Comment by nivla | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nivla | Hacker News Reader

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>when I was reading their blog I quickly started to feel like they go off half-cocked too often.

While I am a fan of EFF and the work they do, I too have started to notice this recently. The title of articles have become borderline click-bait and sometimes conveniently omits vital information that may help better understand the issue. The most recent one is "Stupid Patent of the Month: Microsoft’s Design Patent on a Slider" [1] [2] which surprisingly is a lawsuit on a whole lot more than just sliders.

However on this issue I am kind of split. I agree with both EFF and T-mobile. As for T-mobile, BingeOn is optional and can be disabled anytime with just a click, so it does little to nothing to hurt customers and cannot effectively be called throttling. As for EFF, they have the right to be worried that this may set a precedent for bigger control over your data in the future.

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/12/stupid-patent-month-mi... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10802413

The fact that it's optional (enabled by default) does not change the fact that it is, indeed, throttling. There's also the fact that this throttling (regardless of what they'd like to call it) was actually happening for video services not included.

This is precisely the opposite of content neutrality, in that they're making general internet traffic intentionally worse.

Call it throttling, call it whatever you want. It makes my general internet better.

The service is optional from all sides: both the consumer and the content provider. It gives me, as a user of the general internet, more control over what I do with the internet. Not less.

It may be better if there was RFC for devices to register their bandwidth preferences that Netflix and other video services implemented, but there's not. Perhaps BingeOn is a route towards that.

"Call it throttling, call it whatever you want. It makes my general internet better"

Not mine. Sure Bloomberg, Wikipedia & other top-tier payers' windows open fast, but I find most "not popular" sites hang and drag on opening new tabs/windows... long enough for me to open a Bloomberg tab/window to "prime the pump", so to speak. Tethering to a laptop, I can watch local library or .gov window attempting to load with no in/out network traffic for 15-20 seconds. Everytime I open Bloomberg or Google, multiple previously loading tabs/windows recommence instantaneously.

How does that relate to the conversation? Who are you using for internet, and what type of weird setup is it where they deliver packets after "priming the pump"? That is not a throttling scheme, nor anything like BingeOn.

"Priming the pump" is an expreasion[1]. I am matching your favorable experience on T-MOBILE with my differing experience. The discussion is pertaining to Tmobile's throttling traffic, when non-prioritized traffic fails I have found opening a prioritized connection resumes the former, as well.

[1] http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/prime+the+pump

> The service is optional from all sides: both the consumer and the content provider.

Are you sure that content providers are opting in? I've read that services like youtube are being throttled, while not benefiting from being included in the 'free streaming' services.

And Legere was implying that Google may have bribed EFF to attack T-Mobile on Google's behalf, suggesting that Google wasn't happy; I assumed this is because Google is not happy that T-Mobile is throttling youtube (presumably) without their consent.

Demand that control from the content provider. The man in the middle shouldn't touch your content.

Yes, fantastic, over-simplied, completely unrealistic solution. It would require not only getting Netflix to give me that control, but also the devices themselves to be in on it, because the device needs to switch modes based on what network its on. The network itself is the deciding point of what bandwidth I want to use. What if I want the middleman to help with the content because Netflix and Apple and Google are nitwits on this issue, and the middle man can actually do something here? Do you think that Netflix or Apple or Google care about my demand? HAH!

There's a lot more going on here than "the pipes are filtering our data" and being blind to that means that the problem is going to unaddressed for longer.

If we allow data metering of any sort at all, then BingeOn things have to be ok. If we want to ban all provider-based data caps on wireless networks, I'm not sure exactly how that would work. And its not just data metering over wireless networks, pretty much all hosting solutions are billing based on the amount of data transferred.

> As for T-mobile, BingeOn is optional and can be disabled anytime with just a click, so it does little to nothing to hurt customers and cannot effectively be called throttling.

It's still throttling, from what I read. If it's optional throttling at the user's control and at no price difference, then you have a point in that it's not unfair or unreasonable, but only if customers actually understand that it is throttling so that they know to turn it off.

If they don't know that they're being throttled, then the ability to turn it off is moot; they effectively don't have the ability at all. And in that case users are being unreasonably and unfairly throttled.

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