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Battle for the Internet

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Can someone please respond to the actual pro-repeal arguments (in a non-John-Oliver-smug way)? Everyone is focusing on "woe is the unfree internet!" which seems like a spoonfed, naive response with no content. And just having Google et. al. on one side isn't enough of a reason, given their motivations. The given reasons for the current FCC's actions appear to be:

1. The Title II Regs were designed during the Great Depression to address Ma Bell and don't match the internet now.

2. The FCC isn't the right vehicle for addressing anti-competitive behavior in this case; the FTC would be better.

3. The internet didn't need fixing in 2010 when the regs were passed.

> Can someone please respond to the actual pro-repeal arguments

Assume for a moment that we had effective competition for ISPs, and almost everyone in the country could select among three or more ISPs. In a world that looked like that, restricting how ISPs can structure their networks is both unnecessary and potentially harmful, given the historical precedents of law tending to encode outdated assumptions about technology. (As a random example, some proposed versions of Network Neutrality rules I've seen would also stop CDNs from handing ISPs a box full of content or arranging fast links to their caching servers.) If we had effective competition for ISPs, any ISP engaging in any of the terrible behaviors NN advocates are genuinely concerned about would find themselves with an abrupt loss of customers.

The main problem is that we don't have effective competition for ISPs; many people have only one choice, or two choices where one is also incredibly terrible for other reasons.

Personally, I'd like to see some focus on regulations to break ISP monopolies, and in particular to ensure that there's an independent source of fiber to everyone's door, with a wide selection of ISPs willing to light up that fiber. But until we have that, we need Network Neutrality to stop abuses by the current ISP monopolies.

This is absolutely the best answer. Competition would fix this more effectively than net neutrality regs, but competition in ISPs is typically blocked by state-enforced monopoly laws or by the technical and economic challenge of deploying an ISP.

Wired ISPs are what is often termed a natural monopoly.

One solution would be to open up a lot more wireless spectrum to ISP use and license it to many upstarts. This would allow wireless alternatives to last-mile wired connectivity such as what would amount to neighborhood-scale WiFi. That would dramatically reduce cost of entry for the ISP business.

Until or unless we can find a way to open the ISP business to a lot more competition, net neutrality regulations are absolutely essential to preserve the Internet as a medium for open innovation.

> natural monopoly

I don't think so. Here in Germany I can choose my provider for power and natural gas provider freely although there is only one line for each to my house. For the last mile, we have mandatory must-route rules which work quite well.

You're agreeing with the parent. There is only line line for each to your house, meaning, whatever entity owns and maintains that line is a natural monopoly. The mandatory must-route rules are what bring competition back into the picture. That is the system I think we would all prefer ... except, of course, Comcast and AT&T.

Agitating for the net neutrality rules to be preserved is what we do because we don't think we have the political power to get real competition like you have.

Wireless would help, but not very much. You can get a whole lot more bandwidth through a fiber network than you can through air, because you can double your bandwidth by laying another fiber next to the first - or put in 20 more fibers, or a thousand. Those don't interfere with each other, whereas free space radiators do.

Wireless could help with the literal last mile. The cost of deploying broadband becomes exponentially higher as you near the edge due to the sheer number of links.

Hundreds of megabits with one mile range is easy now and is faster than many cable plans. Gigabit is on the horizon and probably achievable within 5-10 years, especially with enough spectrum. The problem is that current available bands are a poor choice for this. Some bands dedicated to last mile ISP service that have better range and less interference would really help.

Natural monopoly? In what way does that make sense. Where google put down fiber people suddenly had one more choice. When Chattanooga put down fiber people suddenly had one more choice. In areas with multiple cable ISPs, multiple companies are laying their lines down. That's it, there is no natural monopoly, there are only monopolies granted by governments.

Google has deemed Fiber a failed experiment. It's great for consumers that got it, but if not even a corporation with a giant war chest and the right kind of incentives can make it happen on a scale that goes further than selected neighborhoods in a few cities, then it's clearly not suitable as a model for the rest of the country.

Chattanooga is one of very few cities. Personally, I think it's a great model, because crucial infrastructure that needs to be shared among competitors is exactly the kind of investment that should be built and owned by taxpayers, i.e. governments or their arms-length subsidiaries. It's good for everyone except Comcast & Co. who want their overcharged rent extraction to continue forever, and call it a free market.

Now imagine what kind of outrage it would be if people said, you know, let's make a one-time investment on a country-wide scale financed with some extra taxes so that we can get reasonable broadband prices for everyone for the indefinite future and invest in society instead of guaranteeing the profit margins of local monopolists.

You're right in that the ISP monopolies are granted by governments - on the one hand, by having due process in place to make sure people and companies can't just dig up streets or add new cables whenever they just feel like it (which would be a mess, and America had it before, and it wasn't pretty), and on the other hand, by resigning to inaction to do the right thing, which is to provide important infrastructure without respect for currently rent-seeking incumbents who already made more than good on their original investments. People always complain about the former, when the sensible way to solve this issue is to de-stigmatize the latter.

Preserving the gains we've made with telecommunications is critical for our future as a civilization, but this still bothers me. The lobbying efforts by ISPs will keep it a monopoly, and the best we can expect is for the government to sanction that monopoly?

Alongside competition you also need a level of transparency. The consumer needs to be able to get proper information about what they are buying. There's laws around that already, but they often need to be accompanied by regulations that define what that means for a particular industry (I'm being a bit vague here because I'm not American, so I don't know the precise issues in the US).

Before Joan Citizen signs up for on a 24 month contract with Super-Cheap-ISP, she needs to know that they throttle Netflix (because that way they keep their bandwidth requirements down and their prices low). That might be exactly the tradeoff she wants, but she needs to be able make an informed decision.

Or that there will be extra charges midway through the contract. And the charges have no description besides "fees and services."

But where are the people actually advocating for more competition amongst ISPs? Google Fiber couldn't even break into the market in silicon valley and nobody seems to care. Instead people seem to have been sold on the impression that we can regulate our way into better service, which is ridiculous.

Until we actually do something about getting last mile competition, last mile connectivity will continue to stagnate and we will continue playing these inane cat and mouse games with what an ISP should be allowed to do with their networks.

> But until we have that, we need Network Neutrality

"We have X, which is bad, so we need Y to counteract X, though Y is also bad" is how these things proliferate. Net Neutrality is - as you state above - a lipstick on a pig to hide the fact that ISPs are granted local monopolies in the US.

I'm not an expert on net neutrality, but just looking at your claims, the obvious rebuttals are:

> 1. The Title II Regs were designed during the Great Depression to address Ma Bell and don't match the internet now.

The point in time and original intent that something was created for has little bearing on its current suitability. Hammers with handles were invented in the Stone Age to break wood and stones. They still work just fine for putting in nails today.

If the Title II Regs effectively accomplish the high level goals of network neutrality, then it's irrelevant what original goals it had.

> 2. The FCC isn't the right vehicle for addressing anti-competitive behavior in this case; the FTC would be better.

The perfect is the enemy of the good. Is there any ongoing plan to have the FTC regulate this? Who is driving that? Is the argument that if the FTC does not do this, then having the FCC do it is worse than doing nothing?

Politics is always a game of compromise and incremental improvement. There are no perfect laws.

> 3. The internet didn't need fixing in 2010 when the regs were passed.

I'm not sure what this is even claiming. Is the idea that the law was passed to early so should be repealed now? We started agreeing to nonproliferation treaties before we had multi-state nuclear wars. Should we have waited until after that before doing those?

Isn't prevention better than cure?

Re #3: the "new" laws passed in 2010 maintained the FCC's responsibility to enforce neutrality in the face of a court decision that would have otherwise have revoked it. The responsibility existed before the 2010 laws.

If it wasn't broke in 2010, keeping the "new" laws on the books constitutes "not fixing it".

> Politics is always a game of compromise and incremental improvement. There are no perfect laws.

Amen.

> Isn't prevention better than cure?

Agreed. Technology moves way too fast, by the time we get a cure to the problem, businesses will have moved on to a new way to screw everyone.

The problems we should prevent aren't exactly rocket science to figure out.

>Isn't prevention better than cure?

No. There is very rarely an example of a regulation being passed in the fast moving field of technology that has no poor side effects. Unless there is a glaring problem, it is reckless to pass regulations for what-if scenarios.

> Isn't prevention better than cure?

I can easily think of opposition rebuttals to this:

1. It's a solution in search of a problem.

2. It's a premature optimization.

3. The cure could be worse than the disease.

etc...

Those aren't rebuttals, they're platitudes.

> premature optimization

Yes. I feel like Net Neutrality is trying to solve a mostly hypothetical issue.

> The Title II Regs were designed during the Great Depression to address Ma Bell and don't match the internet now.

This is simply false. The regulations under Title II that would apply to broadband were designed by the FCC in a short period of time leading up to the reclassification order, and are a further evolution of boradband policies that have come out of the FCC in case-by-case actions and earlier orders under Title I since the late 00s.

The statutory authority on which those regs are based is earlier (but newer than Title I), but the whole reason the statute grants the FCC fairly broad regulatory authority within specified parameters (for both Title I and Title II, with different parameters) rather than specifying detailed treatment is to allow the details to be adapted to changing market conditions and technology landscape.

> The FCC isn't the right vehicle for addressing anti-competitive behavior in this case; the FTC would be better.

Neutrality opponents also oppose FTC regulation, and some of them (notably AT&T) won a Ninth Circuit ruling prohibiting the FTC from regulating common carriers like telcos even when performing non-common-carrier functions.

> 3. The internet didn't need fixing in 2010 when the regs were passed.

The regs passed in 2010 were different than the ones being discussed, and in any case the internet did need fixing then; monopoly ISPs blocking of particular protocols and applications was a thing that was happening then, and the FCC attempt to deal with that through case-by-case action without general regs was stopped by the courts.

Could someone make a pro-repeal argument that doesn't boil down to caring more about which bureaucrat enforces the rules than the rules themselves?

Seriously, the whole FTC vs FCC thing is deeply confusing to me. I mean, WTF? I've never seen the public care so much about a battle over jurisdiction between two federal agencies. For this reason, I suspect it's all a bullshit red herring tactic -- the FCC is stripped of power to enforce net neutrality because "the FTC should do it", but then FTC's hands are also tied. Suddenly you can deregulate without actually making a substantive argument for deregulation.

I'll jump in and take the hate.

Reddit is framing the issue like this: Net neutrality ensures that the free market—not big cable—picks the winners and losers

This seems like double-think to me. The net neutrality regulations actually prevent me from negotiating an agreement that models my priorities. It forces me to accept everything one-size-fits-all, explicitly preventing a differentiated market from developing in the commodity of bandwidth.

There are a couple of examples where I think this is relevant.

1) I imagine a hospital that performs surgery via telepresence. This seems a pretty clear area where I would really want the opportunity to pay more, to ensure that the connection between the surgeon and his robot never even suffers the slightest amount of jitter. This is life-and-death, and I can't see why people would object to a right to pay more for higher-priority for this traffic.

2) A few years ago I recall reading about a cell phone provider who wanted to provide a very basic service level that would allow free use of Facebook and a couple of other apps, but going outside of that narrow box would cost much more. Providing to poor people a way that they can participate in the online community seems like a positive, even if what they get is rather hobbled. The idea that we would say to them, "no, you're not allowed to save your money by buying a lower level of service; if you can't afford the whole enchilada, you can't have anything" seems awfully unfair.

> This seems like double-think to me. The net neutrality regulations actually prevent me from negotiating an agreement that models my priorities. It forces me to accept everything one-size-fits-all, explicitly preventing a differentiated market from developing in the commodity of bandwidth.

There are downstream effects on consumers and websites which lead to the same problem eating away at our democracy: the people with money get disproportionate representation.

#2: This is a slippery slope that prevents the market from adjusting to provide a cheaper/lower-quality service. If people cannot pay $5/m for internet access, the answer isn't to give them access to a monopolized walled garden that extracts value from their mere presence - the answer is to offer a lower level of service for $1/m.

#1: Same as above. The ISP and hospital are absolutely free to pay for higher qualities of service. This isn't new - 10 years ago I could buy business-level DSL with stable latency.

I think you're confusing tiered access to the internet versus tiered access to specific websites.

Assuming you have 10mbit internet access for $N/month:

* Paying +$20/m for 100mbit internet: OK

* Paying +$20/m for 100mbit access to "Top 100 websites": Not OK

* Receiving 10mbit access to Youtube and 1mbit access to Vimeo: Not OK (neither is receiving 100mbit youtube/10mbit vimeo)

1) I imagine a hospital that performs surgery via telepresence. This seems a pretty clear area where I would really want the opportunity to pay more, to ensure that the connection between the surgeon and his robot never even suffers the slightest amount of jitter. This is life-and-death, and I can't see why people would object to a right to pay more for higher-priority for this traffic.

This is false. Net neutrality doesn't prevent the provisioning and purchase of high QoS connections. More specifically, the relevant position of net neutrality is that a content provider cannot collude with an internet service provider to pay for blanket privilege of their connections over other connections.

Example: If User A and User B are both paying subscribers to BIGISP, at the same service level, it's downright insane that User B's traffic should be degraded over User A's, just because User A is streaming Netflix (who has a paying deal with BIGISP). Another viewpoint: allowing this sort of collusion means that small entrants in the content provider space will have a much harder time making inroads because they simply lack the capital to make these sort of deals. Probably THE greatest innovations of the internet is that it has reduced the marginal cost of distribution of many kinds of media and services to near-zero. So now we want to throw that all away...? For what, exactly? That's the question that needs a strong, well-reasoned answer.

Your #1 is about QoS, not net neutrality. You want to prioritize the remote surgery protocol above all others...net neutrality allows that. If, instead of protocol, you prioritize by source/destination, how can you ensure that the remote surgery protocol isn't disrupted by the transmission of high-resolution X-ray scans between the two hospitals? We already allow (and even encourage) ISPs to prioritize real-time protocols above those that aren't. VoIP is the oft-cited example because late packets are useless packets. Remote surgery can be handled the same way.

Would you really want your hospital to prioritize remote surgery from one hospital over another? When patients are choosing their remote surgery doctor, do you want them to have to worry about finding one at the top-priority hospital instead of one at a lower priority? What if the surgery is the result of an emergency and the doctor is on vacation? By using protocol as the prioritization instead of source/destination, that doctor can find a local hospital from which to perform the operation and doesn't have to worry about having a lower priority during the surgery.

You're argument is absolutely sound: where possible, producers should be able to differentiate products to better suit the consumer demand. However, you overlook the unfortunate fact that there are signicant barriers to entry for ISPs, which means that it is effectively impossible for new producers with the current ones such as AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner, etc. What results is an oligopoly which has significant anti-trust issues and largely causes suboptimal results for the consumer (consider the absurdly high prices Americans pay for shitty Internet service). Open the doors to a new marketplace of service for these ISPs and all hell will break loose. Add to this the political leanings of these companies and it's hard to imagine a worse outcome.

> 1) I imagine a hospital that performs surgery via telepresence. This seems a pretty clear area where I would really want the opportunity to pay more, to ensure that the connection between the surgeon and his robot never even suffers the slightest amount of jitter. This is life-and-death, and I can't see why people would object to a right to pay more for higher-priority for this traffic.

Just how would that work across multiple ISPs? The application begs for a circuit.

For what it's worth, it prevents you from negotiating an agreement that you were not going to win anyways. ISPs are an oligopoly in their present state. If they weren't, then it might make sense to deregulate, but since they are, it doesn't.

(1) No, this is fundamentally misunderstanding what happens when monopolistic assholes get to interact with people who are making life-or-death decisions. In those cases the monopolistic assholes always overcharge the crap out of the person who wants, more than to have more money, to be alive. You know how we keep getting news reports about why healthcare costs are higher in the US than anywhere else and it's a problem? It's invariably because there's monopolistic assholes involved -- and congrats, they just got higher due to abandoning net neutrality rules which prevent this from even being a thing.

(2) That cell phone provider was probably lying their pants off to you about the marginal cost of going from "you can use a couple apps" to "you can request the whole internet, but your bandwidth will be limited." It's very likely to be negative; you'd seem to have to build out more infrastructure to limit peoples' traffic destinations than you'd do to limit their bandwidth. (Think of the fact that Facebook is all-HTTPS these days, for example, so it's not like you're sniffing those packets without MITMing the whole connection.)

To address your earlier point, it's not really double-think. The point is, in the presence of the oligopoly the ISPs are basically Internet countries, with a strange but unelected oligarchic government at the top. We have somewhat more freedom than most to emigrate, but that's about the biggest difference. Net neutrality is an externally imposed free-trade deal among all of them. They are expressing that no, they would instead really like to charge taxes and inspect imports like makeshift customs officers, at their own anti-transparent discretion. They don't want the free-trade deal. It is indeed a valid response to say "well, tough, you're going to have this free-trade deal because the benefits of free trade for everyone in terms of innovation and public good outweigh the benefits those taxes on imports and exports will bring to your shareholders."

To quickly address this:

For number one: net neutrality doesn't stop that from happening. You can pay more for a quality of service connection. Net neutrality doesn't regulate quality of service. It's the idea that what traffic goes over those pipes should not in any way be denied from going over those pipes, essentially. It's so that Facebook for instance can't pay ISPs to ban all Mastodan traffic or effectively filter it from showing up on say a search for social networks. It's so that the ISPs can't favor one service over another so they can extract fees from competitors.

Has nothing at all to do with quality of service Of a connection.

2) I don't believe those plans were being floated in the United Statss but developing nations. How does policy in this area they would be implemented in West Africa or India have anything to do with net neutrality in the United States

On 2) this happens already in some places, Facebook.0 is that and in some countries it is free for mobile users on particular carriers.

There has been significant fights against it in other countries, I believe India specifically. The reasons are clear as to why if you think about it a bit.

Putting aside how you feel about Facebook, how does the next Facebook happen in these countries? How are you meant to compete against free if you are trying to bring up a new service? Even if your service is better in every way you just don't stand a chance.

If you believe value is created by innovation, then you need to enforce that the opportunity is the same for everyone, otherwise you are creating an environment where new things just can't bubble up.

This doesn't even get into the side of things that the "internet" then becomes what Facebook wants it to..

1) I imagine a hospital that performs surgery via telepresence

Allow for businesses to apply for exemptions to the rule, specifically for one endpoint to another endpoint.

If the number of exemptions gets to be unwieldy, then perhaps it would indicate it's time to revisit the law. Until then, there's been plenty of proof of, what I believe to be, abuse.

2) cell phone provider who wanted to provide a very basic service level that would allow free use of Facebook and a couple of other apps, but going outside of that narrow box would cost much more.

Laudable, for the moment, but Facebook "and a couple of other apps" can easily be abused; they're for-profit companies rather than for-public services. If the company wants to provide free bandwidth, I don't think it's right or fair to limit to whatever sites they choose.

I totally agree but the rub is that I don't understand the FCC's previous action or the implications of the latest foray by Congress. Most of what I read or hear has that "john oliverish" smugness and non-specificity that a previous poster mentioned and you can't really learn anything from that unless ignorance is bliss to someone.

I'll be seriously disappointed though if I end up having to pay for Internet like we do for Cable channel packages today. I'll be seething with rage most likely. So if Net Neutrality keeps that at bay, and still allows ISP's to profit from the top 100 bandwidth consuming websites, I'll be happy. Like many others though, I have little actual clue as to what is going on due FUD, political natures, grandstanding, and the ignorance of the media themselves.

> Net neutrality ensures that the free market—not big cable—picks the winners and losers

There isn't a free market. Near-zero interest rates have flooded the Valley with VC capital in an incredibly inefficient arrangement, and it's distorted the market. The market is thus dominated by a few grotesquely large conglomerates that stifle competition. "Net neutrality" does nothing to restore that competition and provide an actually free market. If net neutrality really provided advantages to smaller Internet players, then why are all the large conglomerates backing it to the hilt? This is a fight between the big cable providers and the big Silicon Valley firms -- Facebook, Google, Netflix. A large cartel is what wins either side of this fight, not the "free market."

> surgery via telepresence

A point to point connection with guaranteed latency the entire way doesn't sound like a connection to the internet to me.

> This is life-and-death, and I can't see why people would object to a right to pay more for higher-priority for this traffic.

Ah yes, imagine the free-market possibilities where your ISP can now bill your insurance provider $10,000 per procedure to ensure the ultrafast, jitter-free connection while the telemedic is operating on you.

For (1), net neutrality laws wouldn't stop you from getting a high-quality connection, they would be what stops your ISP from saying, "You can purchase a low-latency, low-jitter connection for $300/month. Wait, you want to use it for surgery? I meant $3,000/month."

"I imagine a hospital that performs surgery via telepresence. This seems a pretty clear area where I would really want the opportunity to pay more, to ensure that the connection between the surgeon and his robot never even suffers the slightest amount of jitter."

This is a common objection, but it's entirely irrelevant to net neutrality (and in fact, net neutrality actually helps here).

Even small hospitals (certainly ones which can afford a robosurgeon) already pay for dedicated Internet connections (often redundant across two or more different providers) to avoid this type of problem. Such connections have guaranteed minimum performance characteristics and are not subject to any kind of throttling on the ISP's part. This is true of most businesses with physical locations.

Net neutrality is more about preventing the selective throttling of services as they come across non-dedicated (e.g. residential) Internet connections. This is where ISPs typically engage in such selective throttling, since they tend to sell maximum instead of minimum performance characteristics (for example: a residential plan might include "up to" 15 Mbps at any given time, while a commercial plan might instead include "at least" 5 Mbps at all times). That maximum is shared between all other residential customers in a given geographic area (e.g. a neighborhood), so selective throttling is employed as a way to keep up the illusion that each residence has its own high-speed Internet.

Put simply: net neutrality does not actually negatively impact businesses (and especially not hospitals), since their Internet plans are not subject to selective throttling. Ensuring that you have enough bandwidth to run your telepresence robot without jitter (beyond making sure that you've purchased a plan with the right bandwidth minimums) is the responsibility of the hospital's own network administrator or equivalent (namely: by prioritizing the robosurgeon's traffic over other less-critical traffic).

Net neutrality does not prevent anyone from choosing to pay for more bandwidth. It only prevents ISPs from being the ones to decide how users allocate the bandwidth for which they pay. Thus, net neutrality would benefit the hospital in this case, since the hospital can decide for itself which traffic should be prioritized within the constraints of its available Internet bandwidth.

"cell phone provider who wanted to provide a very basic service level that would allow free use of Facebook and a couple of other apps"

The usual problem is when a provider wants to offer Facebook specifically (which is anticompetitive, since it gives Facebook an unfair advantage over, say, Twitter or reddit).

The specific case of which I'm aware was when Facebook itself wanted to offer the sort of plan you're describing, with (unsurprisingly) Facebook being the free site, all under the banner of "but think of the poor people!". If that's not monopolistic, I don't know what is.

The much better approach - if one really does actually care about poor people (I've yet to be convinced that any ISP attempting to justify such practices is actually honest about its motivations here) - would be to just provide slow-speed Internet connections with some high-speed exceptions for specific types of traffic (like audio/video). This is how T-Mobile's non-unlimited plans work, and while net neutrality purists usually object to it, I personally see no problem with it as long as all audio/video providers are treated freely and equally.

> Seriously, the whole FTC vs FCC thing is deeply confusing to me.

It's also deeply disingenuous, as the anti-neutrality camp doesn't want the FTC to actually act for neutrality, either, and some of the people pushing it also have been in favor the lawsuit (focussed on FTC internet privacy regulations) which (successfully through the Ninth Circuit panel Decision, though it's up for en banco review) resulted in the ruling that the FTC can't regulate many ISP (those that are also Title II common carriers in at other aspect of their business, such as traditional telcos), whether or not the function the FTC is regulating is one for which they are a common carrier.

I've read that the FTC vs. FCC distinction is important because the FTC has a strong history of trustbusting, e.g. AT&T in 1984. Your comment is an interesting political ramification that certainly weakens the above argument.

> Could someone make a pro-repeal argument that doesn't boil down to caring more about which bureaucrat enforces the rules than the rules themselves?

If you believe there's capacity for new entrants to the ISP space, e.g. from satellites [1], then the incumbents' present-day margins are a short-term cost for that long-term gain. If you believe the ISP field is more or less locked, then all the innovation will happen downstream. It would thus make sense to restrict the ISPs' margins in favor of Google, Facebook et al.

I'm in that useless place where I see good points on both sides. ISPs need to be able to make money to encourage new entrants. But they shouldn't be able to do so in a way that discourages new entrants downstream. Net neutrality appears to strike that balance. Turning ISPs into utilities does not.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musks-next-mission-interne...

I think history shows that the distinction is important; some agencies are well-adapted to handling these issues, while others are not. I'm still undecided, but I've read that the FCC's action in 2010 was a political power grab by friends of the administration (e.g. Google). On the other hand, the FTC has a strong history of trust-busting, e.g. AT&T in 1984, making it the stronger contender for actually handling net neutrality in essence. Whether or not that's true (see other comments), I'm not sure.

> Could someone make a pro-repeal argument that doesn't boil down to caring more about which bureaucrat enforces the rules than the rules themselves?

Net neutrality is the idea that there should be a specific QoS setting required by law. This locks in something that seems sensible based on current protocol usage.

How is traffic shaping used by ISPs? It's used to allow more value to be delivered to customers using the same size pipe. It's used to gracefully degrade some less obvious aspects of the internet in favor of keeping others uninterrupted.

What do ISPs actually do? Sellers of residential bandwidth are in a business that is actually much more like finance than like a typical technology business. ISPs invest in bandwidth contracts and then they arbitrage the bandwidth based on actual demand.

If an ISP expects demand for bandwidth to be strong for 5 years, it may negotiate a 5 year contract with its upstream provider. Risk is being taken, and profits are made when the ISP can re-sell bandwidth for a profit. The service being provided is that the ISP removes the need for consumers to make long-term projections about bandwidth, and removes the need for consumers to buy more bandwidth than they actually need.

Now think a bit more precisely about what the actual service an ISP provides is. It's an acceptable connection to the hosts that customers wish to access. If the ISP de-prioritizes youtube.com a bit so that its own VOIP offering can remain crystal clear during heavy usage, that should be completely up to the ISP.

If consumers don't appreciate 10ms more lag when accessing youtube, or similar minor degradations, they can switch to another ISP.

Now, why does Google support net neutrality? Google wishes to prevent ISPs from offering improved quality services for the "short head" of most popular content. Imagine if you could get ad-free, instant 4K streaming of the top 10000 videos on youtube directly from your ISP. This is where Google makes most of its money from youtube. Google can build a CDN near you, but it can't prioritize the last mile traffic shaping experience in a way that prevents ISPs from exploring business models like the one I've just described.

Google can't prevent it without laws like net neutrality, that is. Google wishes to lock in (by law) QoS that supports its own business model. What happens when you load a typical website? Lots of pixel traffic flies back and forth to Google/Doubleclick and market price ads are sold and delivered before you realize what happened. Google's massive profit infrastructure depends on local ISPs sticking only to bandwidth arbitrage.

In effect, net neutrality is a regulation very similar to financial regulations. It defines the characteristics of a residential bandwidth circuit, preventing ISPs from defining it their own way. Google wants this because the alternatives threaten Google's cash cow.

The problem is, many ISPs invested heavily in last mile buildout with the expectation that they could compete with Google by offering additional value delivered based on locality. All content providers are in the business of creating bits which must be carried across space, and there are some kinds of content where local offers a big advantage. Many of these are yet to be discovered, as local circuit quality has been fairly poor since the origin of the internet. Net neutrality makes it far less likely that any of these will be explored.

Net Neutrality is the perfect propaganda name. There is no need for net neutrality because ISPs want to make customers happy, and if they fail to do so, another ISP will.

Imagine if we'd had net neutrality in the origin of the internet, ISPs today would be forced to allocate significant priority to Gopher and FTP traffic.

The last thing the internet needs is non-technical people creating regulation for it. I'm deeply disappointed that Google has let its own corporate interest drive its propaganda campaign for net neutrality. I have much more positive sentiment for Google than I do for Comcast, but I want Comcast to have a shot at doing something innovative.

"Net neutrality is the idea that there should be a specific QoS setting required by law."

That's not correct. Net neutrality is the idea that the ISP should not be enforcing QoS settings. Instead, that should be left to each customer to decide for one's own allocated bandwidth.

The fact that ISPs choose to oversell their residential bandwidth is the ISPs' problem alone. Punishing the customer (or third parties which which the customer does business) for the ISP's poor business decisions is nonsensical.

"If the ISP de-prioritizes youtube.com a bit so that its own VOIP offering can remain crystal clear during heavy usage, that should be completely up to the ISP."

No, it absolutely should not. The customer - and the customer alone - is the one who ought to decide how said customer's bandwidth is allocated.

"There is no need for net neutrality because ISPs want to make customers happy, and if they fail to do so, another ISP will."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

No.

ISPs - especially in the United States - couldn't care less if the customer is happy. The customer will pay no matter what, because the customer has very few (if any) choices.

"The last thing the internet needs is non-technical people creating regulation for it."

Indeed. Too bad the vast majority of the technical people are in favor of net neutrality.

> If consumers don't appreciate 10ms more lag when accessing youtube, or similar minor degradations, they can switch to another ISP.

Except they often don't have other ISPs to choose from. The selection is extremely limited here in the US.

I don't understand your focus on Google - they're not at all visibly associated with battleforthenet.com, nor have I seen them releasing any kind of public statement on the issue (at least this time around). Look at today's doodle ffs, it's celebrating a costume designer's 79th birthday.

youtube didn't happen after Comcast built high speed internet.

Customers demanded better internet and paid more for it, to access youtube, pandora, facetime, facebook, twitter, flicker, netflix and MMOGs.

Comcast invested in faster CO side equipment because there was customer demand for faster internet. The coaxial cable was still the same, customer still paid for modem in the house and paid for upgrade to DOCSIS 3.0 modems. Investments here by Comcast are same as any internet giant invests in a data center equipment, there was no new digging of last mile by Comcast, it was same as what it had been for last 25 years, laying coaxial cable when homes get built. And Comcast did charge more for faster speeds. Customers paid for faster access to the web. Just like content providers upgrade from Pentium to i7 on servers, Comcast upgrades were cost of doing business and it did pass that cost to customers in terms of more money charged for higher speeds.

>All content providers are in the business of creating bits which must be carried across space, and there are some kinds of content where local offers a big advantage. Many of these are yet to be discovered, as local circuit quality has been fairly poor since the origin of the internet. Net neutrality makes it far less likely that any of these will be explored.

CDNs are working just fine on existing internet. Google or Netflix or Amazon moving content closer is not prohibited by concept of Net Neutrality. The request to the local/geo-graphically server originates from the site/app html-js-DNS/code based on geo-location of the end user. This is only limited by Comcast CDN build out and offering made available for sale. Comcast doesn't want to do that, they want to peek inside packets and be arbitrator of what happens based on contents of the packet, regardless of what the browser or server wanted the packet to do.

Comcast being allowed to do deep packet inspection is like opening up letters going to bank to see if it is for car payments and then delaying the envelop if bank doesn't pay the postal services extra fees. It doesn't matter if the customer selected overnight delivery, as long as bank doesn't pay postal service, checks don't arrive on time.

I firmly believe that people think of their ISP bill as something they pay for youtube, gmail, maps, photos, amazon, pandora, school/college/work websites. It is ISPs who should be thankful to content owners for making their product offering something that customers want. The canvas company wants to be able to charge more if a successful painting gets painted on it, after it has already sold the canvas, would that be OK?

The individual user at home bought certain amount of data transfer per second, and may be agreed to upper limit on total data transferred per month, the content provider paid their ISP bill to do the same e.g. Amazon AWS data transfer rates. Now, the individual's ISP like Comcast wants to hold their users hostage and seek additional payout from content providers for doing the things that they already took payments from their customers.

CDNs are different and fair. CDNs are micro sized data centers spread across the land that content owners can lease space/power/cooling/compute/storage/network from. Net neutrality opponents want people to get confused about CDNs and deep packet inspection. CDN does not require deep packet inspection. Comcast wants you to think that this is unsolved problem that they can solve if only people allow them to look inside their mail and read contents. No, thank you.

Can you imagine if gasoline companies asked for paybacks from car companies? Why can you imagine if tcp/ip companies ask for payback from online video companies?

You buy gasoline and you can use it as you wish, in a Ford, Toyota or a Craftsman lawn mower. You buy tcp/ip and UDP capacity and you use it as you wish on youtube, netflix or yahoo mail.

Can you imagine if same gasoline slowed itself down if it figured out that it was being used in a Hyundai and offered 91 octane if found to be used in a BMW? Costing you the same at the pump, but works differently by figuring out where it is being used, a Hyundai vs a BMW? Does the gas company has right to know which car I will be using the gas into? Can it reduce the value its product has to the purchaser, the person pumping gas, unless the car manufacturer pays it to unlock the full potential of the gas?

One can't do it with gasoline but can do few things with tcp/ip packets. Just because it is possible to open up an envelope mailed to the bank and hold bank hostage for additional postage, doesn't mean postal service should open up the mail. Just because it is possible to open up tcp/ip packet and see if it is headed for youtube vs vimeo, doesn't mean ISP should do it. It is not ethical, it is not legal. Find the shortest path to the destination and forward it on, post or packet.

Youtube Red is available for $9. Ad-supported Youtube itself is free. Comcast charges $70 for 100 Mbps connection. $40 for VOIP phone.

Average Comcast bill is $120 a month. Comcast has a goose that lays a golden egg every day, they are out to slice it open for reasons beyond me. Comcast share holders should take company executives at task for risking their investment over opposition to net neutrality. Ask Comcast to cut costs. They are throwing dirt in your eyes over "boogeyman of Net Neutrality keeping the stock from soaring" while throwing money to the wind. Comcast should reduce costs and make itself more profitable. Comcast should introduce innovative products that customers want and will pay for like its VOIP and home security product line. A more fine grained CDN deployment would be great product idea. Comcast engaging in political debate bating against its own customers wishes will only empower activism against the company. The Comcast executives are burning the brand value in a bonfire right in front of the share holders, such destruction of share holder value shouldn't be tolerated.

If Television sets manufacturers created "Information Service" that plays short funny video clips instead of ads by deep inspection of HDMI signal, or a centralize service tracking ad start-stop times publishing it over internet, would that be OK Comcast? You are jealous of google and facebook's ad revenue. What if Samsung decides to cut in on your ad revenue on MSNBC? Samsung TVs won't show ads on MSNBC because they don't pay Samsung, it plays CNN ads just fine because Time Warner paid the ransom to Samsung.

it's because doing "the right thing" the wrong way, as is many people's wont, leaves it open to just this sort of trivally easy meddling in the future. see also: ACA battles

Sorry, but I think you're being naive if you think that the people complaining most loudly about an "FCC power grab" are attempting to achieve anything other than deregulation.

>Could someone make a pro-repeal argument

There is no repeal. Either we do nothing, and nothing changes, or we start applying Title II rules to ISPs that were never there before.

As in any debate, the onus is on proponents of NN to explain how a rule change is a good thing, since they are arguing against the status quo.

> There is no repeal.

The whole discussion is about repeal of regs the FCC already adopted.

> Either we do nothing, and nothing changes

The entire premise of NN advocacy that things will change. Read the original site.

"or we start applying Title II rules to ISPs that were never there before."

The rules have been there since 1934. Opponents of net neutrality want to pretend that Internet providers are somehow not included in those rules.

> 1. The Title II Regs were designed during the Great Depression to address Ma Bell and don't match the internet now.

How so? As far as I can tell, 99% of Americans are still in the same situation as our Great Depression-era counterparts. The only difference is that the situation is now duplicated across a phone line and a cable line, instead of just the phone line alone.

> 3. The internet didn't need fixing in 2010

The internet itself may not need fixing -- but internet service providers certainly need fixing, both back in 2010 and now still today.

Every major US ISP (including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Sprint, T-Mobile, and many others) have all breached Net Neutrality. There have been numerous violations over the past decade -- a small portion of which is documented at https://www.freepress.net/blog/2017/04/25/net-neutrality-vio...

The FCC does not have the power to create law/regulation out of thin air.

Congress should act.

Ajit Pai is not against net neutrality, but rather against the power grab from the FCC.

None of the complaints addresses this.

https://www.wired.com/2017/05/congress-not-fcc-can-fix-net-n...

Ajit [0]worked for Verizon he is most certainly against net neutrality, he speifically said the actions in 2015 have prevented ISP investment in broadband and internet services. [1]. Ajit also specifically made multiple statements about the actions in 2015 and how they had a negative impact on the US economy. [2]. I find this akin to the repeal of dodd-frank. as I overheard some hedge-fund acquaintances "It is rip-off city" again.

My opinion: How does this benefit the consumer? in what way? I fail to see how a government organization created to help the consumer is doing so, this appears to help the 'pocket wing' specifically moving money to again a smaller handful of individuals and the populace continues to be parochial about the entire issue.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajit_Varadaraj_Pai [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/06/isps-across-country-te... [2] https://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/201...

[0-2] How does this show that he is against net neutrality?

What power grab by the FCC? The telecommunications act may well be outdated, but it seems quite clear that ISPs fit under the Title 2 definitions. ISTM the FCC under Wheeler was doing its job.

Okay, if downvotes is what I get then here's an answer.

No, ISPs do not fit under Title II and it's not the way to go to ensure net neutrality. Even congress agrees that Title II was never meant for broadband.

Power grab? The above. It was never meant for broadband.

Quote from the EFF: > But Congress has never given the FCC any authority to regulate the Internet for the purpose of ensuring net neutrality.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/09/net-neutrality-fcc-per...

I will likely just regurgitate the article I linked. Read it and ask questions if any remain.

I never said that the route the FCC took to get to Title 2 classification made any sense or that the FCC's previous actions were justifiable. But the final outcome seemed fairly good.

One argument I've heard made against net neutrality generally is a neoclassical/liberal economic one.

To put it into practical terms, consider the "free data" plans prevalent in much of the developing world. You get free data to access a limited set of services who have agreements with your mobile ISP. FB pay (presumably) the ISP to be The (or part of the) restricted set of internet services provided to the consumer at subsidized (by FB) rates. Many people cannot afford the "real" internet access at full rates. But FB is willing to subsidize partial access for their own reasons^. The individuals who choose these plans (assuming competition^), are better off with cheap restricted access then none, or the more expensive full access.

^I don't agree with this reasoning. Adequate competition does not exist in ISP markets and FB's reasons for participating in walled gardens are anti-competitive, especially when it comes to new/small services that cannot negotiate with ISPs.

such "free data" thing is popular in some developed countries as well, e.g. Australia. It is just business promotion, has nothing to do with net neutrality. With or without net neutrality, new/smaller services can not complete in that front - how many of them can show their names in super bowl? should super bowl be ads free to make it more new/small services friendly?

I think it's a pretty core net neutrality issue. The ISP uses its position as ISP to be selective/opinionated about what internet services their users are accessing. USe FB? OK that's free. Want Friendster? You have to pay extra for Friendster or we don't support Friendster. Net neutrality means ISPs must be neutral about which services users access.

"The Title II Regs were designed during the Great Depression to address Ma Bell and don't match the internet now."

In what ways do they not "match the internet now"? The Communications Act of 1934 (in my opinion as someone who is very much not a lawyer) seems to have been intended to regulate all telecommunications, even if it has language specifically addressing AT&T's then-monopoly on a specific form of telecommunications. Its various amendments appear to be consistent with that intent.

If these repeal supporters can cite specific reasons why Internet providers shouldn't qualify as common carriers (and thus be subject to Title II) just like how telephone network providers are classified as such, then we have a proper discussion on our hands. Else, it really just reeks of more whining on the part of cable companies and their ilk: "no no no, we're totally different from this other subcategory of 'telecommunications' because reasons".

Personally, I ain't buying it.

"The FCC isn't the right vehicle for addressing anti-competitive behavior in this case; the FTC would be better."

The FTC isn't the (only) right vehicle for enforcing the terms of the Communications Act of 1934; the FCC would be better.

The FTC should by all means be involved here, don't get me wrong (ISP's behaviors are definitely characteristic of coercive monopolies), but that doesn't mean the FCC gets to stick its fingers in its ears saying "LALALALALA Title II doesn't apply" when it very obviously does.

"The internet didn't need fixing in 2010 when the regs were passed."

Depends on who you ask. If you're an ISP, then no, it didn't need fixing. If you're pretty much anyone else, then yes, it very much did (and still does; Title II is still insufficient in really addressing the abuses of modern-day ISPs, in particular because the Comm. Act doesn't really do much about price gouging AFAICT; this is - like we've both suggested - the purview of the FTC).

Thanks for asking this question, it makes me realize how blindly I've been on the 'save net neutrality' bandwagon. I tried understanding these reasons (you provided) and it turns out I don't know anything. For starters,

1. What is the title II Regs? I did a quick google search and I came up with this: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-pai-fcc-internet-... Why doesn't the regulation match the internet now? All of the articles I find seems to handwave the actual reasoning. "And they argued that the only way for the government to prevent this outcome was to adopt an old regulatory framework called Title II—originally designed in the 1930s for the Ma Bell telephone monopoly—and apply it to thousands of Internet service providers, big and small. In other words, they wanted lawyers and bureaucrats to govern the Internet rather than engineers, technologists and businesses." - HOW?

2. For those who didn't know what Federal Communications Commissions (FCC) or the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is and how they are different: http://roslynlayton.com/fcc-vs-ftc-which-will-do-a-better-jo...

The valid arguments I read from industry groups like WISPA cite significant uncertainty in what Title II regulations would actually look like in practice. Given that WISPA is basically a trade group of small ISPs, some mom-and-pop scale, burden of any new regulation is a significant concern. My personal opinion strays from this, since the incumbent ISPs that WISPA membership generally competes with stand to benefit even more from the tact of deregulation (and presumably make further progress in driving more of them out of business).

> The valid arguments I read from industry groups like WISPA cite significant uncertainty in what Title II regulations would actually look like in practice.

The reclassification wasn't abstract; the actual regulations under Title II were included in the order with the reclassification.

Any uncertainty about future regulations is unresolved by rescinding the reclassification now, since anything that could have been done under regulation with the reclassification can still be done in the future (it might take reclassifying again, but since that can be done in the same action as the concrete regulation, that's immaterial.)

Quoted below is an except from a listserv discussion with a WISPA committee member working to draft that org's FCC filing. I'm sharing this, to fill in details on the assertion of "uncertainty in regulation" that is being bandied about, i.e. that the assertion isn't devoid of substance. But again, I don't share this view myself, believing that the absence of any Title II regs at all bodes worse than the burdens they or may not impose.

------

The Commission asked what the definition of ‘reasonable network management’ should be. The original (2010) version called for “reasonable network management” and defined it as:

"A network management practice is reasonable if it is appropriate and tailored to achieving a legitimate network management purpose, taking into account the particular network architecture and technology of the broadband Internet access service."

In the Title II order this was changed to:

“a practice that has a primarily technical management justification, but does not include other business practices.”

What does “other business practices" mean? From an engineering standpoint I can design and build a network that never requires ’network management'. We used to have that network - it was called ‘circuit switched’ and it was an engineering marvel. What I can’t do is build that network today and deliver broadband at competitive prices without some degree of oversubscription. The level of oversubscription is ultimately a management (and economic) decision. If all network management practices are then ‘business practices’ it becomes very difficult to decide what network management can be justified as ‘primarily technical’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1IzN9tst28

I don't get why I see arguments like 'Oh, why would it matter, its not neutral anyway' or 'it won't change anything' and no one tries to explain why allowing an end of net neutrality would be bad. I would say the reason why net neutrality is important is the following:

'On paper' the end of net neutrality will mean that big companies like google or facebook (which, according to the website, do not support net neutrality [why would they, right?]) will pay the ISPs for priority connection to their service, and ISPs will be able to create 2 payment plans for their customers - throttled network and high-speed, super unthrottled network for some premium money. And some people are fine with that - 'it's their service' or 'i only use email so i don't care' or other things like that.

But we are living in a capitalism world and things aren't that nice. If it is not illegal to slow down connections 'just because', I bet in some (probably short) time companies will start abusing it to protect their markets and their profits. I'd expect under the table payments, so the company F or B will be favored by a given ISP, and you can forget about startups trying to shake up the giants.

Something that is not mentioned often is the combined effect of losing net neutrality and the recent decision to let the ISPs sell your advertising data.

It's a two pronged attack on the internet. The ISPs data collection is going to be more valuable than Facebook or Google simply because they have everything and most importantly the ISPs can verify physical identities.

So internet ad revenue is being attacked from one angle and then they are extorting money for packet delivery on the other.

"It's a two pronged attack on the internet. The ISPs data collection is going to be more valuable than Facebook or Google simply because they have everything and most importantly the ISPs can verify physical identities."

Third prong: lawmakers advocating "closing the VPN loophole".

Because terrorism.

Another reason for all web developers to encrypt their websites.

That helps, but not entirely. The metadata of which sites you're visiting is still valuable advertising information - especially when browsing through a phone (geolocation).

This doesn't help - just a set of domains (and page count + times of connection) you connected to last month is a very precise and valuable identifier of who you are and what your interests are.

Would it be possible to connect to Internet w/o ISPs?

Also, ISPs could make pay both the companies providing a service and the customers of those companies. Just so that they can get in contact in the first place.

To companies: "You want your customers to have faster access to your services right ? Or we could cut you off."

To customers: "You want to access those services faster don't you ?"

Seems like a classic mafia move.

How's this different from priority shipping for example?

The USPS doesn't also own the roads, rivers and skies they transport your package through, and can't blockade people from moving the package themselves, or with another service.

My guess is monopoly (approximately). ISP choice for the vast majority of US people is practically nil - you either have a cable provider (Comcast, Cox, Spectrum, etc.) or a phone provider (Verizon, AT&T). With priority shipping, if you don't like Amazon's non-subtle nudges to you to pay for Prime, you just move on to Walmart.com, Rakuten, or an eBay vendor. Treating ISP as a utility company was the right model and the current FCC is not doing consumers a service by killing this model.

It'd be like if Amazon owned the only road to your house and said Amazon couriers get to use the left lane at 65mph and everyone else delivering packages from Walmart or Target use the right lane at 30mph, unless both you and Walmart pay extra to use the fast lane.

If Amazon owned the road, I would be fine with that. If a company owns a mall, I'm fine with them letting companies that pay them more have a bigger shop, and those paying them less have a smaller shop.

I'm also fine with them giving their own products preferential treatment. (This actually happens here - all mall companies have their own products, very visibly exposed.)

In priority shipping, only one side pays the fee. If the post office or UPS said "oh you want it there faster, pay X" to both sender and receiver, and both were required to pay for it to be faster, then it would be the same.

So the burden of the cost is on the sending party?

In reality the cost is really distributed. The sender hands over the money to the shipping company, but that money comes from the receiver.

And the infrastructure is supported by the community at large.

How do you debug your slow internet connection? What tools let you know you're getting what you're paying for?

One way to explain it is to ask if your phone company (which is your ISP) should be allowed to block Skype/Facetime. After all, if you're skyping (or facetiming), then you're not paying them for a phone call! (Or should Skype be allowed pay your phone company to block Facetime (or vice versa)). Surely it's in the phone company's interest to not help their compeditor. (If your internet is from your cable TV provider, ask if they should be allowed block Netflix).

Examples like that are easy to show the downsides of net neutrality.

I like thinking of it like other utilities, such as water and electricity. Imagine if your electric company could block power to one of your devices because it's a competing device. Or if it could stop you from using water for drinking to promote some drink they have.

The data going through should be just as blind as water through pipes or electricity through cables.

Probably worth pointing out that this already occurs now for very large companies who have to pay for upgraded uplink connections or data centers inside the networks (Netflix et al). Also part of why the bigger companies aren't pushing too hard, they have to pay this stuff under the current rules so new rules won't help them much.

Some of the issue was that ISPs refused to upgrade their peering connections even when the other party offered to pay for both ends of the upgrade. They wanted to double dip, and anything short of that they refused.

Yes, and this is extremely corrosive to free market operation of the internet. Customers lose visibility into what sites cost (in time and money) because the cost of the deals that the ISP force onto companies are hidden on both sides of the transaction. Customers can't really make good market choices among sites or ISPs cleanly with these kinds of deals going on, so the market becomes much less efficient at delivering value to the economy.

Consumer choice between ISPs solves most of these problems.

How do you propose to enable that?

Hindsight is 20/20, but I suspect that the breakup of Ma Bell in 1984 should have been along service lines, not geographic lines. One company should have been given control of the physical wires, and that's all they do---they have have the right-of-ways to run cable and maintain the physical structure. And they have a mandate to provide service to any company that wants to provide a service (route data), and the other company provides the service, but they aren't in a monopolistic position.

What's the natural monopoly here? The physical infrastructure. What isn't? The service---phone, television, data. Could this still be done? Yes, but I suspect the politics would be worse today than in 1984.

It's a hard problem that states and localities should sort out. High fixed costs, regional monopolies, etc. I get it.

I'm just saying that almost this entire, complex discussion can be reduced to that crucial point.

> big companies like google or facebook (which, according to the website, do not support net neutrality [why would they, right?])

It doesn't quite say that. It says[1] that they didn't sign up to the event on the 12th. However, news outlets are reporting otherwise.[2][3] The Internet Association, which they founded, launched its petition site[4] on Monday. Microsoft is now also a member. Apple, for whatever reason, is not.

Google also has its own 'Take Action' page[5] but I'm not sure how old it is. Mark Zuckerberg has publicly stated support for net neutrality.[6] But both companies have been criticized[7][8] in the past for using a self-serving interpretation of the term. And, as the recent EU ruling against Google reminds us, telcos are not the only internet gatekeepers we need to worry about.[9]

[1] https://www.battleforthenet.com/july12/#participants

[2] https://www.recode.net/2017/7/8/15938164/net-neutrality-day-...

[3] http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/12/google-amazon-protest-against...

[4] http://iadayofaction.org

[5] https://www.google.com/takeaction/action/freeandopen/index.h...

[6] https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10102033678947881

[7] https://www.facebook.com/notes/access-now/open-letter-to-mar...

[8] https://scroll.in/article/717663/double-standards-facebook-a...

[9] https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/eu-google-antitr... (this article was written a year ago by someone who gets funding from various telcos and Microsoft: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Scott_Cleland )

As a tidbit about Google: Take Action actually emailed me today about it. I opted in a long time ago, but they definitely sent out a very pro NN email. An excerpt from that email:

> Today, Google is joining other Internet companies, innovative startups, and millions of internet users around the country to defend these common-sense protections that keep the internet free and open.

> Net neutrality ensures that both new and established services, whether offered by an established internet company like Google, a broadband provider, or a small start-up, have the same ability to reach users on an equal playing field.

KK, thx for clarification. I'll allow myself to not edit the original post, but I promise I'll stop bashing Facebook and Google in my head.

> we are living in a capitalism world

Far from it. Far far far faaaaaaaaaar from it!

To what extent would we need more capitalism? Currently, you have companies literally able to shut down countries (see examples of cigarette giants suing countries), and companies like Comcast being so anti-competition that they sue towns trying to set up faster internet fiber lines. That's not even involving the massive influence companies have with government officials in legal means via lobbying. Companies aren't charitable, and yet they give millions upon millions to politicians... And then of course there is the hilarious trends of a politician passing laws and then somehow, repeatedly, getting cushy jobs with big oil / Comcast / etc after they exit government work.

The point I'm getting at is companies have far more power and far more sway than any one person, Government worker or private citizen, so at what point does a world become capitalist? Do we have to shut down government and literally be run by Comcast before we consider it a capitalist world?

Companies shutting down other countries and bribes are not a part of capitalism. These acts are dick-moves that can happen in a socialist or communist system also.

So if it doesn't matter which system we live in because corruption can happen in any system, why not quit masking the real issue by making it about capitalism? The real problem here is corruption and lack of accountability. That's equally likely in whatever system we choose.

The difference is, a working Government works for the people. Note I said a working Government. A company has no loyalty, no core incentive to work for anyone but themselves. They have no reason to be nice, and not do "dick moves" as you put it.

We can't expect companies to have morals, they should operate within the law. Governments must keep them in check, keep the laws safe for humanity.

To me, I extend this to anything that "matters". Ie, I believe in reformed health care because health care is too important to me to be handled by corruption. Insurance companies are not aligned with the peoples incentives. Just like how Cable is not aligned with my incentives either. They want to squash competition, stifle innovation, and fundamentally change an equal playing field of access and bandwidth.

And by that you mean that we live in what, communism? IMO what I can see 'around' is the capitalism at it's worst, with cash aggregation by top players. And who has the money has the power, as it was since the beginning of time.

It is possible to be far from a free market economy and still not be completely communist

And it is possible to be far from a free market economy and still be capitalist, because Capitalism and "free market economy" aren't synonymous.

Let me cite Wikipedia since it's good enough here: "Capitalism is an economic system and an ideology based on private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Characteristics central to capitalism include private property, capital accumulation, wage labor, voluntary exchange, a price system, and competitive markets." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism)

I didn't mean that it has to be either capitalism or communism. What I meant is that IMO what we have right now is still a form of modern capitalism, albeit I agree that it became kind of twisted in comparison to the capitalism from the beginning of the 20th century.

Or more generally, those who have a say in resource allocation, have the power.

Therefore, this is a blatant power grab by the ISPs - suddenly they get to decide how to allocate a resource, however artificial that resource may be.

If your internet browser were a hearing aid, the information coming in would be sound - whether that's your husband or wife asking you to do the dishes, a ring at your doorbell, or even an advertisement on the radio.

now imagine if that hearing aid wasn't neutral in how it handled sound. imagine if, when the advertisement played on the radio, it would be louder than all other sounds around. at that time, you might miss an important call, maybe your wife just said "I love you", or perhaps there's a fire in the other room that you are now not aware of, because clorox wipes demanded your full attention.

without net neutrality, we lose the ability to chose our own inputs. our provider, our hearing aid, gets to choose for us. this could mean slower video downloads for some, if they're using a competitor's streaming service for instance, but it could also mean the loss of vital information that the provider is not aware even exists.

By rejecting Title II recommendations, the FCC will introduce a whole new set of prioritization problems, where consumers no longer have the ability to decide which information is most important to them. and, if the provider goes so far as to block access to some information entirely, which it very well could without Title II protections, consumers would be at risk of missing vital information - like a fire in the house or their husband saying "I love you"

Now also imagine most people in the US only have one choice of hearing aid manufacturer. Also, that manufacturer happens to produce some of the radio programs whose volume the hearing aid manipulates.

Poor analogy.

Hearing aids do discriminate and are quite programmable to be adjusted to the needs of the user usually by an audiologist who works with the patient to understand what sounds they want to hear (and it changes over time)

That makes it a better analogy. Hearing aid users get to choose how loud sounds are based on what they want to hear; people who make noise don't make that decision for them. A hearing aid user who tunes their device to make adverts quieter is the equivalent of a web user who installs an ad blocker. That's exactly how the web should be - users should choose what's a priority to them, not the suppliers of the service. Just as advertisers should never be allowed to make their adverts sound louder to hearing aid users.

That may be but I thought it was an excellent analogy. I don't think he is really concerned with imparting information about how hearing aids actually work, it is just a device.

Then imagine that the audiologist is being paid to force the patient into hearing advertisements rather than working with the patient to understand what sounds they want to hear. Does that fix the analogy?

Seriously? You think you receive every single packet or that there isn't any filtering done for technical purpose done at your computer? It's the same principal. You are bad at analogies.

I fully support the net neutrality argument, it seems like a no brainer to me. However I find it interesting that companies like Netflix and Amazon who heavily differentiate in which devices you can have which video quality[1] will then argue that ISPs shouldn't be able to differentiate which services should have which transport quality.

The situation seems completely analogous to me. I'm paying my ISP for a connection and it thinks it should be able to restrict which services I use on top of it. I'm paying a content provider for some shows/movies and it thinks it should be able to restrict which device I use to view them.

The argument for regulation also seems the same. ISPs don't have effective competition because physical infrastructure is a natural monopoly. Content providers also don't have effective competition because content access is also a natural monopoly because of network effects (right now there are 2-3 relevant players worldwide).

[1] Both of them heavily restrict which devices can access 4K content. Both of them make it very hard to have HD from non-standard devices. Netflix even makes it hard to get 1080p on anything that isn't the absolute mainstream (impossible on Linux for example).

I think there is a huge difference here. First of all, the restriction on 4K has a lot more to do with technical limitations than anything else. Very few devices can actually handle 4K. While your laptops screen might be able to handle it, your browser might not be able to decode h.265 at all, and might not be fast enough to decode h.264 at 4K resolutions.

As someone who works on a video streaming service for similar type of content. I see this policy as a help to consumers more than restrictions, simply because they ensure they only allow 4K where they are fairly certain it works.

Secondly, if Netflix doesn't provide you the service you need, you can switch to Amazon, or Hulu or any of a number of providers. If your ISP doesn't provide you a service without restrictions, plenty of people have no recourse. It isn't unusual for natural monopoly industries to be more heavily regulated.

>I think there is a huge difference here. First of all, the restriction on 4K has a lot more to do with technical limitations than anything else. Very few devices can actually handle 4K. While your laptops screen might be able to handle it, your browser might not be able to decode h.265 at all, and might not be fast enough to decode h.264 at 4K resolutions.

The exact same setup (Chrome on this Linux laptop) works just fine with 4K youtube streams. Yet both Netflix and Amazon have restrictions for 4K where it basically only works with closed set-top box type devices. There's no reasonable technical motivation for the restriction.

>Secondly, if Netflix doesn't provide you the service you need, you can switch to Amazon, or Hulu or any of a number of providers.

There isn't "any number of providers". For relevant content my two options right now are Netflix and Prime Video, there is no third.

>If your ISP doesn't provide you a service without restrictions, plenty of people have no recourse. It isn't unusual for natural monopoly industries to be more heavily regulated.

While I only have 2 choices, and those are the same two worldwide, I easily have 3 good ISP choices and those are local to each market, so worldwide there are hundreds or thousands. That's exactly my point. Worldwide the neutrality in content access is probably more important as it is a much more consolidated industry.

> I easily have 3 good ISP choices and those are local to each market, so worldwide there are hundreds or thousands. That's exactly my point.

I think your missing the point. You already have Net Neutrality (by your own admission) so that seems like a solved issue for you.

But the Americans don't have what you have -- almost nobody in the US can claim to "easily have 3 good ISP choices". Most Americans have 1.5-ish ISP choices or less (usually a shitty-but-usable monopoly cable provider, and occasionally a shitty monopoly DSL provider that is often so slow it not really competitive).

The Americans are simply trying to create regulation that would allow them to have a situation closer to the ones most Europeans already have.

> There's no reasonable technical motivation for the restriction.

There may well be licensing restrictions on the content which preclude them sending 4K video to unDRM'd or unverifi{ed,able} clients.

> The exact same setup (Chrome on this Linux laptop) works just fine with 4K youtube streams. Yet both Netflix and Amazon have restrictions for 4K where it basically only works with closed set-top box type devices. There's no reasonable technical motivation for the restriction.

That doesn't mean it will do that smoothly with DRM on top of it. It also doesn't mean that most users have equally capable hardware, since it might not be accelerated in hardware. While pretty much any device today will do 1080p H.264 with hardware acceleration. Have you ever tried explaining these nuances to customers who says their movie playback is terrible, if so, I think you would reach the same conclusion as those providers. Youtube is free and doesn't really have the same issue as people don't expect to be able to contact Youtube support and complain about quality.

> While I only have 2 choices, and those are the same two worldwide, I easily have 3 good ISP choices and those are local to each market, so worldwide there are hundreds or thousands. That's exactly my point. Worldwide the neutrality in content access is probably more important as it is a much more consolidated industry.

Well, good for you. But not every ISP market is the same, not every country is the same. I wouldn't mind that somebody looked at how content licensing works, but me being able to access Wikipedia or any number of other websites, a lot of which might be discussing my ISP in negative terms is IMHO much more important than i get to see the entertainment i like.

One is a choice between produced entertainment content, and the other is free speech/ basic communication.

Can I ask where you live that you have 3! good ISP choices?

> First of all, the restriction on 4K has a lot more to do with technical limitations than anything else.

That argument may have worked in a world without HDCP and EME, but that's not the world we live in. The requirements for becoming part of HDCP cabal explicitly state that you must degrade the quality of non-HDCP streams[1]. This is not a natural limitation of the user's machine, it's an attempt to force users to use HDCP-compliant hardware and software so that they can view their content properly.

This is of course not directly relevant to the discussion of Net Neutrality, but GP's point is entirely valid given that Netflix uses HDCP and was one of the authors of EME.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-bandwidth_Digital_Content...

>The requirements for becoming part of HDCP cabal explicitly state that you must degrade the quality of non-HDCP streams[1].

Your source only seems to support that if you have a HDCP stream and a non-DHCP output you need to degrade the quality. Is there actually a requirement that if I try to view my 4K family video that I captured with my own camera on a non-HDCP 4K projector that the content needs to be degraded? That would be a whole other can of worms of anti-competition. Where not even the argument that you can vote with your wallet would work (flimsy as it originally is anyway).

> That argument may have worked in a world without HDCP and EME, but that's not the world we live in.

My argument weren't with regards to DRM. Simply with regards to performance, since we are talking quite a few more bits than 1080p. Indeed HDCP and especially EME has been great for enabling better playback experiences in browsers. But that still doesn't help with support for H.265 and for the increased bitrates needed for 4K.

Except if Netflix provides a bad experience, I can just switch to a different provider.

If my ISP throttles certain "services" - I literally have no other option beyond dial-up which I don't actually consider an option. The barrier to entry for a new ISP is a mountain. The barrier to entry to startup a new video service is minuscule in comparison. I could literally have a new video streaming service up in a week. Granted it wouldn't have nearly the features or content of something like a Netflix in a week, but creating a competitor wouldn't be hard if they started abusing their current market position.

The whole point here is ISPs should be the dumb pipes to carry our traffic. I don't want my ISP owning content (although that ship has sailed) anymore than I want GM to start owning public roads. "Oh, you drive a Ford? Sorry, you can't use the freeway, you'll need to take back roads."

In the same vein, if GM decided to just stop offering air conditioning in their cars, I'd go buy a Ford.

It's funny, the insanity of that in the real world would have people marching on capital hill with shotguns and pitchforks. Yet when it's "the internet" the general populace doesn't even see how badly they're being swindled.

>Except if Netflix provides a bad experience, I can just switch to a different provider.

In this market there are Netflix, Prime Video, and maybe Hulu across the whole planet. It's actually a much more consolidated market than ISPs. It just so happens that in the US the ISP situation is so dire you often only have 1 ISP per area. In Europe for example that's rare.

>The barrier to entry to startup a new video service is minuscule in comparison. I could literally have a new video streaming service up in a week. Granted it wouldn't have nearly the features or content of something like a Netflix in a week, but creating a competitor wouldn't be hard if they started abusing their current market position.

I'd argue the complete opposite. It's much easier to start a new and profitable ISP by installing a small amount of infrastructure in a dense area than to start a streaming service. When you start a new streaming service you have no content and thus can get no clients and thus can get no content licenses. It's a chicken and egg problem that leads to natural monopolies from network effects. When the content is now even being created by those same streaming services it's even worse. Good luck getting a content license from Netflix to be able to stream House of Cards.

But as I stated I fully agree with net neutrality and agree with you that it's a huge issue that the general population doesn't understand the full importance of. I just find it a hypocrisy that the same companies that want to build anti-consumer monopolies in other areas are fighting for net neutrality because it fits their interests.

I think what you'll find is that many, many people in the US live in cities like mine with regulated internet access that would make it practically impossible to "installing a small amount of infrastructure in a dense area".

If Google couldn't muscle their way into breaking Comcast's monopoly in my town, I don't see how some new upstart is going to do it.

Net neutrality won't fix that and that problem seems to be particularly serious in the US and not nearly as much everywhere else. We should fix all these issues, neutrality of networks, neutrality of devices and reasonable competition for ISPs. But saying that because the US has particularly bad competition between ISPs that the problem of the worldwide centralization in 2 or 3 streaming providers forcing lack of choice in devices isn't serious is the typical "the internet = the US" bubble.

https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/884939675617472512

Perfectly put. Quoting here as it's short enough:

@Pinboard Net neutrality is about making sure the cable monopolies can’t play favorites among the Internet monopolies

The distinction with the cable monopolies is that there are externalities to the production of internet capability, where that doesn't really exist with the content production in your example.

The natural monopoly argument exists much more strongly for the ISPs because, as part of the technology, they actually require physical installations of wires et. al. all across your neighborhood, city, etc. It would not be feasible to have 100s of these going up in your city -- you'd live in a "Brazil: The Movie"-like scenario of wires every which way. Also, a lot of these use old -- and often government-owned -- infrastructure, which are also not in infinite supply.

Conversely, in the content production-case, if Netflix doesn't want you to watch their content on a certain device, that has ZERO impact on how you can watch other people's content on your device. In fact, part of their reason for aggressviely pursuing their own content is that they can now distribute it globally and not be tied to all kinds of geographical licensing squabbles with traditional content providers.

So, you are right that Netflix has a natural monopoly on Netflix-owned content. But the ISPs have a natural monopoly over internet infrastructure, not just on the internet infrastructure they provide.

>So, you are right that Netflix has a natural monopoly on Netflix-owned content. But the ISPs have a natural monopoly over internet infrastructure, not just on the internet infrastructure they provide.

Netflix has more of a monopoly than just their own content. Network effects make it so that I won't be subscribing to 10 different streaming services so their monopoly grows naturally because customers want a single streaming provider and content providers need access to a big pool of viewers. That's actually much harder to break than the ISP monopoly because you can easily start a new ISP by building small amounts of infrastructure in a single dense area whereas you can't do the same for the content over those same wires because those people while geographically homogenous will be quite varied in terms of tastes. You can try to build a niche streaming service for a specific type of content but it has to be very appealing for people to be willing to have yet another subscription. But we don't need to conjecture it's evident from reality. There are hundreds of ISPs worldwide and only 2 or 3 relevant streaming providers.

For me, it comes down to ease of switching. Most Americans have a single broadband option but there are numerous competitors in each category of content provider, and the latter don't tend to require long contracts.

I sincerely wish people would get as upset about the regional monopolies ISP's have as they do about net neutrality. We have a serious problem the way things are now, and they just want to make it worse by grabbing even more power.

In a way these American ISPs are overplaying their hand. If the situation was one with more choice or even just less rent seeking we wouldn't have such a drastic "what could go wrong" case for net neutrality. So thanks from Europe where the situation isn't nearly as serious and we could end up much worse without this cautionary tale.

John Oliver, College Humor, and some comedian are featured heavily. You're going to need to do more than give liberal millennials something to feel smug about, if you actually want to win this political battle.

I don't know where I stand on net neutrality, but this is certainly not going to convince me.

Allow private companies to impose regulations on internet traffic and you don't have a free and open internet.

Block private companies from imposing regulations on internet traffic and you don't have a free market for ISPs.

You're losing one free market or the other. Which is worth more to you?

This is a gross simplification and neither are ever going to be free markets, but you get the idea. There is no avenue that doesn't involve some institution imposing their will on a marketplace.

I hear good arguments on both sides. The worst-case scenario of different levels of internet service for access to different sites is troubling. And if you could convince me that it's likely to happen without the FCC's regulation, I'd oppose repealing it, at least without a replacement. But it does seem unlikely, especially in a market like the US where there is the demand and willingness to pay for unrestricted access, and where political pressure could always stir regulatory agencies back into action. But I agree that it is a bad end result that should be avoided.

Here's my big question: weren't things fine before Tom Wheeler's net neutrality regulation? So why not go back to that? Am I forgetting something about that state of affairs?

So I would have no problem I don't think with a certain mandatory minimum amount of guaranteed bandwidth unlimited free (as in beer as well as bird) data being provided subsidized I suppose by people who want to stream 3DHD entertainment (say half/third the highest speed the ISP offers). A free and open internet guaranteed and the ability for ISPs to offer VIP services to paying customers/businesses. Everyone is happy or am I just a smug liberal looney left millenial whatever that other guy said... or merely mistaken somehow?

This single image is really all you need:

http://www.wordstream.com/images/what-is-net-neutrality-isp-...

That image has existed for years now. But even without government Net Neutrality regulation... it hasn't happened!

Humans see censorship, paywalls, etc as damage, and route around. Why wouldn't we just mix-up the domain names and IP addresses for a while? If it costs extra to goto Reddit.com, then Reddit can add another domain (e.g. Greendit.com) and continue operating with no embargo. This paradigm served the warez/anime/torrent community for decades.

But that isn't what is proposed, the ISPs can't regulate which services you get to just how fast they serve? If youtube wanted to paywall they could easily.

Very recently I bought an iPhone and a subscription that includes 4G service. With this subscription I have 6 GB of traffic per month anywhere in EU, BUT any traffic to Spotify is unmetered, and I don't know quite how to feel about this. On one side it's great having unlimited access to all the music in Spotify at any time and any place within the whole of EU, but on the other side I worry that I am helping damage net neutrality.

Now Spotify, like Netflix and YouTube and a lot of other big streaming services, almost certainly has edge servers placed topologically near to the cell towers. I think this is probably ok. In order to provide streaming services to a lot of people you are going to need lots of servers and bandwidth no matter what, and when you do you might as well work with the ISPs to reduce the cost of bandwidth as much as possible by placing out servers at the edges. So IMO Spotify is in a different market entirely from anyone who hasn't got millions or billions of dollars to spend, and if you have that money it should be no more difficult for you to place edge servers at the ISPs than it was for them.

But the unmetered bandwith deal might be harmful to net neutrality, maybe?

Of course it's harmful!

We have a similar thing in our region (Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia). Mobile operators give you access to a couple of services unmetered, and you spend your data for other. As long as you can't choose the services you want to be unmetered, I consider these packages anti-NN.

This works in your specific advantage since you've probably already been using Spotify previously. If you were an Apple Music / Google Play Music subscriber, and were forced to switch to Spotify, it wouldn't be ideal for you, would it?

I even took things a bit further. About two dozens of websites from the region (so, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia) either shut down, or displayed a static message about the harmfulness of such data packets today. It's kind of a small support towards Battle for the Net and their action, but our goal was more to spread awareness and start a story than to ask for a specific action (like sending comments to the FCC).

It's not as big as Battle for the Net, it's mostly me and the websites I already had a previous affiliation with (posted articles previously and things like that), but I had $0 budget, a steady job + other obligations, and was basically able to spend <2 hours per day convincing websites to shut down for a day.

All in all, I consider my own project a success.

No point in sharing the link in an English forum, but in case there's someone from the region interested in it, and in case you really feel helpless outside of the US, here's an example of what you can do. This is not a local fight, this is a global fight against the ISP fuckery: https://netneutralnost.com/

I don't see how providing unmetered Spotify is "forcing" any Apple Music / Google Play Music subscriber to switch. You can freely choose to ignore the unmetered services and continue to use whatever other services you choose.

Okay, let me put it this way:

You have three competitors: A, B, and C. They all pretty much accomplish the same thing. Your ISP cooperates with A to give it a privileged position (unmetered connection).

If you're a subscriber to B and C, you can't use your service of choice under the same conditions as those who use the service A. Therefore, you can either switch to A, or pay more data to use your preferred service (B or C).

As long as you can't choose the service that's going to be unmetered, Spotify has a privileged position compared to its competitors for the users of that ISP.

Because, without NN, it doesn't have to be JUST unmetered. QoS can be used to throttle connections to Apple Music, hell, service to competing music services could even be denied totally.

T-Mobile has that set up in the US. Luckily you can at least opt out, which I have. T-Mobile offers various unmetered streams if you use the apps, but they degrade the quality of the stream. I believe all youtube streams become 480p, for example. I don't trust that they don't or won't affect other sites in some negative way.

Frankly, I'm happy with the data plan I have and I have no need to bargain off portions of the internet so that my ISP can closely monitor and manipulate certain sources.

For me it comes down to whether it's a special deal or open. In the US T-Mobile has a program where any music service can apply to have their traffic exempted from caps and that seems unremarkable to me since it doesn't favor a specific service. What I would worry about the most would be that being negotiated, where a competitor could arbitrarily be excluded for strategic reasons, or with a fee which would make it hard for competitors to enter the market.

It depends on what program you're talking about. The previous iteration, Binge ON, capped streaming videos at 480p, but you could opt out on your account settings page.

The current iteration, One, caps Netflix, YouTube, HBO and other services at 480p, and you have to pay $25/mo for an "HD Add On" to get rid of the cap.

Sprint caps different types of apps (even games) at different bandwidths as well, and there is no option to get more than 480p from them.

There is nothing good about this.

I was talking about music, as in https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-10969. Video is harder since it requires much higher bit-rates but the only thing which bothers me about Binge On is that they rolled out first as opt-out but even that's not a big deal since it's trivial to turn off if you want extra pixels more than a lower monthly bill.

I have a virtual mobile operator here in Czechia that has boasted about its offering of zero-rating (not counting towards data cap) traffic to Facebook and Messenger. They also have very competitive prices, which is why I have migrated to them once they launched.

Because I am a poor student, what I use now is a plan where I pay an equivalent of 3 euro per month for 80 MB. After I use these up, the internet gets slowed down to 32 kbps (really more like 128 kbps). That is enough to send chats, find buses and receive notifications and it prevents me from procrastinating too much.

I am an avid user of Twitter and browse only Twitter when I am on WiFi. However, on mobile data, I browse only Facebook (Facebook runs fast even when I have hit my cap). I also watch videos on Facebook on the bus very often since they are free. I usually use up about 1.5 GB of data per month.

Next month, because of a law (they say it's because our regulator told them to) , they will no longer be allowed to zero-rate only Facebook. What they are doing is overhauling their plans: the smallest one is 500 MB for general use plus 250 MB of data for social media for the equivalent of 4 euro. (https://www.mujkaktus.cz/kaktusite) Social networks include Twitter, FB, IG, Snapchat. Before the changes, I could get only 200 MB for the equivalent of 4 euro (with Facebook).

I love that. I can finally use Twitter on the go and I'll get more freedom and mobile data for the buck. This clearly benefits the free market. Their customers are complaining, however, because they use mostly Facebook given the choice and they switched to them because of it.

> This clearly benefits the free market.

Free != regulated. In fact, they are pretty much opposite.

Where were the protests, blackouts, outrage and calls for action from these companies (Google, Amazon, Netflix) when the Internet privacy bill was being repealed? I'll tell you where they were - In line outside Comcast and Verizon, eagerly waiting to buy our browsing histories.

We had their back the last time net neutrality issue came around (lets be honest, their business depends on a neutral net). But they didn't do the same for us. Screw them.

Google probably knows even more about our browsing history than ISPs.

Yep, they've got my desktop, work machine and mobile phone browsing history. My ISP has just got my desktop, and my mobile phone when I'm at home.

As a foreigner who deeply cares about the web, what can I do to help? For good or for bad, USA decisions on the Internet spread widely around the world. "Benign" example: the mess before UTF8, malign example: DRM and copyright fight.

Note: Besides spreading the word; I do not know so many Americans

Act locally. Do you live in Spain? Talk to your legislators about passing strong net neutrality laws like the Netherlands. You have weak net neutrality from the EU, but you can do better.

Sorry I chuckled a bit when thinking about Spanish government listening at all and then acting on some pro-people policy. The Spanish government have relatives in the bigger corporations, it's called "puertas giratoria" (revolving doors), just look at the lists: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerta_giratoria_(pol%C3%ADtic... . Current government has strong ties with the biggest ISP in Spain (Telefónica/Movistar).

Luckily we have something different going on; it's legal to share 3rd party content among people, so Copyright for individuals basically doesn't apply and torrenting is pretty much legal (though you might be taken to court anyway). But Net Neutrality as it depends on the ISP just does not make sense, it's not a matter of whether it's possible or not. Also, people have much more urgent things to fight for; if someone wants to do something about the Internet in Spain the fight is right now around copyright (we're trying not to lose this due to US influence).

I fully agree with dsr_'s comment: act locally.

The principle of net neutrality needs to be fought in every single country. I organized a smaller in scale "Internet protest" in my region (Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia), convincing website owners to shut down for a day (today) to spread the message of what net neutrality is and how it's not being enforced within the region.

Nothing even close to being big as Battle for the Net, but for one person with no budget, a steady job, and almost no time to work on it, convincing 20 websites to shut down and spend a day to talk about net neutrality as the only topic is definitely what I consider "mission accomplished".

Honestly? None of the solutions presented so far (ie. try to persuade higher ups) will work.

The only solution that will work is to make the telcos unnecessary. Home based Mesh networks, hacking internet over other channels - like you can tunnel ssh over https - direct competition to current market leaders.

One thing is for sure, net neutrality will be abolished, but the other thing thats for sure is that hackers will find a way to make everything right again.

Make no mistake, this is a battle, but it's a battle that we've won many times before.

Ah just in case I just redirected my most visited website to https://www.battleforthenet.com/ , not too much but still might make someone from the USA to act upon it.

This is great. I think the letter textarea should also be empty.

Instead there can be a small wizard with questions like "why is net neutrality important to you", etc with a guideline on what to write.

This way each letter will be a differently expressed opinion instead of every person sending the same thing and may create more impact.

The EFF has a nice site set up exactly that way: https://dearfcc.org

I have often thought the government should provide an alternative option for critical service just like they do with the mail and now health insurance (ignoring current politics).

That is I think the net neutrality issue could be mitigated or non issue if there were say a US ISP that operates anywhere where there is a telephones poles and public towers analogous to the United States Postal service (USPS).

Just like the roads (postal service) the government pseudo owns the telephone poles and airways (FTC) so they should be able to force their way in.

I realize this is not as free market as people would like but I would like to see the USPS experiment attempted some more particularly in highly leverage-able industries.

Agree completely. The web is too important in our daily lives to put in the hands of a couple fat cats. We should, quite literally, form an "Internet Constitution".

The problem with that is that the alternative will be a minimal solution, so your choices will be crappy state service or non-neutral ISP service that's good enough for you not to care but still sub-optimal. Here's what I believe is a better regulatory solution that makes the free market work properly without needing the state to build inneficiency by duplicating services that the private sector is willing to supply:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7644339

>so your choices will be crappy state service

Says who? There are co-ops all across the country that run fiber to the home and provide a far superior service than 99% of the ISPs out there today.

At the end of the day, the only REAL solution is for government to own the last mile. Run single-mode fiber to every household in the US, run that back to a centralized pop and allow ISPs to attach to that pop to provide service. The cost of last-mile is no longer a barrier to entry for new ISPs, people will end up with more choice and better service, and we can stop having ridiculous fights over access to utility poles that never should've had more than one line strung in the first place.

Given that the government could run fiber when building new paved roads and it wouldn't even be a rounding error... it seem ludicrous to me we aren't already doing this.

Your suggestions solves a different problem, the lack of competition giving you crappy (but potentially still net neutral) internet service. It only solves the neutrality problem if enough people care to switch providers because of it. Considering the general apathy towards that problem I wouldn't bet on it. See my proposal for a market solution for that. Personally I think we should do both to solve both problems.

> regulatory solution that makes the free market work

The amount of cognitive dissonance in the comments here is astounding.

So you think free markets work without regulation? Give a single example. Sniping vague comments doesn't help the discussion.

The form on this page requires you to submit your personal information for use by third parties. I refreshed the page 3 times and saw 3 different notices:

"Fight for the Future willcontact you about future campaigns." "Demand Progress willcontact you about future campaigns." "FreePress willcontact you about future campaigns."

No opt out, no thank you.

You can actually opt out through the widget which will pop up if you go here: https://www.battleforthenet.com/july12/

It saddens me to see HN jump on the bandwagon of an anti-free-market campaign such as this. Words such as "battle" and "fight" have no place when coming up with solutions to problems in a market economy. I know government and its history of cronyism are a big part of the problem, but to think that more regulation will make everything better is woefully misguided. How did it come to pass that there's so little trust and understanding in the system of voluntary, peaceful, free trade that has produced virtually all of the wealth we see around us? Sure there are tons of problems, but I'm sure you'll agree that they pale in comparison to those of state-run economies.

The mistrust of large corporations is definitely warranted. McDonald's doesn't give a rat's ass about your health as long as you're healthy and happy enough keep coming back. And the reason why people come back is because McDonald's knows they have options; enough so that we all have it pretty good dietary-wise. Consumers and suppliers don't need to organize protests and boycotts of fast-food chains. Likewise, I don't think the major ISPs give a rat's ass about our choice/speed of content, so long as we're happy enough to not jump to another provider. As with food vendors, more choice, not more regulation, is the answer. The market should determine what it wants; not bureaucrats under the influence of large corporations.

Having regulations doesn't turn this country into a "state-run economy". Is America currently a state-run economy because of the existence of the FDA, the USDA, etc? What are these countries you believe have no regulations, and have "produced virtually all the wealth we see around us"?

"so little trust and understanding"

Assuming smugly that people who disagree with you don't understand how capitalism works is childish and totally out of line.

In general, please try to make your point in a way that doesn't assume people who disagree with you are ignorant or stupid. Nobody here is saying that regulation makes everything better. It's a strawman.

There is no free-market! ISPs practically have a monopoly! I have 2 choices for Internet access where I live. Comcast and AT&T. They compete all right, compete on who can out screw their customers the most.

"Anti-free-market," hogwash. Net Neutrality is pro-free-market.

Hey guys,

The Trump administration expressed interest in having the FTC regulate ISPs. Does it really matter who enforces net neutrality as long as we have it?

It's not secret that ISPs have local monopolies, and that's an area of expertise the FTC has successfully regulated in the past (look at how the Gas station economy works).

It's really time to move past the 2016 election and put petty political arguments aside. We're failing because we're divided. I beg everyone to please stop being smug, and push collaboration with the powers that be rather than confrontation.

Concerns that seem petty to you seem of existential importance to others. Surely you have noticed that there's a trust deficit in the political economy of late. Also, I don't agree with your implicit point that political activity should be limited to participation in elections, especially given the way a good part of the population is structurally barred from doing so.

"It's really time to move past the 2016 election"

Net neutrality has been a concern since long before the 2016 election.

I'm fully in favor of net neutrality, but I am not against premium plans for some content.

For example let's say I have a 50/20Mb internet. I should be able to browse the entire internet at that speed. But, if I want to pay extra to have like 100Mb with QoS only from netflix, I am not against this kind of service.

That's not a net neutrality issue. They are very similar, but they aren't quite the same. I guess it depends on how you look at an internet connection.

Your connection provided by your ISP is a communication channel akin to a phone number. That is arguably a public utility that should be treated as such. Yes, an ISP should be compensated for infrastructure, technical support, etc. Access to the internet is pretty much a necessity in many societies.

Your subscription to Netflix is an agreement between you and a private entity for a service. It is up to Netflix to implement throttling policies for different pricing tiers, because Netflix is not providing you a communication channel to the web.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but it really depends on if you're paying the QoS fee to Netflix or to the ISP. An ISP should have to provide reasonable connections to the web at a reasonable price.

Assuming he has a 50/20 but then gets an increase to 100 for Netflix, it would be the ISP he is paying. If he is capped at 50 by his ISP, he isn't going higher to 100 just because he paid Netflix.

Yes, I imply the ISP could have the Netflix premium package. But if should come in addition to the actual internet connection.

But I guess the problem is that, at least here in Europe, high speed internet connection that can handle "anything" (like 500Mb/200Mb) are becoming more and more common. With this kind of connection, any "premium package" would be of zero interest as it would be able to handle anything Netflix would throw at it.

Of course, the ideal solution would be to have Netflix pay ISP for peering and the Netflix subscription cover additional ISP bandwidth costs.

Anyway I really hope that a solution that won't kill net neutrality will be found.

Whats to prevent ISPs from starving out the whole internet package to force people into buying additions?

What's the prevent ISPs from reducing their bandwidth offerings across the board to force people into buying more?

My local ISP could triple their prices or slash their bandwidth offerings and I'd have no choice but to pay it or not have internet. They could - very neutrally - extract very large amounts of money from me because of how valuable internet access is to me. That isn't a neutrality issue, that's a lack-of-alternatives issue, and before Title II is mentioned, the FCC reclassification explicitly specifies that the rate regulation clauses of Title II are subject to forbearance (ie, not applicable).

You are right, this is the main problem I guess.

Why not make barrier of entry easy for other/new ISPs by forcing them to share infrastructure for a fee, and then allow them to tier/price as much as they want?

Public ownership is where this ends up at.

Actually with good regulations, there is not much need for public ownership (although it is the ideal in theory)

Public ownership leads to slow or no innovation. Please let this not happen with data infrastructure.

I would argue that Congress needs to act, FCC shouldn't be in this.

I see everyone framing this conversation around Comcast charging customers to access websites. I feel that's just a talking point, not the real meat of the issue.

Regarding Backbones:

If I recall correctly, this originally came about over a peering dispute between Level 3's network and Netflix. The internet backbones work on settlement-free or paid to peer. When there is an imbalance, the party with the imbalance pays. When there is the balance, no one pays. This system has worked well for a very long time.

Regarding Personal Internet Access:

Consumer Internet connections are overbooked, meaning you may have the 100Mb link to the ISP but the ISP doesn't have the capacity for all users to use 100Mb at the same time. In short, they aren't designed for all users to be using high capacity at the same time. These networks expect users using bursts of capacity. This is why tech like BitTorrent has been an issue too.

There is a fundamental shift occurring where users are consuming far more network capacity per user because of technology like Netflix. I know I'm streaming 4k Netflix :D

Hey everyone! My name is Aaron and I'm on the team that helped put together some of the digital tools that are making this day of action possible. If you find any issues please let us know here or here: https://github.com/fightforthefuture/battleforthenet

It's very disheartening that this is a battle that doesn't seem to end. They are just going to keep bringing proposals in hopes that one time there won't be enough noise to scare politicians, or worse the politicians are already in pocket just waiting for the opposition level to be at a minimum. The inevitability vibe is growing.

*the American internet

Meanwhile the EU already has laws for Net Neutrality (though zero-rating is still allowed).

That's a great illustration of what happens when you let the market be owned by only several entities. Long time ago, there were more, with time centralization happened and now you have to bow to the survivors.

Similar situation but at an earlier stage can be observed on the Cloud horizon - see Google, AMZN, MS, and maybe FB. They own so much traffic, mindshare and sales power, in theory they are not monopolies, but together their policies and trends they generate shape the internet world.

I'm not saying this current situation with Verizon et al is OK, just saying that if you intend to fix it, consider addressing the next centralization that is still happening.

Are Google, FB, Amazon, and others actually supporting this and if so, how? I don't see anything on their sites about this. As far as I'm concerned, they're not doing anything to support this. And of course, why would they?

Amazon does have a Net Neutrality info box on their home page, but not super prominent. Google and Facebook say they are supporting but I haven't seen much from them.

Really? I don't see it. Neither 'net' nor 'neutrality' are words on their home page. There isn't a graphic about it. There is nothing about it. (I'm looking at the logged out page.)

All I can find are arguments for neutrality, it seems like a very vocal crowd full of businesses who currently make a lot of money from people on the internet (reddit, Facebook, et al).

Anyone want to share resources or their pro priority internet stance?

I can't really say I'm against net neutrality, but like many Internet issues I think the debate is sloppy and full of assumptions. I think there are at least a few arguments against net neutrality.

1. The Internet isn't neutral to being with. To get connected to the Internet an ISP, especially a smaller one, will have to buy transit. But can also make peering agreements with other, often local, ISPs and large services like Google or Facebook. In reality, depending how things are connected, your connection speed will vary regardless based on business decisions. Net neutrality leaves those decisions up to, other, big players like large (tier 1) ISPs, cloud providers and big services instead of consumer ISPs.

2. The real problem isn't net neutrality, but competition between consumer ISPs. Net neutrality restricts the business model for ISPs even when there competition. Many consumers might actually just want news, social media, software updates, some streaming services and limited access to the open Internet. Yet, they are forced to pay for the rest of the traffic and infrastructure.

3. I used be a nice idea that the Internet was open and that most nodes where equal, but that isn't really the case anymore. There's a number big players with huge influence over Internet technology that makes a lot of money. While consumers pay just to access the Internet, don't get static ip addresses and limited upstream traffic. Internet protocols have not kept up with reality and hosting your own services are challenging with the prevalence of ddos, spam, ransomware, exploits etc. You can argue that the big services that makes a lot of money should today be, or at least have the possibility to be, paying more. Especially since they enjoy economy of scale.

> Net neutrality leaves those decisions up to, other, big players like large (tier 1) ISPs, cloud providers and big services instead of consumer ISPs.

Without net neutrality, the decisions are still up to tier 1 ISPs, cloud providers and big services. You just have to deal with one more type of decision-maker (consumer ISP) in addition to, not instead of, all of the above.

Come to think of it, I wonder how those deals will play out when net neutrality is gone. ISPs probably don't care enough to discriminate against individual domain names or small IP blocks, and most developers don't want to have to care about such things, either. So the prioritization deals will most likely be between large companies. Something like, host with Linode if you want fast connections to Comcast users, and host with DigitalOcean if you want priority access to Verizon users. AWS might start offering two types of elastic IPs, one that gets prioritized with all major ISPs and one that doens't, with different transfer rates.

>Many consumers might actually just want news, social media, software updates, some streaming services and limited access to the open Internet. Yet, they are forced to pay for the rest of the traffic and infrastructure.

But it's a level playing field because all ISPs face the same problem.

While I wouldn't necessarily say that it's a level playing field (as large networks have huge advantages), this particular issue is more about consumer choice. That you can't, essentially, buy a laptop without Windows isn't a problem for laptop manufacturers, but it is for consumers.

My thoughts exactly.

Caveat: I'm not 100% sure on my stance, personally. Most arguments (for or against) net neutrality appear based on assumptions I don't agree with.

The priority internet argument seems simple: It's the ISP's cables, and they should by default be able to make whatever deals they want, just as I can make unbalanced deals around who gets to use my car or headphones.

But then there's the "common carrier" issue. If the ISPs want that status, they should be held to its implications, which roughly equals net neutrality.

Priority internet with common carrier status is just ISP's having their cake and eating it too. That's what's on the table as I understand it, and I can't endorse it. It's just a money/power grab.

But I'm not sure whether neutral internet with common carrier status is morally better than priority internet without common carrier. There's maybe a productive conversation to be had there.

Edit: got words mixed up

In many ways, you're not allowed "do what you want" with your car or headphones. For example it would be illegal to work as a taxi driver and say "I don't pick up black people"

Nit: the NYC taxi rules make no mention of race in their rules. They cover in depth payment, route selection, luggage etc but nothing about race. They have a lengthy list of acceptable reasons not to accept a passenger, many of which could be used to reject outright any person hailing the cab that the driver personally did not want to carry.

Unless the racism occurred against a disabled person, it seems totally possible for a taxi driver to freely discriminate in their selection of passengers.

So 'illegal' seems a strong word.

I definitely don't only see a bunch of wealthy buisnesses. I don't know where you are looking but in the list of supporters I see a mixed group of organisations, people and businesses - all of them of different size. The videos linked are from comedians, professors, politicans, Youtubers... I have no idea how you got "only people making lots of money" from that (hell, you mentioned Facebook and I can't even find them in the list of supporters).

The only big voice I have found arguing against net neutrality is Ajit Pai himself. His views on the issue can be found in numerous interviews but maybe the best place to find his views of the internet would be in FCCs notice of proposal [1]. I don't agree with much of it and found it completly misunderstanding how the internet works.

I have seen some argue that VPNs and encryption would solve the problem even if net neutrality would disappear but I find that a solution not a very complete one.

[1]: https://www.fcc.gov/document/restoring-internet-freedom-noti...

No, because there are very few ISP CEOs here.

There's truth found in Ajit's comment, that Americans' internet infrastructure just isn't as good as other countries. Is that because of the regulatory climate? The ISPs receive a lease on the public spectrum; are they expected to meet a minimum service level of quality?

According to this source, the US rates low in many categories of internet access i.e. % of people over 4mbit, and average bandwidth:

https://www.fastmetrics.com/internet-connection-speed-by-cou...

There are two possible explanations of which I can think:

- The United States is a large country in terms of geographic area, which makes it harder to deploy and maintain high-speed networks unless you're already sitting on top of a major fiber backbone (and even then).

- The ISPs have no reason to improve things, since their local near-monopoly statuses means that customers have no choice but to pay for slow speeds. This is especially severe in rural areas. There are options like satellite and cellular, but both are heavily affected by local geography, and the former has pretty significant latency issues (making it less-than-ideal for, say, VoIP) while also being pretty expensive (satellites ain't cheap).

I hope I'm not alone in saying that if we lose net neutrality I'll be looking to help organize and set up a locally owned/operated ISP in my area.

"Net neutrality" sounds good but it's just more and more laws to regulate and censor the internet via the FCC.

It's also much easier to switch ISPs than governments

I'm currently unable to submit the form on https://www.battleforthenet.com/.

https://queue.fightforthefuture.org/action is returning HTTP 500.

Hey I'm one of the developers, we've been working hard to keep it up but have had a few short outages due to crazy volume. It's working now!

Thanks! I was able to submit.

Just to be clear, this has nothing to do with the Internet, and everything to do with the USA. Most Internet users can't be affected by stupid actions of the FCC.

I guess I'm just a little annoyed that Americans think their Internet experience somehow represents 'the' Internet experience.

In my opinion it's rather naive to think that the development in the US won't have any effect on the internet for global users.

The user "bicubic" expressed it very well in another comment [1] in this discussion, so let me just repeat that:

> American internet has a very strong and direct impact on 'international' internet. Aside from the fact that a large fraction of international traffic passes through American switches or servers, America is a policy leader to many other nations - both passively and actively. Passively by signalling to telcos in other nations that they could probably attempt the same thing, and actively by forcing some of these provisions as part and parcel of trade agreements. You just can't pretend that the impact these decisions will be isolated to the US.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14751274

How can you say this when the EU aggressively pursued the EU-US data shield, has net neutrality enshrined in its laws (with many countries opting to build even stronger regulations on top of that). America may be the biggest hard power, but the EU is the biggest soft power. They have the most influence on international law/rights, politics, progression etc; not to mention that they are also the #1 economy in the world.

As John Gilmore said "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." If America decides to fuck up their portion of the Internet, we will move those important services off-shore and build links around it. It won't be broken for long.

> I guess I'm just a little annoyed that Americans think their Internet experience somehow represents 'the' Internet experience.

Isn't that their stance on pretty much everything? If it's not a US problem, they don't care. If it is, then it more often than not gets portrayed as a major problem for the entire world.

It's a very diverse campaign! They're targeting all 50 states!

I understand, but we could definitely use your help. The current administration is hostile to most citizens, and anything that could be done to stop them would be appreciated,

Ah, seems like this battle is just a part of the bigger war that is the ugly side of capitalism. The top companies that Millennials are raving about are threatening old companies, and as a result those old companies are making a pact to bring their rivals down.

Examples include Airbnb; the business is now being banned by cities like New York city, New Orleans, Santa Monica and countless others. Another is Uber; it's banned in Texas, Alaska, Oregon (except Portland), and more. Now it's our beloved, favorite websites that are being targeted by Internet Providers.

Who do you think will win this war?

This website gives me the impression that this is the latest cause that the left has repurposed as something they can beat us over the head with. The video thumbnails look like a gallery of the who's who of the left. This is disappointing, because this is an issue for all of us. People are sick and tired of the left beating them over the head with various causes and tend to rebel against them regardless of their merit. We shouldn't lose our internet freedoms over a petty culture war that has nothing to do with this.

I feel like this site is missing context - what recent events have caused all of these organizations to protest? I found this NY Times article gave me a better idea of this context: "F.C.C. Chairman Pushes Sweeping Changes to Net Neutrality Rules", https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/technology/net-neutrality...

I wouldn't care so much about net neutrality if there was open access to the last-mile conduit for broadband to my house. But there isn't. Comcast owns the coax and there is no fiber here (even though I live in the heart of Silicon Valley).

Comcast is conflicted on topics from content to voice service. So neutering net neutrality is tantamount to deregulating a monopoly. That doesn't sound smart to me.

Let me see if I have this right. The complaint against ISPs goes like this:

They established themselves as dominant middlemen and want to leverage that position to enable new revenue streams by putting their nose where it doesn't belong.

I'd have much more sympathy for belly-aching tech companies if they weren't all doing (or trying to do) the same goddamn thing.

Is this form broken for anyone else? I'm getting CORS errors when it tries to submit to https://queue.fightforthefuture.org/action. That seems like a pretty big blunder, so I'm guessing maybe the site is just under heavy load?

Yeah, broken for me as well. Start of the workday on the East Coast and a lot of people submitting forms? I hope that's the case at least.

One of the developers here, sorry about that, it should be fixed now! The good news is we are getting swamped :)

I can't help but feel like the site would be more effective if they removed https://www.battleforthenet.com/how-we-won/ - "we" didn't win, we just got a short reprieve from losing.

Is anybody else fatigued of this "battle"? I have historically spent time and effort supporting net neutrality, but it seems to rear its head again every 6 months.

It only seems inevitable now that these big-budget companies with great incentive will get their way.

In my hometown, Darjeeling (India), Internet has been blocked since June 17, 2017 by the government to censor the citizens of the area. Media doesn't cover us well as its a small town. How do we Battle for the Internet? How can we drum up support?

An article detailing the issue would be very interesting. I found this one but don't know the issue as well as I'd like. If you wanted to suggest some better ones via gmail, I would be happy to try to raise awareness though my own social media network, as this is the sort of thing that would be of interest to many of my friends.

It sounds as if you're from Darjeeling rather than based there now (since you obviously have internet access). I wonder what obstacles besides the obvious ones of poverty would prevent the creation of informal peer-based networking. It seems clear to me that networking needs to be fractal in order to function as an instrument of general liberation/empowerment, vs high-volume hierarchies that can be switched off as in your example.

Please do follow up with me on this. I can't devote a lot of time to it but you raise a critically important question that I want to include in my political calculus going forward.

Here is an article from couple of days back. https://scroll.in/latest/843200/home-minister-rajnath-singh-... - Near the end there is a section about Darjeeling.

I live in Darjeeling but at the foothills where the Internet hasn't been blocked. I have friends who have been suffering.

Banks can't function without internet.

Doctors cannot look up medicines without the internet.

Its a mess.

People are not tech savvy enough to use FireChat.

We have free voice calls on mobile(3G/4G). Where does one start to build a data on voice app?

Thank you for the support! Please spread the word :)

Perhaps the battle is already being lost.

Anyone else getting this error trying to send a letter from the site?

"! There was an error submitting the form, please try again"

http://imgur.com/a/V60gh

reddit (US Alexa rank = 4) is showing a popup to all users that sends them to www.battleforthenet.com. It is about time a major player started leveraging their platform. Why aren't Google, HN, etc. doing this too?

Funny you should say, HN just updated for it.

Please also check out and share the video recording flow we've built at https://video.battleforthenet.com

I assume this is why the title bar has changed? Curious, since there doesn't seem to be a definitive statement about that.

Not surprising... Yahoo.com which was bought by Verizon has no mention of net neutrality.

HEADLINE: Kim Kardashian Goes Braless in Tank Top With Gym Shorts and Heels: See the Unusual Look!

Trending Now 1. Chris Hemsworth 2. Wiz Khalifa 3. John McCain 4. Joanna Krupa 5. Sean Hannity 6. Universal Studios 7. McGregor suit 8. Maps 9. Loan Depot 10. Justin Bourne

Imagine if this was the fastest homepage for millions of Verizon customers. head explodes

edit. They are at least highlighting the FBI Director hearing on the homepage. shrug.

Is there anything we who don't live in US can do for you guys? I mean beyond spreading the word.

I wish ARIN, and IANA would just blacklist any companies that actively work against net neutrality.

so much unhappy talks about the internet recently, I wonder why there isn't startup doing network service on top of NDN and IPFS for a better network

Tried submitting the form without a phone number, got an error.

Is there anything those outside the US can do?

I'm all about the net neutrality.

But while we're at it how about some hardware neutrality.

And some data portability and control over who sees my information.

And maybe an API neutrality.

And how about letting the municipalities offer free wifi.

Slightly tangentially, it seems that today the only way to get to get to the front page, other than the 'back' button if applicable, is to edit the URL?

Interestingly all this kind of stuff seems to happen in the 1984th year since Jesus died.

love the blatant americentrism in the site:

"This is a battle for the Internet's future." - just American internet's future

"Team Cable want to control & tax the Internet" - they will be able to control the global system in which the US is just a part of?

"If we lose net neutrality, the Internet will never be the same" - American internet, others will be fine

Please don't take threads off topic into nationalistic resentment. It inevitably starts pointless spats that would be ridiculous if they weren't so nasty.

It's a U.S. site; of course they don't put the qualifier "American" on everything, for the same reason programming languages have namespaces. HN's case is different, since we're obviously an international community, but (a) readers here are smart enough to disambiguate things, and (b) the internationalness of the site means we all need to be particularly respectful when talking about each other's countries.

> - just American internet's future

American internet has a very strong and direct impact on 'international' internet. Aside from the fact that a large fraction of international traffic passes through American switches or servers, America is a policy leader to many other nations - both passively and actively. Passively by signalling to telcos in other nations that they could probably attempt the same thing, and actively by forcing some of these provisions as part and parcel of trade agreements.

You just can't pretend that the impact these decisions will be isolated to the US.

It still should be written differently then. As a non-American this all reads quite... strange.

London has been the biggest European city for banks, but with Brexit looming on the horizon many of the banks are relocating to mainland EU and they seem to be doing just fine.

The companies, the entrepreneurs that would be affected could move their operations just the same way.

Yes you can. The United States isn't a thought leader anymore in this kind of thing. If anything many politicians in countries other than the USA get more popular by proposing to do the opposite of what the USA is doing. Think Paris Climate Accord if you need an example.

I get what you mean about americentrism, but to be honest a loss of Net Neutrality in America would be a very symbolic defeat for the rest of the world and might lead to other regions following the fall.

Or it might lead to other regions viewing it as a cautionary tale, once they see the actual real-world effects.

It's an American law targeting American ISPs...

>American internet, others will be fine

Yeah, because what happens in America doesn't affect anyone else...

> Yeah, because what happens in America doesn't affect anyone else...

You can say the same about almost every other nation on this planet. Where are the outrages against Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, France, Great Britain, ...?

I think it's natural for a site about American politics to be America-centric. Adding "American" everywhere would make the site read better to people outside the country, but it would weaken its message to the people it's trying to reach -- we love to believe that the entire internet revolves around America, as you can see in the other replies to your comment.

Agree, I'm not sure that there would be this big an outcry when the government actually tries to ban encryption here in the UK.

Perfectly factual comment, don't see how it adds any value to the conversation though.

Would you prefer them saying something like "This is a battle for our Internet's future."? I think either way would be fine because it was written for Americans anyways.

The majority of these websites are American websites created by American companies with a primary user base of American citizens.

Do you intend not to use US websites anymore?

Most of the US websites that I visit are owned by major multinational corporations, which do more business in the rest of the world than they do in the US (http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-iphone-sales-region-chi...), (https://www.recode.net/2017/4/29/15479932/alphabet-revenue-g...), (https://about.twitter.com/company)

Are they even US companies anymore?

You, and others, are missing the point: the americentrism is in assuming that the website readers are from US, not about the impact on US trends on the rest of the world.

More like not use US ISP's...

All large sites use cloud or CDN services so US ISPs throttling their customers makes no difference

The internet is still basically an American institution. If it's bad for the 'American Internet' it's bad for everyone. Also US policy on matters like these is usually propagated around the World. If it happens in America, it'll probably happen in [country] soon after.

> The internet is still basically an American institution.

Can you elaborate on this?

Last time when I checked, there are 730 million Chinese users who mostly don't use _any_ US Internet services, their switches and servers are made/operated in China mostly by Huawei and ZTE. It is also laughable to believe that US domestic policies are going to affect Chinese decision making.

Policy leader? Not after we Chinese declared independence from the monopoly of your US "lead" on Internet.

It sounds as if you have some good, substantive points to share about the Chinese internet, but your comments here also have the ring of nationalistic flamewar. We don't want that on HN, so please edit every trace of it out of your posts here.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14751274 and marked it off-topic.

"Independence"? It definitely looks more like "isolation".

Why Americans can't stop its own isolation and start learning how to use Alipay/WeChat?

I'm not sure if being forced to view content through the censorship and malware-insertion machine that is the great firewall of China can be considered any sort of independence.

你个五毛

> we Chinese

Yes the "peoples" Republic of China.

finally we got something in agreement - stop representing other people. US should stop pretending to be the rule maker for the Internet because it is _not_.

strange most of the top level comments are arguing against either net neutrality, or this campaign.

On a site that is otherwise extremely strongly for net neutrality.

Nothing suspicious about that...

Please don't insinuate astroturfing or shillage on HN. The overwhelming majority of the time, people just have opposing views. Meanwhile such insinuations damage the community.

Readers are far too quick to misinterpret disagreement as sinister bad faith, presumably because we all think our own view is so obvious that only someone dishonest could disagree. In reality, it's just that the world has a lot of things in it.

astroturfing about these issues IS real, its naive to stick your head in the sand about it.

I mean look at stuff like this

https://www.fiverr.com/gigs/reddit

http://www.hack-pr.com/library/how-we-hacked-reddit-to-gener...

https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/10/15610744/anti-net-neutral...

This is the reality, PR firms are on overdrive on social media sites about issues that are politically sensitive. Its irresponsible NOT to question the motives of commenters.

I mean surely as an HN moderator you have seen more than a few shady situations.

HN is extremely politically influential in the tech sphere, pg has said himself that its the subject of campaigns like this.

we can not afford to ignore this problem.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com