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It would be nice to put together a spectrum of possible outcomes if net neutrality regulations were completely repealed. Here's what I think. Peer-to-peer file

by minimax 13y ago

It would be nice to put together a spectrum of possible outcomes if net neutrality regulations were completely repealed. Here's what I think. Peer-to-peer file sharing is gone or throttled way back. ISPs have no reason to support it since it takes up so much bandwidth and there are no stakeholders with enough money/clout to fight back. Microsoft starts paying carriers for QoS for Xbox to use it as a differentiator against Sony. Maybe they try a similar tactic with Skype but maybe the carriers don't want to go along with that since they have their own voice offerings. I don't think streaming music services are affected at all. The bandwidth is so low and it's relatively insensitive to latency. It seems like it would be excessively cruel for ISPs to seek out and block arbitrary streaming services. Maybe video is different? Perhaps they could charge video services (Youtube, Amazon Prime, Netflix) slightly more for high def streaming to subscribers. Sports. ESPN already has a sort of self-imposed reverse net neutrality thing with ESPN3. Hard to see much changing there. I don't think there really any VC backed upstarts here to speak of either.

bradfordcross 13y ago
Agree that we need to look at concrete deal terms in question and talk about what's actually anticompetitive vs. what is just sound decisions by self-interested economic actors. It seems to me that if torrent users are paying for connection parameters that account for the specifics of their usage, there shouldn't be any problems. I have tried to find good detailed accounts about the torrent vs. comcast battle, but haven't found any really detailed technical and economic accounts of what's been happening and why. Anyone have a good link?
rz2k 13y ago
"I've got this thing and it’s fucking golden, and I’m just not giving it up for fucking nothing." Occasionally statistics are released by companies on how much traffic leaves their site when it is 100ms slower, or the percentage drop in sales conversion rates. Furthermore, the sensitivity of visitors seems to be increasing. And yet I think it would be very difficult to argue in court the specific harm caused by 50ms of added latency in 2020. Consumer ISPs could easily offer 'prioritization' to companies for a fee. Perhaps a Facebook of 2014 could make a subtle case measuring the harm of low priority, or cover the nominal fees to get that prioritization, or get users to complain to their ISPs. However, a company equivalent to Facebook of 2006 on the other hand would just have its growth slowed by a degraded user experience. Already the structure of the industry for consumer ISPs encourages rent-seeking behavior. The slow spread of gigabit-tier broadband is likely related to those dynamics. Altering the landscape for content availability and latency, so that it is not neutral and is likely to favor incumbents, seems like it does not optimize the internet for innovation or the growth of new internet properties.
- minimax 13y ago
  You're saying you think ISPs would try and penalize all traffic by 50 or 100ms and let the big sites pay up to avoid the penalty? That seems like mustache twirlingly cruel and I'm not even sure you can do that with conventional network hardware (you'd have to buffer all that traffic in RAM). On the other hand, if we're just talking about allowing certain companies to pay ISPs for prioritizing traffic for certain applications (VoIP, gaming), then I don't think that's such a horrible thing.
  - rz2k 13y ago
    I'm not just saying that not doing so is equivalent to leaving money on the table, I'm saying that the net costs to the economy would be greater than the revenue collected from content providers. In a certain sense the revenue collected from content providers could be seen as offsetting revenue that would otherwise be collected from subscribers, and may lead to faster deployment of network improvements. However, that neglects the full cost to the internet as a whole, which would be the increased barriers to entry for new companies. Blagojevich got in trouble because he pushed the envelope so far, but I used the quote because it reflects the reality that not cashing in on some opportunity is equivalent to losing money, and particularly so if you have a responsibility to shareholders.

by minimax 13y ago

bradfordcross 13y ago

Agree that we need to look at concrete deal terms in question and talk about what's actually anticompetitive vs. what is just sound decisions by self-interested economic actors. It seems to me that if torrent users are paying for connection parameters that account for the specifics of their usage, there shouldn't be any problems. I have tried to find good detailed accounts about the torrent vs. comcast battle, but haven't found any really detailed technical and economic accounts of what's been happening and why. Anyone have a good link?

rz2k 13y ago

"I've got this thing and it’s fucking golden, and I’m just not giving it up for fucking nothing." Occasionally statistics are released by companies on how much traffic leaves their site when it is 100ms slower, or the percentage drop in sales conversion rates. Furthermore, the sensitivity of visitors seems to be increasing. And yet I think it would be very difficult to argue in court the specific harm caused by 50ms of added latency in 2020. Consumer ISPs could easily offer 'prioritization' to companies for a fee. Perhaps a Facebook of 2014 could make a subtle case measuring the harm of low priority, or cover the nominal fees to get that prioritization, or get users to complain to their ISPs. However, a company equivalent to Facebook of 2006 on the other hand would just have its growth slowed by a degraded user experience. Already the structure of the industry for consumer ISPs encourages rent-seeking behavior. The slow spread of gigabit-tier broadband is likely related to those dynamics. Altering the landscape for content availability and latency, so that it is not neutral and is likely to favor incumbents, seems like it does not optimize the internet for innovation or the growth of new internet properties.

minimax 13y ago
You're saying you think ISPs would try and penalize all traffic by 50 or 100ms and let the big sites pay up to avoid the penalty? That seems like mustache twirlingly cruel and I'm not even sure you can do that with conventional network hardware (you'd have to buffer all that traffic in RAM). On the other hand, if we're just talking about allowing certain companies to pay ISPs for prioritizing traffic for certain applications (VoIP, gaming), then I don't think that's such a horrible thing.
- rz2k 13y ago
  I'm not just saying that not doing so is equivalent to leaving money on the table, I'm saying that the net costs to the economy would be greater than the revenue collected from content providers. In a certain sense the revenue collected from content providers could be seen as offsetting revenue that would otherwise be collected from subscribers, and may lead to faster deployment of network improvements. However, that neglects the full cost to the internet as a whole, which would be the increased barriers to entry for new companies. Blagojevich got in trouble because he pushed the envelope so far, but I used the quote because it reflects the reality that not cashing in on some opportunity is equivalent to losing money, and particularly so if you have a responsibility to shareholders.