The Invisible War for the Open Internet
medium.freecodecamp.com
medium.freecodecamp.com
Also, here's how you can contact the FCC directly:
1-888-225-5322
press 1, then 4, then 2, then 0 say that you wish to file comments concerning the FCC Chairman’s plan to end net neutrality
Or on the web:
https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filings/express Under Proceedings, enter 14-28 and 17-108
Suggested script:
It's my understanding that the FCC Chairman intends to reverse net neutrality rules and put big Internet Service Providers in charge of the internet. I am firmly against this action. I believe that these ISPs will operate solely in their own interests and not in the interests of what is best for the American public. In the past 10 years, broadband companies have been guilty of: deliberately throttling internet traffic, squeezing customers with arbitrary data caps, misleading consumers about the meaning of “unlimited” internet, giving privileged treatment to companies they own, strong-arming cities to prevent them from giving their residents high-speed internet, and avoiding real competition at all costs. Consumers, small businesses, and all Americans deserve an open internet. So to restate my position: I am against the chairman's plan to reverse the net neutrality rules. I believe doing so will destroy a vital engine for innovation, growth, and communication.
This information is taken from this thread on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/6894i9/heres_ho...
I did, important and a good read.
Trivial Q. What search term did you use on google to get show the paid adverts google inserts above "freecodecamp"? Was the term generic? I get this result (no adverts, many links to freecodecamp): https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/34191703472
thx @quincyla, Google doing the, "your reality isn't everybody else's reality". So localised search hits harder with adverts.
Would be an interesting experiment to have a page to submit HN comments as posts (add a title, get a few ppl to recommend).
Just to be clear, it's not an "Express Filing", it's a "Standard Filing", which allows attaching a document (express just lets you paste in text, with no formatting--not even line breaks). Those are the only two options on the FCC's site for submitting filings.
I find the Western Union and Hayes espionage story emotionally appealing but I couldn't find any serious sources with a quick Google search. The Rutherford B. Hayes Wikipedia article mentions neither Western Union or any sort of spying/espionage.
There are two warring trusts here, and both are equally evil in that they will abuse you as much as they can. On one hand there is the distribution problem, which is the ISP monopoly. With the recently media fallout around rolling back ISP data collection some of the big ISPs have openly promised to not resell this collected data... but if they own their own advertising networks they have less incentive to.
On the other side there is the content provider mega-states, which actually bigger and scarier than the ISPs. As your facts indicate the top 8 apps in the Apple app store come from Google and Facebook. Using their ad networks they can track your browsing habits as a third party service on second party sites, which means they know who you are even when you have no account with them or are logged out.
Remember the fallout of SOPA. SOPA scared the shit out of social media. If that law passed then social media would actually have to police the content of user submissions without motivation from multi-billion dollar law suits.
On one hand the ISP army is kind of evil in that they force their authority upon the public and the public is often powerless to do anything about it. The benefit of that is that they don't have to be dishonest about it, which is some level of transparency... even if still an aura of corruption.
The content provider side is scarier to me, because they can only gain wealth and influence if users lend it to them... and for convenience most users absolutely give up their privacy. They often don't need the same super-power lobby force the ISPs need if they can convenience their users to scream loudly enough together.
Fortunately, they are each the solution to the other's problems. If you believe the content providers are the greater evil then prioritize distribution and diversify your content sources. If you believe distribution (the ISPs) to be the greater problem then consolidate your content consumption and receive it through alternate providers.
No, they aren't, because the major ISPs are also significant content providers and are trying to use their positions as ISPs to promote their own content-provision businesses. Unless you view "solving" the existence of incumbent large content providers as something that is done by making the oligopoly of ISPs also the oligopoly of content, the ISPs are not offering a solution to anything, just the same problem you are describing, intensified, with their own faces replacing the incumbent dominant content providers.
Of course they won't offer anything to you that is not immediately in their commercial interest. You have to take the initiative to use what they provide in a way that does what you need.
Even with that said I still think the ISP problem is the lesser of the two evils. People don't have any right to complain about NSA spying if they willingly sacrifice their personal data to Google and Facebook. This data isn't for lease or borrow... it is owned, and when it becomes the property of Google or Facebook they can, and should, use it against you to generate revenue.
The software giants have convinced their users they are acting in a benign capacity for the interest of their users. The biggest problem is that most people take them at their word.
Sure they do. People can complain about whatever they want.
You're off on a tangent anyway. If you're for net neutrality, focus on that. That's the point of this thread, to brainstorm about how to maintain net neutrality.
It doesn't matter whether the ISP or content provider is the bigger evil - they're both potentially evil under these circumstances. Let's focus on our opposition to the proposed policy and see how the giants react. My suspicion is FB and Google will not be supportive of the FCC's proposed changes, and that counts for something. If they turn evil at a later date, we address it then. As far as I know, they're not currently supportive so that's not on the table
No, I am commenting directly to the subject matter. You want the subject matter to be only about net neutrality, but it isn't. I addressed this.
The end of net neutrality means they control what they or others can provide to you. That includes the ability to give you what they need you to use instead of what you need. So, you can't just use what they provide for your needs. The main article showed the ISP's and mediums before them repeatedly did this. There's no reason to trust they won't do it again as they're already scheming on us. The Comcast cap was a recent example I personally had to fight where they were faking my data usage counting up bandwidth when the computers weren't on and wifi was unplugged.
Nah, open, decentralized, and bazaar is the best model for the Internet because that's what gave us all the great things that the Prodigies, Compuserves, MA Bell's, etc didn't.
That is not completely accurate. They are not content provides or censors... at least not directly. Some of the major ISPs do own ad networks and so can prioritize advertising distribution in a way that others down stream cannot. They can also irregularly throttle access to content using criteria of their choosing, which isn't completely censorship but is absolutely the slippery slope.
Net neutrality is beneficial and important, but the ISPs aren't the ones you should be most fearful of in these regards.
They are if they determine what content you can get. They've already reduced that in the past just to save bandwidth costs. Then there's the content side. So, direct or indirect, it's equivalent in the sense that letting them have control over what you can receive makes them the content provider or censor in practice. A key middleman who might help you out or harm you instead of being impartial.
Throttling and prioritization aside, this is not an argument I have heard anyone make with regard to net neutrality.
> So, direct or indirect, it's equivalent in the sense that letting them have control over what you can receive makes them the content provider or censor in practice.
No it does not. They are still merely the distributor no matter how directly they censor you. You don't get to use effect to qualify the causality in your argument. This is a logical fallacy called post hoc ergo propter hoc.
Blocking -- not throttling or prioritization -- was the issue in the original net neutrality action (the Comcast BitTorrent blocking case) and the threat of ISPs blocking unwelcome content and applications has always been one of the core focuses of FCC net neutrality policy while they were pursuing it.
The word "blocking" is used in the article by the plaintiff, but the actual issue at hand was throttling that the plaintiff perceived as blocked traffic. Even then the lawsuit wasn't about throttling either, but fraudulent advertising.
The idea that the ability of the ISPs to censor has not previously been an issue in the neutrality debate is utterly wrong; its been a central concern identified and addressed in each public draft and issued version of the FCC's net neutrality rules.
It was made after the Bittorrent blocking that dragonwriter referenced. The next thing they did was start throttling it and other high-bandwidth users. They were secretive about it, too. This was a problem in and of itself since there were content distribution businesses using BitTorrent. Having everything but their product running smoothly on a network makes them look incompetent. People might switch to vendors with steady performance that weren't being throttled. Consumer advocates argued it was bad since they sold us on a specific speed we could use as much as we like. If they wanted tiered access, they should be public about it and/or straight charge for it in their marketing materials. The debate continued.
EDIT to Add: I think the reset packets should probably be mentioned as they're an active attack on users' connections.
https://www.eff.org/wp/packet-forgery-isps-report-comcast-af...
"They are still merely the distributor no matter how directly they censor you. "
Ok. Change the word to distributor and my point stands. They control what content you can get if they can arbitrarily block things, inject stuff into your traffic, or seek rent from content suppliers. ISP's have done all these things. It's still puts them in control what content you can receive through a pipe no matter what word you call them.
If we had some data and a map we could pinpoint which areas have high density and low competition.
What is Baltimore going to do? You can regulate all you want but you can't make companies build. The big dense cities best suited for fiber also tend to be broke, so municipal fiber isn't in the card either. There are no restrictions to municipal fiber here in Maryland--parts of Anne Arundel (heavily rural county around Annapolis) that don't have FiOS are getting municipal fiber. But Baltimore, like most larger US cities, is poorly managed and has no money.
[1] Baltimore is in some ways a great candidate for fiber. The 740 miles of conduit under the city is owned by the city itself; utilities and telcos all rent conduit space per linear foot from the city. It's a significant east coast telecom hub. But fully 1/4 of residents are at or below the poverty line. Very few neighborhoods have enough higher income people who could afford to subscribe to $70/month fiber service. Outside of a handful of rich, heavily gentrified places like D.C., NYC, and SF, most of the dense cities (the ones best suited for fiber) in the US are also extremely poor. (That is in stark contrast to London or Paris, where wealthier people tend to live in the city while lower income people live in close suburbs).
I don't buy that. Cities have people with voting rights. Average income is higher in the US than in Asia, and coverage in Asia is pretty good.
You can regulate to encourage a non-monopolistic system, particularly when businesses like Comcast are gouging to the sole benefit of investors who have already made theirs back.
Two other commenters noted that competition is forced by law in the last mile of networks in Europe [0] [1].
Would ISPs really be put in dire straits if they were required to be a bit more competitive? I doubt it.
It is very far fetched, particularly under this administration, that such regulation would happen. We can still discuss it now because we see a potential loss of quality in internet content. If that comes to pass, we can refer back to our earlier ideas and have another plan in mind.
These days, I think we all see the need for less silos, not more.
I'd like to see more try just to see what happens. Meanwhile, there are cities whose energy companies are investing in bringing broadband to consumers. It's partly a result of ISP bribes to states to ban tax-funded Internet where some compromised allowing at least energy companies to do it. Most don't care but some do. In Tennessee near me, they did municipal broadband in 8 cities with Chattanooga doing a gigabit at $70/mo and 10Gbps at $300/mo.
That's cool, thanks for sharing. Hope to see more pushback against current ISPs and their monopolistic tendencies.
If it needs to be public first -- so be it. I think there's still room to argue the ISPs made use of public infrastructure to lay lines. Anyway, I think we all agree that these monopolies are producing bad businesses and we ought to disrupt them before they do more harm in rolling back net neutrality.
Oh, they did. They like to act like it's an entirely private thing. What they'll say is it was given willingly for that purpose but doesn't mean that it should happen again. A bullshit argument but one that will prevent legal coercion in states with lawmakers they're paying off.
You keep saying that but it doesn't work when the topic is an actual electable one. When people contact their representatives and say they want a certain policy or law, the rep's job is on the line.
The only reason politicians might bow to corporate pressure is they don't have harder pressure from the people on their backs.
No popular vote, no job.
Hows that worked out in all the states where people griped about Internet speeds, cost, and availability but politicians passed laws for incumbents anyway? It didn't. You're talking a huge campaign of enough voters across enough districts to override what a few lobbyists do. It's asymmetrical. It might work but it usually doesn't. It's also extraordinarily difficult.
I'm for people trying it esp in rural areas. It's just that the ISP's currently outspend them on outreach and politics. Many of the areas getting hit are also already conservative where they believe business does it better. So, there's that too.
That's how voting works. Will it happen this election cycle? Maybe not. On the plus side, we've got plenty of discussion on the books saying what might happen to the internet if we allow net neutrality to lapse. In 10 years from now, when the general public goes looking for what happened to the good old internet, there will be a depth of articles and commentary, as well as people who've been following the issue over that period.
It's not worthless to voice your knowledge, even when it appears people will go against you. Consider the FBI record story from yesterday,
> Two years later I regained my seat on the board as the riders finally figured out that the strong helmet rule was a good thing. It then started spreading around the world and has since become standard in racing organizations almost everywhere, saving hundreds of lives and preventing thousands of serious head injuries. I’m proud of that. [1]
Due to his early effort, people knew where to turn when their theories did not pan out. There was a plan B ready to go, and everyone jumped on board.
Not ideal in the formal mathematical-proof sense, but, that's how humans and evolution works. We try stuff, see what works and what doesn't, and adjust if necessary.
> I'm for people trying it esp in rural areas. It's just that the ISP's currently outspend them on outreach and politics. Many of the areas getting hit are also already conservative where they believe business does it better. So, there's that too.
I agree there are a lot of speed bumps. That shouldn't stop us from trying. As technologists, we have an opportunity to share the importance of this topic with our family, friends, and representatives.
Perhaps we're wrong. No harm done. In the event we're right, people may consider your words more carefully in the future.
By and large they pay rent to use those rights of way (poles and conduits). Besides that, consider Google Fiber. Fiber cities have agreed to e.g. provide land for hosting things like Fiber huts. Does that give the municipalities unlimited rights to the rest of the Fiber infrastructure in perpetuity? Whatever rights of way phone and cable companies have, they got decades ago in return for building telephone and cable TV networks, which they already did.
I get that. Yet, the quality of service isn't good enough, and we know competition can help. I'm not claiming to have the magic bullet that solves that, and I imagine the solution will vary from region to region anyway.
At the very least, right now we can stand up against this rollback of net neutrality. It's completely unnecessary and the title, "Restoring internet freedom", is completely ironic. The only freedom this policy would give is enabling more monopolistic behavior to internet service providers. Enabling such large monopolies is not freedom, it's infringement of the rights of consumers and future small businesses, both content providers and service providers who might otherwise later be able to step into a competitive role.
I get why ISPs are asking for this - they want to secure their position and earn more money. It's just not good for the rest of us and I think we ought to say so.
He also points out that this is because the infrastructure was originally built by state-owned monopolies.
Also, as I pointed out in another thread, the internet situation in the other big diverse European countries isn't better than in the U.S.: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14212569. I've been paying $70/month for 150 symmetric in D.C. Doesn't look like my options would be better in London: https://www.productsandservices.bt.com/products/broadband-pa.... It seems like I'd pay somewhat less for half the speed down (and just ~20 mbps up because the last mile is DSL). Situation doesn't seem much better in Germany: https://www.reddit.com/r/berlin/comments/2sgi7z/whats_the_st....
Yup. Doesn't mean competition can't happen another way.
> Also, as I pointed out in another thread, the internet situation in the other big diverse European countries isn't better than in the U.S.
Why limit the comparison to Europe? Also, why focus on situations where quality is the same or worse? No country is identical anyway, so we know apples to apples isn't really happening. And, to see it done somewhere successfully is to know it's possible. Good quality and competition can be found in parts Asia, Europe, and the US.
I'm confident we can figure out how to increase competition among ISPs in the US so we do not have walled gardens shoved down our throats. I don't know that I have the right solutions in mind but I would like to discuss possibilities and see lawmakers attempt various negotiations with data providers.
The question isn't "what's the best policy for maximizing the quality of the broadband network?" It's "what's the best policy for maximizing the quality of the broadband network, in a country where people prioritize many other things more highly?"
It's pointless to compare the U.S. system to an Eastern European or Asian country where the people see broadband, technology, and computers, as a way to close the wealth gap with the US/UK/Germany/France. People in the U.S. don't see broadband that way. To the extent ordinary people care about it at all, they see the issue in terms of the pressing social justice issues the U.S. faces: rural/urban, low-income/high-income, etc. They care (quite reasonably) a lot more about whether low-income folks in Baltimore have access to broadband (and computers to use it!) than whether knowledge workers in Menlo Park have gigabit.
That's why we have well-developed programs for, e.g. subsidizing rural telephone deployment, but really nothing for fiber: https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/the-broadband-gap-....
This is particularly relevant in the context of municipally-supported systems displacing private ones. Take Amtrak. A private system aimed at shuttling knowledge workers from DC to New York might actually be pretty good. Instead, we have a public system where the only sensical route is burdened by having to subsidize trains around the country nobody uses.
Here in Annapolis (a D.C. satellite city), Verizon is upgrading our fiber to gigabit and I can get 50-150 mbps downloads on my iPhone. Having experienced the D.C. subway spend a good chunk of the last year literally on fire, there is no way I'd vote to turn internet service over to the government. If I lived in Tokyo I'd feel differently, but I'm stuck with the government I've got.
> Also, why focus on situations where quality is the same or worse?
The countries I picked for comparison are just the 5 largest EU countries, which contain more than 2/3 of the population.
Hong Kong, Tokyo, Taipei, Seoul are very wealthy and have quality internet options. There are pockets of wealth and poverty all over the world.
Are you saying the US isn't trying to be competitive any more and doesn't need to worry about knowledge workers? If so, that is absurd. We import tons of talent, not because it's cheap, but because we need it. We aren't churning out enough students in high tech and MD roles to satisfy our country's demands.
> If you tried to build a municipal network in Baltimore, the conversation would not be about how it's going to bring in knowledge workers and enhance economic competitiveness. It's going to be about why public money is being spent on wealthy knowledge workers when schools in low income communities are crumbling.
I think we're getting off topic. The question is whether net neutrality is worth supporting, and what we can do to further that discussion among non-techies who might be looking for a better understanding of this topic.
> The countries I picked for comparison are just the 5 largest EU countries, which contain more than 2/3 of the population.
Even a majority doesn't prove it isn't possible. Everything starts small.
When the current Prime Minister of Japan was born, the U.S. had a per-capita GDP more than five times higher than Japan. Singapore and South Korea became rich even more recently (and China still isn't). Their political leaders remember when their countries weren't rich, and how they became rich.
Moreover, those countries see their cities as their crown jewels. There is political will to build a new subway or fancy fiber network in the capital city. Contrast say DC (the ostensible capital of the US). When I was growing up in the 1990s, in the D.C. suburbs, people talked about D.C. in hushed tones (you might be able to make out "murder capital" if you listened carefully). Wealthy educated people would certainly never imagine living there, except maybe in Georgetown or DuPont. The idea of directing state (or gasp national) money to DC or New York or SF for fiber is a political non-starter. There are highways that need to be built out to the exurbs, after all (where all the political power is).
> Even a majority doesn't prove it isn't possible.
"Possible" isn't the question. The question is "practically achievable, given the relevant constraints." Germany, the U.K., France, etc. are big diverse economies. They're not dominated by hyper-dense city states. Given that we often do much worse than them (e.g. where it comes to roads, public transit, or healthcare), they're a pretty good benchmark for what's practically achievable for us.
I meant the same thing.
> Given that we often do much worse than them (e.g. where it comes to roads, public transit, or healthcare), they're a pretty good benchmark for what's practically achievable for us.
Perhaps that perception has something to do with simultaneously believing that we are the bearers of riches across the world, and that the rest of the world is also responsible for holding us back.
Unfortunately, in most states where this has happened, the state legislature has passed laws forbidding (effectively, if not explicitly) local government from competing with the private sector in this way. So far 19 states have passed such laws. Maine is the latest state where such a law has been proposed.
This map provides a good entry point to the subject:
https://muninetworks.org/communitymap
Since Maryland doesn't have such laws, and Baltimore owns the conduit and charges rent for it's use, Verizon can be presented with the option of building out FTTH across the city or face rent increases in order to fund the creation of a municipal fiber network (Verizon can also allow the use of their own fiber for this purpose to offset some of those rents).
Some municipal broadband laws amount to an effective ban, but the number is a lot less than 19: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/the-21-laws-state.... That site lists 21 state laws, but most aren't a really significant restriction. E.g. California has no restrictions on municipalities building networks, but they must sell or lease it to a private company if one shows up willing to maintain and operate it. In Pennsylvania, the municipality has to prepare a broadband plan and take it to the existing ISP, which can agree to build it within one year, or if not the municipality can build itself. Washington State is listed as "restricted" on that list, but the only restriction is that the municipality has to be a "code city" (which is basically any city organized enough to be able to pass its own municipal ordinances).
I think we should federally preempt laws that create an effective ban on municipal networks, but the issue is a red herring. The vast majority of the population lives in states without significant restrictions on municipal broadband, including residents of the 10 largest U.S. cities.
> Since Maryland doesn't have such laws, and Baltimore owns the conduit and charges rent for it's use, Verizon can be presented with the option of building out FTTH across the city or face rent increases in order to fund the creation of a municipal fiber network
I strongly suspect it would be illegal for the city to charge a discriminatory rate to a single entity for a municipal service used by many different kinds of utilities, as leverage in a separate negotiation. Especially considering that Verizon is legally precluded from doing anything but agree to the increased rent--its not allowed to decide not to rent space from the city anymore and discontinue its phone service.
Raise the price for all users of the conduit,then.
Europe gets around this by the fact that all of the telcos i descended from a state monopoly and bound by contract to behave like a common carrier and allow 3rd party raw cable access.
I realize a constitutional amendment protecting open internet access is a moon shot, particularly under this admin, but, what else can we do but speak our minds on how this rollback of net neutrality may negatively impact education and communication in the future?
We still have our vote, and we can try to make this an issue over time, perhaps many many more years.
> Capitalism allows for small businesses to enter and actually stand a chance. Corporatism makes it impossible.
What you're calling "corporatism" is simply "late stage capitalism". As long as you continue to buy into the delusion that your almoghty dollar will make you a multimillionaire someday, you empower those who have the actual machines of finance under lock and key to act as the new monarchs of your world.
I think we can support last-mile competition or regulation, and educate people about why net neutrality is important. That's our job as technologists.
Where did that come from? I didn't read that in the above comment.
Unless you have this idea that to get to socialism one has to undergo a bloody revolution? Nope. One just have to set up taxes properly and pump up public services.
"Late stage" implies people think we should get rid of capitalism soon. I don't see that happening. I don't want full-on communism / socialism , as it's been demonstrated to be a failed incentive for countries to both grow innovation and to defend themselves against the far-right-leaning societies in the world.
Maybe once we're all connected and communicating more effectively, we can stop building armies. I don't think we're there yet.
For instance, many US citizens here in HN would say France is a Socialist country. But we're neither a command economy nor a dictatorship (yet). We just put more money in public services (most notably health care and education). Some countries redistribute even more, and they're still quite far from full blown communism.
"Late stage capitalism", to me, implies that someone feels that capitalism is about to, or should, collapse. Plus, he mentioned "buying into the dollar". I really don't know how you're supposed to avoid that. If you're born into some country, you use their money. Even "buying into bitcoin" benefits early adopters more than the later ones. There really is no escaping "working your way up". Even being born to a wealthy family doesn't guarantee happiness or success.
If you interpret "late stage capitalism" and the other comments differently, I'm happy to hear your perspective. Perhaps I have the wrong idea.
I still consider France to operate in a capitalist nature along with most of the rest of the world, it just has more elements of socialism baked in. I absolutely don't think of France as communist, lol, but I'm sure some Americans do.
Perhaps capitalism is a bad word in France. I don't know. It's simply a matter-of-fact, to me, that many humans require a monetary incentive to do the kinds of work we do today, and that this is best achieved by having voting rights and the freedom to profit from new businesses.
Not necessarily. Cyberpunk (and there is evidence we are walking down that path), would be a pretty stable form of "late stage capitalism". Not one I'd want, though.
> Imagine your existing water utility divided its offerings into "regular water" and "super clean water". You'd think, wait, isn't my tap water already clean? And you'd be right.
> Swap "regular water" for "faster internet to specific websites" and you get the lobbyists' argument for killing net neutrality. It would produce slow internet to websites that don't pay up, effectively allowing ISPs to earn money two times for the same product, and elbowing smaller content producers out of the internet
Improvements welcome. I think it could be more succinct.
There is NO CHANCE that ISPs will actually invest in two technically different products like regular/super clean water! That's just how ISPs want paint the debate, that they want the right to invest in "better technology", but the bottleneck is the last mile and the chances that Verizon will lay 2 different cables to your house is exactly zero! The requirement for prejudicial packet routing to deliver things like HD video is a non-starter, Netflix when it's not getting throttled is already delivers great hi-def video in the current non-prejudicial packet-based internet.
It is really pure "extortion"...at least in my view and a clear case of necessary government intervention to insure fair market behavior (e.g. ISPs can only charge consumers, not web services, for internet service).
I realize that ISPs want to paint the debate as separate products. I wanted to use their language in my description so that people can interpret their words alongside mine.
If you're constantly making different points and not addressing your opponents', I feel the listener will walk away with a 50/50 chance of agreeing with you, probably choosing to follow their political party.
If you offer some translation, maybe we can get some meaningful discussion about it.
Regarding charging rich people to enter the fence. I feel that would only help convince the general public that net neutrality benefits big companies. Google and Facebook, forgive me if you work there, are teetering on not being perceived as evil mega corporations with access to all our data. Naming them as a victim doesn't do much to win over the public.
Watch the movie "Idiocracy"
"Now imagine that that new service can't compete, because fb/goog have a handshake deal with your ISP, so as long as you live here you're stuck with shitty X."
Honestly this ^ kinda thing is all most people would care about if at all.
Phrasing it as no more than "the latest trick from ATT to screw you over" has huge resonance with people I've talked to. They don't care what it's about generally.
The much better argument is that BigCos are seeking to establish a cartel for the primary purpose of excluding entrepreneurship and limiting consumer choice. Emphasize the importance of the internet as a free platform for the market and that net non-neutrality allows an undue influence over that market to whoever the local telecom provider is.
This is very real, because the main driver of interest for net non-neutrality from the ISP side is the possibility of protecting cable subscriptions. On that front, it's tech giants v. telecom and entertainment giants.
Over 30% of Disney's gross revenue comes from ESPN (yes, really!), and most of that revenue comes from cable subscriptions. Anecdotally, typical-speed internet access will only consume around 30% of the average consumer's cable bill, meaning a cancellation results in ~70% monthly revenue loss from that customer (bundles, contracts, and packages are used to attempt to control this).
Cordcutting is a very real threat to the established players, directly conflicting with their interest in delivering stable internet services that are sufficiently reliable and speedy to stream videos.
This is true, but I'm not sure what can be done about it. In my experience you can't really appeal to many conservatives along any axis, because they're already sold on the "businesses can do whatever they want" paradigm and if you knock down one pillar of that, they'll erect two others in its place. It won't matter to them if the pillars are made of bullshit, and it won't matter if you keep knocking them down, because they've got a seemingly endless supply of weak excuses for corporate misbehavior and authoritarianism. (And, after your discussion, they'll just prop back up all the pillars you knocked down as well.)
So while the point I suspect you were trying to make was "find better ways to appeal to conservatives", what I take away from it is "convince more people to be anti-corporate". Conservatives are a lost cause IMO.
If you can make an argument that supports entrepreneurship without overt hostility to the basis of commerce and capitalism, there's no reason it wouldn't be well-received by people who are actually interested in thinking about these issues and not just repeating what the talking heads say. And there are plenty of conservatives who are that way.
The best way is to show them the inconsistencies in the corporatist party line. It's pretty easy with telco and ISPs. Conservatives typically don't believe government force should be exerted as a shortcut or to favor or disfavor specific enterprises, so why is it fair to give the ISPs free rein when, in many cases, their monopoly is legally enshrined in the municipal code? And so forth.
That's the thing: so much of modern conservatism is just cargo-cult thinking. Lower taxes (esp. wrt the mythical Laffer Curve which is making a comeback now), deregulation, market economies as an intrinsic good as opposed to a tool (which conveniently shields them from criticism). And so on. And that's just on the economics side.
If you operate according to the maxim "that government is best which governs least" the logical conclusion of that is "that government is best which governs not at all", which is basically what we're getting from conservative politics these days.
Conservatives are not anarchists and, generally speaking, can be convinced that government intervention is warranted in many instances, especially when that regulation is needed to keep the market free and fair.
Instead of trying to come to agreement on the solution to this dilemma (which is where the major rift is) I instead focus on agreeing on the perpetrators and the offences - which is an easier thing to come to a consensus on.
The next agreement is that what is most favorable for the exploitative party is that nothing changes and they get to continue doing whatever they have been.
I think that's what needs to happen. The abusers need to be constrained by a fear of a conservative or liberal or other style response to abuse ... any of them rising and being effective. Right now they can bank on everyone arguing over it and continue doing whatever they want.
Conservatives definitely understand that businesses do things for profit.
I think when you can point out when and where this particular profit-only motive can hurt your quality of life, then you're getting somewhere.
I agree that for many issues, this is predetermined for ultra conservatives. There are also some who change sides election to election.
Since this is a new topic, there's a new opportunity to educate about it and reach out to those who might be open to learning a little bit of tech knowledge from you.
> So while the point I suspect you were trying to make was "find better ways to appeal to conservatives", what I take away from it is "convince more people to be anti-corporate".
That's too big a goal. Finding a way to appeal to moderate conservatives on this topic is possible. Convincing more people to be anti-corporate is beyond the scope of educating about net neutrality.
> Conservatives are a lost cause IMO.
That's pretty defeatist. I don't know why you comment or try to stop others from educating about net neutrality. If you're really on the side of open internet and you plan to do nothing, the least you can do is be supportive of people's efforts.
I'm just not sure it's fair to say that one side here is for content agnostic networks and the other is against them, but rather two different approaches to solving the problem where just about everyone agrees with content agnostic networks.
I don't follow. You don't feel there are currently any companies that provide fast access to all websites? Perhaps that's true in some parts of the US, but it isn't true worldwide. That suggests there is another way to go about setting up a competitive environment that yields low cost, high speed internet.
> I'm just not sure it's fair to say that one side here is for content agnostic networks and the other is against them, but rather two different approaches to solving the problem where just about everyone agrees with content agnostic networks.
When your ISP middle man charges special access fees for certain data, that isn't content agnostic. It's specifically giving preference to some content over others based on big corporate $$.
The Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) was created in 1887 to prevent the vertical integration of the freight train industry. Folks like Rockefeller (Standard Oil) owned the oil production and shipping (freight trains). And used their ownership of freight trains to price discriminate against competitors. Standard Oil shipped for free, other's oil had to pay so much money it put them out of business. The ICC was founded to combat this and break up vertical monopolies.
In 1934 the FCC was founded in a similar vein as the ICC. One of its founding missions is to break up/prevent/regulate vertical monopolies.
What the ISPs want is they want to be Rockefeller. They want to own the transit and the oil, only this time the transit is moving at the speed of light, and the oil is packets.
There were a lot of good quotes from the article, but this one struck me as particularly apt. I saw something on tumblr today about how "net neutrality" just doesn't resonate with people - and it's true - I tried striking up conversation about this and some people didn't even know what I was talking about.
Anyone trying to push net neutrality here would have a hard time getting the masses on board once told they'd have to give up "free" social media.
Arguing for a benefit, without clearly identifying the strategic negatives, is intellectually dishonest.
Perhaps, it is with the help of these types of arguments, is how some monopolies and dictatorships are built out.
Here is an example of the discussion analyzing some arguments of the validity of FCC reach:
"This Comment argues that requiring ISPs to filter pirated material is within the FCC's ancillary jurisdiction pursuant to Title I of the Communications Act,'1 but only so long as the targeted activity has a detrimental impact on network activity."
I would argue, that it is the power of consumer choice to obfuscate his/her usage of internet (and, protecting companies that help with that) -- should be the goal.
Rather than, giving FCC the authority to regulate ISPs or consumer usage of the internet, via the ISPs.
I do want to mention that I appreciated some (but not all) analogies used by the author. I liked this one especially.
"Not only did Western Union back Hayes’ campaign financially, it also used its unique position as the information backbone for espionage purposes. "
I also liked the analogy of TV and facebook, I fully agree -- Facebook is working hard on creating a 'walled garden' of information dissemination, and digital identity of every individual. And they would love to cut out the 'amateur hobbyists'.
> With the fate of a major Internet policy in the balance, Pai's proposal may lend momentum to U.S. lawmakers who have proposed replacing the current FCC rules with congressional legislation. Republican members of Congress have said they are ready to craft a bill that enshrines some of the existing regulations permanently into law. But that effort is expected to stall without support from Democrats, such as Sens. Edward J. Markey (Mass.) and Ron Wyden (Ore.) who argue the FCC can and should regulate ISPs more heavily. [1]
In regards to Facebook, Twitter, etc. creating their own modern walled gardens, let them. They'll soon see the demise that others have, 10-20 years ago.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/04/26...
It's not that it's useless, but a fresh start might not be the worst outcome.
The article gave the implication of having a locked-down internet reminiscent of China's -- losing net neutrality doesn't necessarily mean losing this centralized, tracking and surveillance tool for mass marketing and spying.
I would love to hear your definition of 'fresh start'.
Also even if that is it it would solve nothing, [0]
Fresh start may have been the wrong wording, how about fresh approach? Rather than just settling for what we have, begin experimenting with new technological approaches and new architectures in the hope what we have can rework what we have now, drastically. Moving to better more open models.
It's odd how quickly technology moves in other fields except not much has changed with regards to how the world builds and consumes the Internet over the last few decades, this lack of progress might be deliberate as it's in clearly certain groups interest to have it this way.
[1] https://ipfs.io/
Why reinvent the wheel just to get around people who are messing up the old wheel?
Plus, any new network is susceptible to the same sort of lobbying and moneyed interests plaguing the existing internet.
We will need to be forever vigilant in order to maintain our right to have equal access to data. Some have noted that even a constitutional amendment guaranteeing net neutrality rights could be rolled back, since that has precedent under rolling back prohibition.
BOOM! If corrupt politicians are the problem, then they'll be the problem no matter what you do if it threatens the interests of incumbents paying them. So, you have to fight the real battle.
"Lobbying" is a bad word these days. I don't know why. Our vote will kick lobbyists' butts any day. Barney Frank says so and I believe him,
"If the voters have a position, the votes will kick money's rear end any time. I've never met a politician-- I've been in the legislative bodies for 40 years now-- who, choosing between a significant opinion in his or her district and a number of campaign contributors, doesn't go with the district." [1]
Without the vote, politicians are out of their favorite job.
This was posted on HN awhile back, Frank's advice on how to deal with the Trump admin [2]. I think it bears repeating, particularly in the face of this net neutrality debate.
[1] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/461/t...
[2] https://mic.com/articles/167878/barney-frank-heres-how-to-no...
The politicians receive campaign money from these companies. They then do what's in these companies' interests even when it harms their voters they're responsible to. That's corruption. Here's a nice article with plenty of details I just found:
https://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/08/28/15404/how-big-tel...
I get that. I think the problem has more to do with the Citizens United + Speechnow court decisions [1] which decided that corporations are people, and therefore can donate as much as they like to super PACs that are not directly run by the candidate's team (as if that really matters).
You're never going to completely remove money from politics. You don't want it to be an unpaid position, otherwise, only the ultra wealthy would be able to do it. And, you don't want it to be oversubsidized by corporations like it is now as a result of the CU decision.
Regardless, the vote still beats the dollar. It becomes more difficult to get the word out as a smaller player, but we all still have the ability to vote, and that means something.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC#Super_P...
Yeah, problems like that cause it. My solution is a combination of (a) only individual voters can donate money to political campaigns, (b) it's limited to a specific amount, and (c) any law passed on behalf of a donor against the stated interests of the constituency is nullified by default. I also want to attempt to bring back nullification of these corrupt laws in federal courts, up to Supreme Court. It's a risky concept judges don't like but ideal tool to deal with laws passed by corruption. They're already supposed to fight that under checks-and-balances concept.
(c) is already the role of the people. We elect new representatives when we feel the old ones weren't enacting legislation we like.
Judges don't decide whether laws are good or bad. They interpret and apply written law. The moment you allow a judge to determine whether a law is in the interests of the people is the moment you give full power to conservatives who are already chomping at the bit that we have an activist judiciary.
> It's a risky concept judges don't like but ideal tool to deal with laws passed by corruption
Definitely not an ideal tool. Turning judges into politicians who bow to constituents will just make corruption worse. Judges must be independent. I don't know where you got this idea. It's not a good one.
The idea is that a law can't be applied if it's invalid. This already happens in contract law. It can happen with nullification. I'd argue a law passed due to a bribe is invalid and should be nullified by default.
"you give full power to conservatives"
They're already the ones writing these laws. They just convince or pay a handful of people in the states who are unaffordable to the masses. Convincing a judge or a jury of our peers might be easier. Almost all the gains of civil rights and against corrupt companies have started in the courts in past decade or so.
And you would give that power to judges, who are specifically not supposed to obtain their position by popular vote. What you are proposing is the exact reason why we have appointed judges, and not elected ones.
It seems you do not understand the separation of powers of the three branches of US government. I'd suggest reading about that, particularly the judiciary.
> [conservatives are] already the ones writing these laws
Nonsense. Republicans have control of the white house and congress, that's true, but it won't be true forever. And, currently, they can't do anything they please without being concerned that democrats won't do the same in the future when they have a majority.
> Almost all the gains of civil rights and against corrupt companies have started in the courts in past decade or so.
That's true and has been done in accordance with standard procedure. We don't have judges deciding what laws are in the interests of the people. We have judges interpreting the US constitution and laws made thereafter by elected legislators.
What you are suggesting, that judges have been a party to activism, is exactly what conservatives are saying. Nice trolling.
They already have the power to reinterpret or nullify laws. They just usually avoid using it due to history of abuse. I'm not giving them anything. I'm just asking them to block attacks by ISP's in their courts on local, tax-funded investments that local taxpayers approve of. Nullify ideally but dismiss consistently otherwise.
"Nonsense. Republicans have control of the white house and congress, that's true"
We're talking about bills restricting ability to build tax-funded Internet infrastructure. They're mostly coming from Republicans and capitalists controlling state legislatures. They're enforced in conservative areas (esp rural). You don't need a conservative judge and jury to get conservative politics enforced in areas that vote conservative. Nullifying something even the voters didn't want is another issue.
"We don't have judges deciding what laws are in the interests of the people. We have judges interpreting the US constitution and laws made thereafter by elected legislators."
The laws are supposed to be made in service of the people. If they're not, they're to be countered. That's why courts can reinterpret or nullify law in the first place. The people have been clear when surveyed that they want faster speed, more reliability, and better service than what they're getting. Laws paid for with bribery are preventing it. The judges don't have to "decide what laws are in the interest of the people" to know a law bought by a corporation eliminating its competition and causing problems for the people isn't in the interest of the people. The people rarely ask for politicians to accept bribes and let corporations run the government. The Constitution doesn't even recognize the existence of a corporation on top of it. So, in short, we're nullifying a law that's bought by corporations, runs counter to openly stated interest of many to most citizens, hurts them benefiting the corporation, and the corporation files lawsuits to intimidate local governments. That's beyond time for courts to take action against the corporation and that law. Nullification is the nice way to do it vs what the people who wrote the Constitution did in similar situation.
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of judges.
Judges don't nullify laws that don't satisfy people. They can strike down a law as unconstitutional
> That's why courts can reinterpret or nullify law in the first place
That's completely untrue. They cannot reinterpret law according to the population's wishes.
What you are saying is straight out of an alt-right playbook.
I learned it from liberals talking about fugitive slaves and such originally. Then states nullifying federal law. Past that, I don't have a law degree so sure I might misunderstand some of it. I only intend to attempt it as one of the few, remaining strategies that are minimally disruptive.
Roll back to the nineties, when most of the traffic was made of text, and then a Cuban network is good enough.
But of course, you have to say goodbye to Netflix and Youtube. That's not a bad thing. When I was a student in the nineties, I decided I wouldn't have a TV or a computer in my room, because those where too distracting for me. So I ended up reading books and listening to radio.
The radio is a wonderful thing. It doesn't monopolize your primary sense. Making content doesn't require as much resources as for the TV. They don't need makeup. They don't need lighting. As a result they can focus more on the meaningful content. They just can't distract people with spectacular or pretty images anyway (even ads are better, because it's kind of difficult to sell stuff with boobs here).
But don't hope too much. People won't go back in the nineties. YouTube and Facebook not being available is a no-go for them. Net neutrality and openness will be undone piece by piece over time. But if you're OK with going back to the BBS era (or the too short Gopher era), the bandwidth you'd use would be so tiny compared to the rest that the Internet giants won't care about you.
Media is what you make it. Parents once viewed radio and books as distractions too. Fact is, the internet is loaded with free, useful educational content. The availability of that to anyone who has an internet connection is threatened by rolling back net neutrality.
https://www.fcc.gov/document/chairman-pai-speech-future-inte...
It's a disappointment after Wheeler, but entirely expected, to see Pai fighting against net neutrality. I suggest reading the response by commissioners Clyburn and FTC commissioner McSweeny:
https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-cmmr-clyburn-ftc-cmmr-mcswe...
One can dream...
Today, with net neutrality, the author can choose to publish on Medium, where some publishers and readers congregate for particular types of content, and anyone on the Internet who wants to read Medium can, without having to buy into a price-discriminated tier to escape beyond the home-turf vertical.
In the future, will you be able to say the same?
"Without having to buy X" just means you've yet learned nothing of the past. "Without having to buy" is just internet.org and (potentially, ultimately) a good tagline for trial subscriptions of zero rated content.
It's not the money (or "free" gratis) that matters, it's the control (or "free" libre).
People continuing to fundamentally not understand the rationale of controlling your own tech will be the single biggest contributor to "efforts to save the internet" failing, if you ask me.
Equal access to pipes regardless of the nature of transmitted content -- net neutrality, or as you phrase, the libre aspect is a necessary prerequisite for mass-market and indie content to both have a chance to thrive -- and not just your home ISP's preferred partners.
I get what you're saying, but both of them matter: the point is to get the same playing field, and not sidestep it with either a lower or higher price -- either zero-rating, or by charging more for a broader range of access.
Why should the internet not be this way too? If the answer is because its a monopoly I would have to disagree.
Like TWC/Spectrum secretly intentionally congesting Netflix, then telling customers that upgrading to a faster plan will fix it (which it won't, because the customer's plan wasn't the bottleneck). Then TWC/Spectrum secretly stopped congesting Netflix after Netflix secretly paid them.
Like AT&T/Verizon charging content providers to bypass caps, then probably secretly charging their own content provider much less than they charge other companies.
In theory the FCC's "not my problem" policy may allow these cases to be solved by the FTC, but first the FTC would have to somehow find out that this stuff is going on.
I am willing to bet that if someone offered an internet package that included full speeds for Facebook, Wikipedia, and 30 YouTube videos for $5 /mo, and then 20% speed for everything else, it'd do really well.
Interestingly, this is a really a question about keeping the internet a free market. Just as a local boutique retailer would not be happy about the shopping center charging customers $1 per store they entered, small publishers, as usual, will be the people harmed by a non-neutral internet.
I'm sure the big players are enthralled by the idea that their competitors will soon have an even harder time accessing alternatives, as if it wasn't difficult enough with a rabid copyright regime and restrictive network access. IMO, the only reason tech incumbents oppose net non-neutrality is because they're worried that Comcast will use it as a kludge to stymie the growth of their platforms as media platforms (which Comcast et al are desperate to do, because cordcutting is eviscerating the cable industry).
It's too bad that the mainstream conservative party in the US has interpreted "free markets" and "competition" to mean making the startup environment extremely difficult for the little guy.
Because you already do?
You want more speed and bandwidth, pay for it. You want yet more, take a look at corporate plans.
The internet is a meta creation on top of the bandwidth. It's the conversation you have over the telephone.
The ISPS Are asking to double dip. They want to charge based not on network usage and speed subscription. They want to charge based on what you say and whose you listen to.
Some communities are already banding together to start their own ISPs. I'm not familiar with how they deal with the "last mile" infrastructure challenge. But if it only took a big investment up front then that begs the question why did Google Fiber fail? Lack of community support?
If net neutrality was as valuable to us as we make it out to be, then what would stop local grassroots efforts from installing their own community-based ISPs in response to losing it?
Also, living overseas in Taiwan I get 50+ Mbps down/5 up for $4/month on a landline (cable), paid a year in advance, and in SE Asia you can get 3g Sims giving 5gb data for $10. Here I pay $6 for 1gb 3g per month, prepaid.
Granted, Taiwan is much more urbanized so costs for this go down, but it begs the question what sort of stranglehold ISPs hold over urban America. Perhaps urban America is subsidizing rural America, and Google didn't want to play that game to its finish. Just a wild guess. Anyway, much too soon to call that product a failure, particularly since it is still active.
High meatspace costs (digging, permits), obstruction of easements by incumbents (like pole access [1][2]), and in 19 states, state laws [3], are some of the barriers to municipal broadband efforts in the US.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/08/att-e... [2] https://www.wired.com/2016/09/utility-poles-important-future... [3] https://muninetworks.org/communitymap
Google Fiber failed because Google doesn't care about fiber; they care about creating competition for ISPs to ensure continued access to its services. They realized they don't need fiber for that-5G technologies will be good enough to create competition for ISPs but can be deployed far more cheaply.
In many localities, they can't, because laws and regulations have been put in place giving monopoly access to one of the big ISPs.
This is because the companies who own all the last mile networks (mostly former state monopolies,) are legally compelled to wholesale that last mile access.
We should push for this in high density areas of the US. Not just beg a federal agency not to roll back net neutrality, which, under Trump, they may be able to do without losing much popularity.
As the US govt. didn't own AT&T, not the Baby Bells, nor today's Verizon & AT&T, the situation is a bit different.
The irony that the US has a much worse situation because there is so much less competition (despite it being the home of capatalism).
In terms of speed I know Ireland (where I am,) and the UK can both get you VDSL2+ service (so like up to 80Mb) on copper pair from numerous suppliers. One service slow access to netflix? Go to another.
Yup, pretty interesting stuff. In some ways we're more free; in others, more restricted.
Perhaps one should make a tl;dr out of this?
edit: seriously though, read the article... it's not long
Start here: "How to Read a Paper" ~ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14228912
Is it that hard to read the title and the first 100 words. In papers this is usually the abstract. If you can't find the meaning inside the first one hundred or so words it is waffle and may not be worth reading.
Here is a hint. Network neutrality, enshrined in law, is under attack by large ISP companies for control and profit. There are precedents in our technology history. Tech companies are not run by benevolent skivvied, sandal wearing hippies, who hang around the Dalai Lama in their spare time to be enlightened. If you disagree with my editorialising, that's what happens if you ask someone else to re-interpret the story. Read the entire article instead.