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Comment by _eht | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

The rules are actually pretty strict for what can constitute legal refusal of a fare [1]. 54-20(b)(2), "The Passenger is carrying or is in possession of any article, package, case or container which the Driver reasonably believes will cause damage to the Vehicle" and 54-20(b)(9) "The passenger is disorderly or intoxicated" are really the only rules that have a subjective component.

[1] http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/downloads/pdf/rule_book_current_..., see S 54-20

...and yet, it's only four letters to spell 'race'. And its not there, anywhere. So easy to have said 'drivers will not discriminate on the basis of race, religion' or some such. And they didn't say it.

However, if the law says "You must pick up a passenger under [SMALL LIST OF EXCPETIONS]", then you basically are banned from excluding people on the basis of their race, right?

*(NB I'm not USAian, and don't know much about US taxis)

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.

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