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"And he promised a series of measures to ensure the new paid prioritization practices are done fairly and don't harm consumers." I have a measure in mind that

"And he promised a series of measures to ensure the new paid prioritization practices are done fairly and don't harm consumers." I have a measure in mind that won't harm consumers. Don't allow ISPs to discriminate against users regarding their already paid for internet traffic based on what they request. (Gee that sounds a lot like net neutrality.) Anything less is open for abuse. Perhaps "Discrimination" is a good word to tar this with, because it is. It's discrimination against companies, but it's also discrimination against users based on their tastes, preferences, and possibly socioeconomic status. To say nothing of de-facto censorship issues.

natdempk 12y ago
This seems like a valuable approach. If we could come up with examples of services like nonprofits that would be unable to pay and have their services negatively affected I think that could make people care about this issue. Maybe if we focused on things like Khan Academy, where their content is largely video. I think in that case its clear their money would be better spent developing a larger knowledge base instead of paying extortion money to ISPs, and it might strike a chord with average users.
- rayiner 12y ago
  I think if people would get away from this nebulous message that mostly seems to benefit for-profit companies, and focus on issues like ensuring access for non-profits and educational organizations, that there would be a lot more bi-partisan traction. Right now, the optics, for those not invested in the issue, come across as being mostly about Comcast and Netflix bickering over profits.
  - adventured 12y ago
    If you focus the issue on non-profits and edu orgs, all the people trying to get this through will do is write a tiny little exclusion just for that concern (ie no slow lanes for non-profits). That's what they do every time there's a narrow concern raised against terrible legislation. It'll backfire big time, and waste valuable time.
    - rayiner 12y ago
      First, you have the posture wrong. If there's no "terrible legislation" then Comcast and TWC can do whatever they want. What you're asking for is "terrible legislation" to keep them from doing whatever they want. Second, at least to me, the non-profits and .edu orgs are the ones that implicate the most substantial public interest concerns. I don't really care about Netflix's profit margin.
- ColinDabritz 12y ago
  After thinking on this further, here are some thoughts on wording and campaign approach. This isn't about business, although we know the big ISPs behave badly as businesses (list various examples, monopoly issues) This isn't about who is paying and how much, although we know there are problems with this too (list examples, compare to rest of the world) This isn't even about 'fast lane' vs 'slow lane', although we know that this will be the results (list historical examples, monopilies) This is a direct attack on your personal freedoms. It is censorship and discrimination. This bill makes Comcast and other ISPs your personal internet censor. They will be able to decide who has how much access to you. Although they may not choose to make it 'exactly' zero access, it may be too close to matter. Partial censorship, or not-as-fast access is still censorship. (Examples from history about drowning out voices and controlling the message). This bill allows Comcast to discriminate against it's users. Not only can Comcast (and other ISPs) control how fast you access the internet (which they can already do), this allows them to discriminate against you, based on what information you choose to request. Can't afford services that pay off Comcast or that Comcast doesn't like? You are less of a person, less deserving of the service you already paid for. This also allow subtle and insidious racial or religious discrimination. Do you watch 'televangelists' live online? Comcast or other ISPs could decide a different denomination gets a nice stream, while your church gets the 'separate but not equal' choppy, laggy, broken stream. Do you decide to use services that operate in other countries to talk with family in other nations? Comcast could decide they aren't as good as their favorite service that costs more. Even more critically, that service that they like may not even be allowed by law in the country you are trying to talk to. Live video and voice chat can be hard to hear and understand under good circumstances, if Comcast never fixes problems unless companies 'pay up', then they can decide if you can really see your family using the tools available to them. The free market cannot address this problem. Comcast and other ISPs have made this a controlled non-free market. Fair competition isn't possible in this space, because of their monopoly/duopoly control, and difficult regulations that they helped write and suit only their business models. All netizens are equal. "Whoever can pay" isn't equal. "Whoever we choose" certainly isn't equal. Don't let Comcast make some "more equal" than others. Overall, I think slowing down a webpage may be the wrong message. Straight up better or worse is the better message. Maybe a "congratulations, your ISP has decided you are worthy of accessing this page. Find out why your ISP thinks it has this right, and why your rights are being signed away." would be more effective. Or even a big splash with "Comcast has approved this website for viewing.", which may be REALLY effective if IP block based, to be the actual ISP.
twoodfin 12y ago
Don't allow ISPs to discriminate against users regarding their already paid for internet traffic based on what they request. It's (relatively) cheap for Netflix or their CDN partners to connect their content-serving systems to a few dozen "meet me" rooms where it's "easy" for Comcast to hook as many wires up as necessary to receive the requested data into their network at an acceptable rate. That's all Netflix or their CDNs need to worry about. And so it's (relatively) cheap for them to scale the amount of data they serve as their customer base, average viewing time and stream quality grow. But Comcast has to deliver all this data to tens of millions of customers spread out around the nation. While it would be nice if their networks were sufficiently provisioned to serve, say, half their customers 20Mbit/sec continuously during primetime, that is just not the network they have today. It will always be cheaper for Netflix to turn up the spigot than for Comcast to build out its infrastructure. Should "network neutrality" force Comcast to spend billions every time Netflix doubles its streaming rate?
- maccam94 12y ago
  Then ISPs should stop claiming speeds they can't deliver.
- natdempk 12y ago
  Basically the answer to this is yes. If Comcast spends all of this money to upgrade their network and the cost to the end user goes up for the better service, then there are really no problems here. That's basically how a market should work. That plan would actually encourage them to upgrade their networks over time and install things like fiber to meet the new demands of customers, instead of providing poor service like they do now.
  - twoodfin 12y ago
    The problem is that a network that can stream 20Mbit continuously to every customer (so they always can get the "advertised" bandwidth) would be absurdly expensive, and rates would have to go up accordingly. Why should someone who doesn't consume Netflix pay for this? Why should Comcast be afraid to sell you a 100MBit "bursty" connection (essentially the same kind of service they actually advertise now) because they'd be 'forced' to potentially have the capacity to serve 100MBit to every subscriber when Netflix goes to 8K-h.269 or what-have-you?
grandalf 12y ago
Why is the default QoS of residential broadband suddenly deemed sacred? FWIW: I'd prefer guaranteed super-fast DNS and guaranteed low latency, but I don't care too much whether content from Disney happens to download 10x faster than content from Youtube.
JoshTriplett 12y ago
> I have a measure in mind that won't harm consumers. Don't allow ISPs to discriminate against users regarding their already paid for internet traffic based on what they request. (Gee that sounds a lot like net neutrality.) So you'd ban the large number of existing in-ISP CDNs and CDN/ISP partnerships, as well? (e.g. YouTube or Akamai mirroring content to servers directly on an ISP's network, to improve bandwidth and latency for that ISP's customers?) Or, for that matter, you'd stop an ISP from offering a Debian mirror?
- jessaustin 12y ago
  Well those are non sequiturs. Data sitting on a CDN is not "traffic", until it is actually traffic. CDNs function not by prioritizing traffic, but by reducing traffic.
sliverstorm 12y ago
it's also discrimination against users based on ... socioeconomic status. That's a pretty shakey one. Are people who can't afford Porsches being discriminated against based on their socioeconomic status?
- roc 12y ago
  This is more like conditionally charging people more to drive on the roads that already exist, based on destination, rather than vehicle. And it's pretty easy to see where that could lead to discrimination.
  - pit 12y ago
    This is exactly how toll roads work. You get on, and then pay when you get off based on how many miles travelled. So, if you were starting in New York City, it would cost a lot more to travel to Buffalo than it would to White Plains.
    - jeffasinger 12y ago
      Let's say that roads out of residential areas are owned by some company named R, and the residents pay R a fee to get access to the main arteries. Some roads are used more by people of some cultures than others, sometimes roads get congested when lots of people in one neighborhood are all trying to get to the same place at the same time. Would it be discriminatory for R to spend more on upgrades to the roads to some locations than at other locations? What if all the roads that were best to get to Chinatown were completely neglected?
    - roc 12y ago
      Except none of the provisions for paid-prioritization mentions, let alone mandates, new roads. If this were about new toll roads, these already exist and are paid-peering arrangements, CDNs, etc. [1] These new rules are explicitly about 'traffic shaping', by price, by destination, existing traffic along existing routes. So this is less like using toll roads to cross New York State and more like selectively saying "everyone in New York State that's driving to a Starbucks needs to travel 10/mph slower -- however they're getting there -- or kick in $2/mo to drive the old speed limit." [1] Microsoft pays Comcast gobs of money to ensure a performant network connection for XBox Live. This is quite different from Comcast being able to say "Sony isn't also paying us money for better service. Let's slow them down -- to protect the network -- until they pay up."
mwsherman 12y ago
CDNs are essentially identical (technologically and economically) to what Netflix bought from Comcast: http://clipperhouse.com/2014/05/07/what-netflix-bought-from-comcast-is-a-cdn/ http://clipperhouse.com/2014/05/07/what-netflix-bought-from-... To my mind, I can’t imagine a rule that describes a fast lane that doesn’t also describe a CDN.
- moultano 12y ago
  CDNs increase the overall capacity of the network by caching content closer to its destination. This benefits everyone, even the traffic that is not cached by the CDN because it reduces congestion for everyone. The behavior we are worried about is zero sum (where some packets get prioritized and others lose out), or even negative sum (where some packets get held for ransom.)
  - mwsherman 12y ago
    That’s true, and it’s also true when Netflix buys a dedicated circuit to Comcast. Their traffic is no longer going over the other circuits. Not saying it’s the right thing to do, but that it’s functionally the same. It’s also functionally the same to say that any traffic not on the CDN is in a slow lane or being held ransom, in the sense that it will be congested until the publisher pays.
    - davorak 12y ago
      No, as far as I can tell the incentives in the two scenarios are very different. The transparence on what is being payed for and why some sites are fast and some are slow is not the same for Comcast's subscribes in the two scenarios either.
    - pdonis 12y ago
      > It’s also functionally the same to say that any traffic not on the CDN is in a slow lane or being held ransom You're confusing routes with endpoints. CDNs are endpoints--multiple endpoints containing the same data so that there is a much higher probability of having an endpoint close to any given user. The owner of the data has to do all the work of getting multiple copies of the data placed at all those endpoints, making sure they're all in sync, etc. But the data traveling from endpoint to endpoint--from the nearest CDN node to the user--is not privileged over any other data. What the net neutrality debate is about is the ISPs wanting to control routes--i.e., to be able to say that some data traveling over a given route from one endpoint to another endpoint gets to travel faster than other data traveling over the same route. CDNs don't do that. What Netflix bought from Comcast is sort of in between. It's like a CDN in that Netflix still has to do the work of placing multiple copies of their content at different endpoints in different locations; but it's also like the ISP route control scheme in that Netflix' data gets a privileged route from their endpoints to Comcast users, a route that non-Netflix data from endpoints that are similarly situated does not get, because non-Netflix data can't travel through the special connection points that Netflix now has with Comcast. Normal CDNs don't do that either.
mr_spothawk 12y ago
> discrimination against users based on their tastes, preferences, and possibly socioeconomic status. This is the line I repeat when discussing the issue with folks who are just learning about the issue. [edit format]
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

natdempk 12y ago

This seems like a valuable approach. If we could come up with examples of services like nonprofits that would be unable to pay and have their services negatively affected I think that could make people care about this issue. Maybe if we focused on things like Khan Academy, where their content is largely video. I think in that case its clear their money would be better spent developing a larger knowledge base instead of paying extortion money to ISPs, and it might strike a chord with average users.

rayiner 12y ago
I think if people would get away from this nebulous message that mostly seems to benefit for-profit companies, and focus on issues like ensuring access for non-profits and educational organizations, that there would be a lot more bi-partisan traction. Right now, the optics, for those not invested in the issue, come across as being mostly about Comcast and Netflix bickering over profits.
- adventured 12y ago
  If you focus the issue on non-profits and edu orgs, all the people trying to get this through will do is write a tiny little exclusion just for that concern (ie no slow lanes for non-profits). That's what they do every time there's a narrow concern raised against terrible legislation. It'll backfire big time, and waste valuable time.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    First, you have the posture wrong. If there's no "terrible legislation" then Comcast and TWC can do whatever they want. What you're asking for is "terrible legislation" to keep them from doing whatever they want. Second, at least to me, the non-profits and .edu orgs are the ones that implicate the most substantial public interest concerns. I don't really care about Netflix's profit margin.
ColinDabritz 12y ago
After thinking on this further, here are some thoughts on wording and campaign approach. This isn't about business, although we know the big ISPs behave badly as businesses (list various examples, monopoly issues) This isn't about who is paying and how much, although we know there are problems with this too (list examples, compare to rest of the world) This isn't even about 'fast lane' vs 'slow lane', although we know that this will be the results (list historical examples, monopilies) This is a direct attack on your personal freedoms. It is censorship and discrimination. This bill makes Comcast and other ISPs your personal internet censor. They will be able to decide who has how much access to you. Although they may not choose to make it 'exactly' zero access, it may be too close to matter. Partial censorship, or not-as-fast access is still censorship. (Examples from history about drowning out voices and controlling the message). This bill allows Comcast to discriminate against it's users. Not only can Comcast (and other ISPs) control how fast you access the internet (which they can already do), this allows them to discriminate against you, based on what information you choose to request. Can't afford services that pay off Comcast or that Comcast doesn't like? You are less of a person, less deserving of the service you already paid for. This also allow subtle and insidious racial or religious discrimination. Do you watch 'televangelists' live online? Comcast or other ISPs could decide a different denomination gets a nice stream, while your church gets the 'separate but not equal' choppy, laggy, broken stream. Do you decide to use services that operate in other countries to talk with family in other nations? Comcast could decide they aren't as good as their favorite service that costs more. Even more critically, that service that they like may not even be allowed by law in the country you are trying to talk to. Live video and voice chat can be hard to hear and understand under good circumstances, if Comcast never fixes problems unless companies 'pay up', then they can decide if you can really see your family using the tools available to them. The free market cannot address this problem. Comcast and other ISPs have made this a controlled non-free market. Fair competition isn't possible in this space, because of their monopoly/duopoly control, and difficult regulations that they helped write and suit only their business models. All netizens are equal. "Whoever can pay" isn't equal. "Whoever we choose" certainly isn't equal. Don't let Comcast make some "more equal" than others. Overall, I think slowing down a webpage may be the wrong message. Straight up better or worse is the better message. Maybe a "congratulations, your ISP has decided you are worthy of accessing this page. Find out why your ISP thinks it has this right, and why your rights are being signed away." would be more effective. Or even a big splash with "Comcast has approved this website for viewing.", which may be REALLY effective if IP block based, to be the actual ISP.

twoodfin 12y ago

Don't allow ISPs to discriminate against users regarding their already paid for internet traffic based on what they request. It's (relatively) cheap for Netflix or their CDN partners to connect their content-serving systems to a few dozen "meet me" rooms where it's "easy" for Comcast to hook as many wires up as necessary to receive the requested data into their network at an acceptable rate. That's all Netflix or their CDNs need to worry about. And so it's (relatively) cheap for them to scale the amount of data they serve as their customer base, average viewing time and stream quality grow. But Comcast has to deliver all this data to tens of millions of customers spread out around the nation. While it would be nice if their networks were sufficiently provisioned to serve, say, half their customers 20Mbit/sec continuously during primetime, that is just not the network they have today. It will always be cheaper for Netflix to turn up the spigot than for Comcast to build out its infrastructure. Should "network neutrality" force Comcast to spend billions every time Netflix doubles its streaming rate?

maccam94 12y ago
Then ISPs should stop claiming speeds they can't deliver.
natdempk 12y ago
Basically the answer to this is yes. If Comcast spends all of this money to upgrade their network and the cost to the end user goes up for the better service, then there are really no problems here. That's basically how a market should work. That plan would actually encourage them to upgrade their networks over time and install things like fiber to meet the new demands of customers, instead of providing poor service like they do now.
- twoodfin 12y ago
  The problem is that a network that can stream 20Mbit continuously to every customer (so they always can get the "advertised" bandwidth) would be absurdly expensive, and rates would have to go up accordingly. Why should someone who doesn't consume Netflix pay for this? Why should Comcast be afraid to sell you a 100MBit "bursty" connection (essentially the same kind of service they actually advertise now) because they'd be 'forced' to potentially have the capacity to serve 100MBit to every subscriber when Netflix goes to 8K-h.269 or what-have-you?

grandalf 12y ago

Why is the default QoS of residential broadband suddenly deemed sacred? FWIW: I'd prefer guaranteed super-fast DNS and guaranteed low latency, but I don't care too much whether content from Disney happens to download 10x faster than content from Youtube.

JoshTriplett 12y ago

> I have a measure in mind that won't harm consumers. Don't allow ISPs to discriminate against users regarding their already paid for internet traffic based on what they request. (Gee that sounds a lot like net neutrality.) So you'd ban the large number of existing in-ISP CDNs and CDN/ISP partnerships, as well? (e.g. YouTube or Akamai mirroring content to servers directly on an ISP's network, to improve bandwidth and latency for that ISP's customers?) Or, for that matter, you'd stop an ISP from offering a Debian mirror?

jessaustin 12y ago
Well those are non sequiturs. Data sitting on a CDN is not "traffic", until it is actually traffic. CDNs function not by prioritizing traffic, but by reducing traffic.

sliverstorm 12y ago

it's also discrimination against users based on ... socioeconomic status. That's a pretty shakey one. Are people who can't afford Porsches being discriminated against based on their socioeconomic status?

roc 12y ago
This is more like conditionally charging people more to drive on the roads that already exist, based on destination, rather than vehicle. And it's pretty easy to see where that could lead to discrimination.
- pit 12y ago
  This is exactly how toll roads work. You get on, and then pay when you get off based on how many miles travelled. So, if you were starting in New York City, it would cost a lot more to travel to Buffalo than it would to White Plains.
  - jeffasinger 12y ago
    Let's say that roads out of residential areas are owned by some company named R, and the residents pay R a fee to get access to the main arteries. Some roads are used more by people of some cultures than others, sometimes roads get congested when lots of people in one neighborhood are all trying to get to the same place at the same time. Would it be discriminatory for R to spend more on upgrades to the roads to some locations than at other locations? What if all the roads that were best to get to Chinatown were completely neglected?
  - roc 12y ago
    Except none of the provisions for paid-prioritization mentions, let alone mandates, new roads. If this were about new toll roads, these already exist and are paid-peering arrangements, CDNs, etc. [1] These new rules are explicitly about 'traffic shaping', by price, by destination, existing traffic along existing routes. So this is less like using toll roads to cross New York State and more like selectively saying "everyone in New York State that's driving to a Starbucks needs to travel 10/mph slower -- however they're getting there -- or kick in $2/mo to drive the old speed limit." [1] Microsoft pays Comcast gobs of money to ensure a performant network connection for XBox Live. This is quite different from Comcast being able to say "Sony isn't also paying us money for better service. Let's slow them down -- to protect the network -- until they pay up."

mwsherman 12y ago

CDNs are essentially identical (technologically and economically) to what Netflix bought from Comcast: http://clipperhouse.com/2014/05/07/what-netflix-bought-from-comcast-is-a-cdn/ http://clipperhouse.com/2014/05/07/what-netflix-bought-from-... To my mind, I can’t imagine a rule that describes a fast lane that doesn’t also describe a CDN.

moultano 12y ago
CDNs increase the overall capacity of the network by caching content closer to its destination. This benefits everyone, even the traffic that is not cached by the CDN because it reduces congestion for everyone. The behavior we are worried about is zero sum (where some packets get prioritized and others lose out), or even negative sum (where some packets get held for ransom.)
- mwsherman 12y ago
  That’s true, and it’s also true when Netflix buys a dedicated circuit to Comcast. Their traffic is no longer going over the other circuits. Not saying it’s the right thing to do, but that it’s functionally the same. It’s also functionally the same to say that any traffic not on the CDN is in a slow lane or being held ransom, in the sense that it will be congested until the publisher pays.
  - davorak 12y ago
    No, as far as I can tell the incentives in the two scenarios are very different. The transparence on what is being payed for and why some sites are fast and some are slow is not the same for Comcast's subscribes in the two scenarios either.
  - pdonis 12y ago
    > It’s also functionally the same to say that any traffic not on the CDN is in a slow lane or being held ransom You're confusing routes with endpoints. CDNs are endpoints--multiple endpoints containing the same data so that there is a much higher probability of having an endpoint close to any given user. The owner of the data has to do all the work of getting multiple copies of the data placed at all those endpoints, making sure they're all in sync, etc. But the data traveling from endpoint to endpoint--from the nearest CDN node to the user--is not privileged over any other data. What the net neutrality debate is about is the ISPs wanting to control routes--i.e., to be able to say that some data traveling over a given route from one endpoint to another endpoint gets to travel faster than other data traveling over the same route. CDNs don't do that. What Netflix bought from Comcast is sort of in between. It's like a CDN in that Netflix still has to do the work of placing multiple copies of their content at different endpoints in different locations; but it's also like the ISP route control scheme in that Netflix' data gets a privileged route from their endpoints to Comcast users, a route that non-Netflix data from endpoints that are similarly situated does not get, because non-Netflix data can't travel through the special connection points that Netflix now has with Comcast. Normal CDNs don't do that either.

mr_spothawk 12y ago

> discrimination against users based on their tastes, preferences, and possibly socioeconomic status. This is the line I repeat when discussing the issue with folks who are just learning about the issue. [edit format]

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]