likely them) This is reflected in the Netflix CFO's comments in 2015, among others: https://www.cnet.com/news/netflix-says-it-still-supports-net-neutrality-despite-cfos-comments/ https://www.cnet.com/news/netflix-says-it-still-supports-net...
- xondono 5y ago
  Google and Netflix did campaigns for NN. So did Facebook and other internet and media companies. One of the most successful was the John Olivers Last Week Tonight piece. I saw some evidence later that the ‘evidence’ provided in that piece (claims from Netflix about throttling) were either fabricated or exaggerated, although I did not look into it too much.
  - teachingassist 5y ago
    apologies - I mistyped the direction.
kmeisthax 5y ago
The Net Neutrality argument wasn't that Google and Netflix would be slowed down, it's that everyone else would. Of course Google and Netflix were going to pay for peering and priority. The question was if everyone else who wanted to get into the video business should have to do so. Comcast wanted to basically double-bill for traffic: they wanted their customers to pay, and then they wanted the services on the other end to also pay. This is all a moot question nowadays, because the video market is dramatically different than it was a decade ago. "Free-to-air" content is basically all handled by YouTube and Twitch, both of which are services run by companies with the money to afford the storage costs. "Premium" content fragmented into a bunch of different exclusive providers that already have business relationships with cable companies. So there really isn't a competitive video market being stymied out of existence purely because Comcast wants them to pay in order to compete with cable. The barriers to entry in video got a lot higher than just getting double-billed on bandwidth. (As an example of this: Floatplane, an early-access "premium" platform for people already on "free-to-air" video platforms, had far more problems getting onto iOS than paying for bandwidth. Apple was their existential threat more than Comcast.)
- briantakita 5y ago
  > This is all a moot question nowadays, because the video market is dramatically different than it was a decade ago. With distributed computing & peer-to-peer storage networks such as IPFS, this may not be moot.
  - kmeisthax 5y ago
    I have zero faith in P2P video distribution until copyright liability for watching those videos is shifted off of individuals. Right now, using something like PeerTube is taking your life into your hands. Look at all of the copyright nonsense that hits otherwise legitimate YouTube channels, and now imagine that they get to sue everyone who watched the video, too. Centralized services can rely on DMCA 512 for liability limitation; and individual viewers almost certainly do not have copyright liability for merely watching a video on a central service. At the very least, you'd have to subpoena the service to get an IP address, and then subpoena the ISP to get at DHCP logs, and then argue to a court that a user that the temporary copies involved with merely watching a video had infringed your copyright. When you join a swarm that shares a file, you just broadcast that IP address directly to the person who's going to sue you. That's how these networks work. There's a cottage industry of firms that deliberately "leak" their content to BitTorrent and then sue whoever downloads it; that also applies with PeerTube, IPFS, etc. You don't get DMCA 512 liability limitation because it's your own copyright liability. Furthermore it's easier to argue that someone in a P2P swarm has infringed copyright as there's uploading - further copying - involved. So both practically and theoretically speaking it's far easier to get sued in a P2P system. Also, P2P video is terrible for mobile use-cases. Mobile devices are leeches in a P2P system - they don't have access to unlimited power like a desktop does. So you either flatten the batteries of everyone on phones, or you detect the use of a battery and lose the benefit of the swarm.

bombcar 5y ago

It amazes me that "we don't want to pay for peering" became such a popular "grassroots" movement.

advisedwang 5y ago
Net neutrality is not not just the fight over peering. It's also: * Can an ISP have charge for access to Spotify but not YouTube Music (and presumably get a kickback from YT) * Can an Mobile phone forbid you tethering on you unlimited use plan? * Can an ISP ban you using bittorrent?
- badmadrad 5y ago
  Your questions are making the assumption that this would cost more and limit choice. This is not how markets work, this is exactly what government regulation and crony capitalism does. Even in the case of your Spotify but not YT music example, what if there was a 5/month offer for 15mb internet with spotify streaming. Because spotify and your provider made a deal that subsidized the plan? At the end of the day, partnerships are not bad for the consumer. YT music could make a competing for deal for less money with more Google offerings. Also, this wouldn't eliminate an unlimited option across the board. When has competition made something more expensive? Its regulations like NN which pour amber over a system and make it impossible to be cheaper or better.
  - advisedwang 5y ago
    The questions simply state the scope of the debate.
danaris 5y ago
Perhaps the reason it's so amazing is because that's not actually what net neutrality is about, and never has been, despite a massive propaganda campaign to trick you into believing it is. Peering is for fellow ISPs. Netflix, as you may or may not be aware, is not, in fact, an ISP. They already pay for their internet access. Do they pay enough? That's between them and their provider. Does their provider need to pay more for peering with its fellow ISPs? That's between the provider and its fellow ISPs. What we do not need is for me to need to pay for my internet access and a Netflix subscription, and then pay extra just to let Netflix's internet traffic actually reach me.
lazide 5y ago
That is definitely not the argument - everyone pays for peering regardless (one way or another). The argument was that Comcast, despite peering agreements, should not make Netflix traffic on their own network slower while prioritizing their own video services traffic on top of it unless Netflix or their customers paid them for the privilege of not being slow - regardless of actual bandwidth. Net neutrality would say no - they are a defacto utility and need to treat the traffic objectively and fairly without prioritizing their own at the expense of others. Reprioritizing say ALL video traffic? Perfectly fine. Peering arrangements at the network link layer that would benefit some players due to locality and not others? Perfectly fine as long as they don’t do it explicitly to penalize a competitor (and even then probably fine). Targeting certain services or protocols because they are a threat to their own products? Or asking for upsell money to get useful speeds for certain protocols not due to network management/bandwidth and handled objectively, but for revenue extraction? Not fine. Would you like USPS or UPS to be able to charge you extra (the package recipient) to ACTUALLY deliver Amazon’s packages at the rate Amazon paid those companies already to deliver them, since they know you’re buying expensive things a lot and obviously have money? The extra load on their trucks from these packages is awfully expensive after all. Surely once a week deliveries will be fine for now unless you want to kick in? Don’t worry, the spam mailers will still be free.
- monocasa 5y ago
  There's also the fact that Comcast isn't a tier 1 ISP. The only netflix traffic going across their network is traffic specifically requested by Comcast customers. It's not like Netflix (even indirectly through their ISP) is somehow using Comcast's network for non Comcast uses. Most of the peering talk was leaving that part out, trying to pretend that Netflix was using Comcast's network to reach third parties like is the model being addressed by peering agreements between tier 1 ISPs.
  - lazide 5y ago
    Correct - it’s blatant double dipping combined with anticompetitive practices against competitors of their own related services.
sagarm 5y ago
The fight is over whether ISPs should be able to leverage their position in the uncompetitive infrastructure space to extract rents from the very competitive internet application space.

dexen 5y ago

It is strange to see the correct reply in the gray. Let's re-emphasize: the dire predictions of removal of net neutrality didn't come to bear. They didn't pass the sniff test either. The dire predictions were fake news - however they are now the official record in the media, and won't get corrected.

jgwil2 5y ago
That's specious reasoning: perhaps the dire predictions didn't come to pass precisely because of the amount of controversy that was generated. The telecoms didn't want to rock the boat; they knew that it was only a matter of another administration change for the policy to get reversed anyway.
- Fellshard 5y ago
  No way for you to prove your assertions, either. There's a ton of presumption that goes on regarding this topic instead of examining NN from first principles and seeing what its consequences would actually be.
- ertian 5y ago
  All the disastrous things that proponents of NN said would surely happen without it haven't happened since it was repealed, and also never happened before it was implemented. It really does beg the question why it was ever needed in the first place.
  - jgwil2 5y ago
    As I stated above, there was (a) a massive public outcry against repeal and (b) a strong possibility that it would be put back in place in ~4 years if a Democratic administration came in. These both surely must have been taken under consideration by ISPs. Just because certain practices became legal for them does not mean that it would have been good business to implement them.
- dexen 5y ago
  Perhaps it is as you are saying. Nonetheless, the very charitable "perhaps the dire predictions didn't come to pass precisely because of the amount of controversy that was generated" would be neutrally described as "fake news must be published so that bad things don't happen". That's not a valid civilizational setup: it's both ripe for abuse, and also teaches people to dabble in double-think for sake of the greater good.

boardwaalk 5y ago

I like how “both sides” here are clearly the corporations and special interests. And since “both sides” here did the lobbying and propaganda we’re now at a place where there’s no value in the comments collected or the debate at all. I could give a —- expletive — about what the corporations think. What about normal people? It feels like we need a better audio mix for public policy discourse.

CyberRabbi 5y ago
“Both sides” are solely composed of corporations and their benefactors debating the parameters of a business relationship that has a relatively large fiscal impact on their respective operations. This is not a public issue that concerns normal people at all. The fact that so many normal people think the decision on net neutrality will have a meaningful impact on their lives, the products they use, or even democracy shows how successful these corporations have been in astroturfing this issue. It’s another nothingburger fake political debate of the kind that pervades and rots actual public discourse.
- badmadrad 5y ago
  Correct, this is merely a fight between corporations on who controls the flow of information. As we have seen edge providers are also information monopolies who can censor and limit who use their platforms based on subjective whims.

teachingassist 5y ago

I wouldn't expect Google and Netflix to make any particular effort against net neutrality, since they stand to benefit most from regulatory capture. (If anyone in their respective industries is in a position to benefit over their competition by making deals with ISPs, it is likely them) This is reflected in the Netflix CFO's comments in 2015, among others: https://www.cnet.com/news/netflix-says-it-still-supports-net-neutrality-despite-cfos-comments/ https://www.cnet.com/news/netflix-says-it-still-supports-net...

xondono 5y ago
Google and Netflix did campaigns for NN. So did Facebook and other internet and media companies. One of the most successful was the John Olivers Last Week Tonight piece. I saw some evidence later that the ‘evidence’ provided in that piece (claims from Netflix about throttling) were either fabricated or exaggerated, although I did not look into it too much.
- teachingassist 5y ago
  apologies - I mistyped the direction.

kmeisthax 5y ago

The Net Neutrality argument wasn't that Google and Netflix would be slowed down, it's that everyone else would. Of course Google and Netflix were going to pay for peering and priority. The question was if everyone else who wanted to get into the video business should have to do so. Comcast wanted to basically double-bill for traffic: they wanted their customers to pay, and then they wanted the services on the other end to also pay. This is all a moot question nowadays, because the video market is dramatically different than it was a decade ago. "Free-to-air" content is basically all handled by YouTube and Twitch, both of which are services run by companies with the money to afford the storage costs. "Premium" content fragmented into a bunch of different exclusive providers that already have business relationships with cable companies. So there really isn't a competitive video market being stymied out of existence purely because Comcast wants them to pay in order to compete with cable. The barriers to entry in video got a lot higher than just getting double-billed on bandwidth. (As an example of this: Floatplane, an early-access "premium" platform for people already on "free-to-air" video platforms, had far more problems getting onto iOS than paying for bandwidth. Apple was their existential threat more than Comcast.)

briantakita 5y ago
> This is all a moot question nowadays, because the video market is dramatically different than it was a decade ago. With distributed computing & peer-to-peer storage networks such as IPFS, this may not be moot.
- kmeisthax 5y ago
  I have zero faith in P2P video distribution until copyright liability for watching those videos is shifted off of individuals. Right now, using something like PeerTube is taking your life into your hands. Look at all of the copyright nonsense that hits otherwise legitimate YouTube channels, and now imagine that they get to sue everyone who watched the video, too. Centralized services can rely on DMCA 512 for liability limitation; and individual viewers almost certainly do not have copyright liability for merely watching a video on a central service. At the very least, you'd have to subpoena the service to get an IP address, and then subpoena the ISP to get at DHCP logs, and then argue to a court that a user that the temporary copies involved with merely watching a video had infringed your copyright. When you join a swarm that shares a file, you just broadcast that IP address directly to the person who's going to sue you. That's how these networks work. There's a cottage industry of firms that deliberately "leak" their content to BitTorrent and then sue whoever downloads it; that also applies with PeerTube, IPFS, etc. You don't get DMCA 512 liability limitation because it's your own copyright liability. Furthermore it's easier to argue that someone in a P2P swarm has infringed copyright as there's uploading - further copying - involved. So both practically and theoretically speaking it's far easier to get sued in a P2P system. Also, P2P video is terrible for mobile use-cases. Mobile devices are leeches in a P2P system - they don't have access to unlimited power like a desktop does. So you either flatten the batteries of everyone on phones, or you detect the use of a battery and lose the benefit of the swarm.