F.C.C. Announces Plan to Repeal Net Neutrality | Hacker News Reader

F.C.C. Announces Plan to Repeal Net Neutrality

nytimes.com

260 pointsaaronbrethorst43 comments

In 4 hours on HN, 70 points and 7 comments. Meanwhile, the entire rest of the internet regardless of political ranks (Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, CNN, NYTimes, Wall Street Journal, and Breitbart) this is top page news.

Can someone tell me why this is? Are founders okay with having to sign license agreements with Comcast to give 20% of profits of their video startup? Whats going on on HN?

Edit: I'm honestly not trying to be hyperbolic here, but I'm also getting down-arrowed quite a bit. This is an honest question

Edit 2: Okay, is see other thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15749150 with title "FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see"

There are other HN pages linking to different news stories on the same subject, which have many more comments; for example:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15749150

Please look at least at the rest of the HN front page before taking discussion off topic with complaints about HN.

Better still is to use HN search (it's at the bottom of every page) to see if a topic has been discussed. Most of the time people post such complaints, it has been discussed thoroughly, and they just missed it. Usually more than once.

I ran afoul of the titles being the same as the source titles - I glanced and saw no net neutrality posts. My bad!

It's ok. Sorry for being a bit cranky today!

There's just not anything more we can say.

Or do.

They're taking away all of our rights and there's nothing we can do about it.

Why don't people, when pitching the benefits of net neutrality to conservatives, highlight the fact that much of the distrusted "left wing media" (like CNN) is owned by the very ISPs lobbying for permission to give their own media holdings special treatment? Why not e.g. use Comcast's ownership of MSNBC against itself?

Good point. These networks have mostly avoided covering the issue up until now, when it is too late. This seems intentional to me.

If I remember right, Reuters has run a number of articles over the past few months. NPR hasn't mentioned much, at least from what I've heard on the radio. I don't read or watch other mainstream media though, so I can't compare.

I really want to feel bad for Americans but I can't. This is democracy working as intended. You put bad people in charge and they are going to do bad things.

Explain how Citizens United vs FEC [1] represents "democracy working as intended". Yes, everyone can vote, but anyone can spend arbitrary amounts of money to prop up any candidate they like, or suppress any candidate they dislike. Thus, money translates pretty directly to advertising/information control, which in turn translates to power. Democracy has been broken for almost a decade now, and the only way it could be fixed is by a super-majority, so even a small minority interest (either out of self interest or manipulation) can enforce the status quo.

America is an oligarchy controlled by the wealthy, and those who desire to change it cannot hope to speak loud enough to be heard over the full torrent of "free speech" from financial interests.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

Requiring a super-majority might work...until big money finds a way to buy itself a super-majority.

The problem with suppressing speech in general is 'who decides?'

Yes corporations currently have a lot of power and it is difficult for the average person to filter. However the alternative is effectively censorship.

It's easy to say 'ban the fake news', 'ban the corporate money', but who decides what qualifies as fake news, or which companies / groups / associations / qualify as corporations? Whoever decides gains a huge amount of power.

There has got to be a better solution than censorship.

I hate to sound alarmist, but is this going to be as terrible as I fear it will be?

We can we reasonably expect Comcast et al to implement new measures? Will this allow them to e.g. throttle bittorrent?

Can a future administration overturn this (via an FCC chairman/congressional bill)?

Will the suits that are bound to be filed have grounds?

Will someone have a heart to heart with Pai and ask him if he wants to be remembered as one of the United States' sincerest villains?

>I hate to sound alarmist, but is this going to be as terrible as I fear it will be?

Have a look at how Portugal's ISPs have structured their pricing tiers:

http://www.businessinsider.com/net-neutrality-portugal-how-a...

Various cell telcos here in the US have already given preferential data-cost treatment to services like Netflix and Spotify.

> Can a future administration overturn this (via an FCC chairman/congressional bill)?

Yes. There is always a way to change things in the US, it just might be difficult to do so.

In short: rulemaking such as this can be overturned by new rulemaking or by new legislation. Legislation can be overturned by passing legislation to repeal it or by a court finding it unconstitutional or otherwise invalid. Unconstitutionality or other judicial precedent can be overturned by new legislation or constitutional amendment.

What do the new laws say about VPNs?

Losing net-neutrality seems like it threatens to derail free speech and lock-in monopolies. The ability to compete in a market and voice political dissent are considered by many to be natural rights.

Shouldn't we be prosecuting these people as criminals for attempting to subvert our human rights?

Does this violate our constitutional rights?

Usage of VPN probably can be an additional charge under this plan.

Since ISPs will reason if you are connecting to a "business for work", they'll assume you'll or your company should fork over extra for the privilege of being secure.

> What do the new laws say about VPNs?

What new laws?

The FCC is getting rid of a law, without providing a replacement.

I am not from US, but isn't the problem the local ISP monopolies?

Having 6,7 ISPs where I live using 4 different technologies (broadband, lan, optics and mobile - 4g and WiMAX) means that the moment Netflix starts charging more because of ISP A, I will be moving to ISP B.

They will form a cartel

That is the alternative way to achieve the desired outcome. The thing is, to get real competition, we need to have regulation on ISPs as well -- line sharing rules. We used to have line sharing rules for DSL service, and back then we had dozens of competing services and few regions where competition was scarce. Then one day the line sharing rules were dropped and almost overnight we wound up with the situation we have today, with local monopolies or duopolies throughout the country.

Sadly, Pai's proposal does not have any concrete plan for increasing competition, and mostly seems to be based on the false assumption that there is already an ISP market in America (i.e. that Americans can choose among several ISPs). His only proposal so far, separate from the net neutrality rollback, to improve competition is to streamline the process for attaching cables to utility poles, which is not even close to enough to create a competitive ISP market.

Eh, kind of wishing this was over and we could move on. People voted for the current administration to do this and they should get what they want. It's also up to people when they sign a contract with an ISP that then might limit their access in some way. I'm not buying the "but monopoly!" argument especially since mobile carriers have great coverage for 95% of the people and are rolling out gigabit LTE. There's also the satellite internet option that I personally use and am happy with.

Here's my realistic prediction - ISPs will offer a subsidized internet plan a la Kindle with ads. Your regular internet plan will keep getting faster while staying at the same price.

Edit: I'm also tired of open internet crusaders that cannot stand any trace of an opposing opinion. If you disagree with anything I said, please comment and tell me why instead of just downvoting my comment into obscurity.

> People voted for the current administration to do this and they should get what they want.

Utterly false.

The FCC plan to eliminate net neutrality is wildly unpopular; the backlash against it every time it's come up for public comment has been gigantic.

> Americans of all political parties overwhelmingly support the values of net neutrality and want to preserve existing net neutrality protections. A strong majority (77 percent) of Americans support keeping the existing net neutrality rules in place. This view crosses party lines, as 73 percent of Republicans, 80 percent of Democrats, and 76 percent of Independents want to keep the FCC’s Open Internet rules.[1]

This isn't a fringe issue. The vast majority of the population, both left and right wing, supports net neutrality. But that doesn't appear to matter.

[1] https://www.scribd.com/document/353285485/Freedman-Consultin...

> Polling was conducted by Civis Analytics on behalf of Freedman Consulting, LLC of 2,475 adults online in English and Spanish, June 22-23, 2017. Portions of this research were also supplemented by a national phone poll of 256 adults conducted via cell phone and landline in Spanish and English, June 22-30, 2017.

I'm sorry, but that's a serious self-selection issue. The question that you quoted "Do you support or oppose keeping the net neutrality rules, which are already in place?" didn't even use the phone respondents. I wonder why?

I doubt most voters even know the term "net neutrality", but they did vote for a very vague anti-regulation plan. Show me a 100% randomized phone-poll and I'll change my mind.

If you've followed this at all you know that poll is not at all an outlier, it's very much in line with all other polling on the issue.

You're correct that too many people don't understand what "net neutrality" means, but when polled on descriptions of its effects that 80% level of support is very consistent across the board. Here's a couple of examples, you can find plenty more if you take the time to look.

http://time.com/3578255/conservatives-net-neutrality-poll/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/11/12/wonkb...

I stand by my assertion that your claim "this is what people voted for" is utterly, completely incorrect.

OK, since net neutrality is dead, let's make the best of a bad situation. Verizon, Comcast, AT&T -- why do these companies continue to carry traffic for The Daily Stormer, Breitbart, etc.? Once the shackles are off maybe they can block websites that promote fascism, racism, fake news, and so forth. After all, they will no longer be able to point to regulatory requirements as an excuse. I am looking forward to the opportunity to laugh in the face of all those "free market conservatives" who think this is a good idea once they start whining about how they are all being silenced (see the reaction to e.g. Youtube, Twitter).

Jokes aside, net neutrality is not a partisan issue. It is very unfortunate that we live in an age where everything has "two sides" and where anything liberals support is automatically rejected by conservatives (and, to be fair, vice versa)...

> Once the shackles are off maybe they can block websites that promote fascism, racism, fake news, and so forth.

And lgbt, atheist and other fake news also. If we are going to censor, why not just censor every anyone might find offensive.

> It is very unfortunate that we live in an age where everything has "two sides" and where anything liberals support is automatically rejected by conservatives (and, to be fair, vice versa)...

We live in a strange time. Liberals want net neutrality, conservatives do not. Conservatives want free speech, liberals do not.

There was a time when both liberals and conservatives wanted both net neutrality and free speech.

But with the media push partisan propaganda, they have been able to normalize censorship in order to consolidate their control over information/propaganda.

Could you please improve your insight to provocation ratio? Hacker News is for thoughtful discussion and not political battle, and you've been doing too much of the latter.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It's not controversial for most "other" groups either. Many people who think of themselves as free market conservatives will visit r/conspiracy on Reddit, and a headline about losing net neutrality is on the top of that subreddit's front page also.

I’d be in favor of a much narrower legal avenue for achieving some of what falls under the banner of “net neutrality”. What the FCC previously did in declaring ISPs to be common carriers is unacceptable. It purports to solve problems which haven’t materialized and which may very well never arise in the US.

This is Congress’s place to act.

EDIT: I’ve removed this bit because it’s based solely on the claims of AT&T, which don’t seem to be corroborated elsewhere: ”It subjects the internet to content regulation at the whims of the FCC.”

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/att-claims-commo...

Agreed. Common carrier just gives power to Google, Amazon, FB instead of the ISPs.

How does it give the power to those companies you listed? Because they can link you to certain sites? And they choose to host certain content?

They choose what gets buried through their search and suggestion algorithms.

Common carrier / net neutrality doesn't do anything about that one way or the other. Certainly, repealing net neutrality doesn't fix that problem.

It does not. But protecting Net Neutrality in the current context that it exists creates other problems. Right now Google, FB, amazon can spike content as needed. Without NN ISPs have that power as well and are the only ones rich enough to fight against GFA.

The "little" guys are screwed either way.

A comprehensive legislative solution is the only way we don't accidentally grant someone a monopoly.

I can't say I agree. The solution to "these oversized corporations have too much power" is not "let's give too much of a completely different kind of power to those other oversized corporations".

(The little guys are screwed either way -- that part I do agree with.)

Surely this is a joke or shill account. Not only are you arguing against an entirely different topic than at hand. You're openly suggesting that the best way out of getting screwed is to allow more companies the opportunity to screw you?

It breaks the HN guidelines to insinuate shillage as an argument tactic, so please don't do that here. If you think it might be happening you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com so we can look into it. But bringing it up in a routine way is internet poison.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> It subjects the internet to content regulation at the whims of the FCC.

I'm curious about your understanding of the title II neutrality regulation -- I don't see a clear line from "all packets must be treated equally" (which is what common carrier means) to "subjects the internet to content regulation at the whims of the FCC" (I'm not clear what you even mean by "content regulation", or what it has to do with common carrier.)

It turns out that is AT&T’s interpretation of the law, one that doesn’t seem to be accepted by anyone else, so I retract that claim. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/att-claims-commo...

Thank you for following up, it's good to know the source of that claim.

Why do you feel that "What the FCC previously did in declaring ISPs to be common carriers is unacceptable"?

To me it seems the obvious, common sense solution: I want my ISP to deliver the packets of data I request; I don't want them to have any incentive to interfere with or modify those requests. Just like I want my phone company to deliver my phone calls, without any incentive to interfere with or modify those calls. Common carrier rules do exactly that, cleanly and simply, as demonstrated by decades of successful precedent in a nearly-parallel industry.

"It subjects the internet to content regulation at the whims of the FCC."

Explain, in detail, exactly how this is possible.

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