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Comment by tbabb | Hacker News Reader

No. To save the internet, we have to make the most gigantic stink the world has seen since the Trump election.

The solution is not "give up and let this pass, and then quietly try to work around it." It's "make the people in power pay DEARLY for their transgressions."

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Let's be clear on something. "The Internet" doesn't care how Americans go about ruining their economy by prioritizing certain network traffic. As a Dutchie my Internet is largely unaffected by the FCC.

If anything the FCC rejecting net neutrality may be a boon for investment in EU startups and might actually benefit the EU tech sector. So go right ahead and take a crap on yourself America.

But let's be clear that the FCC has nothing to do with "The Internet". They're strictly an American affliction.

When the Americans successfully ruin NN for themselves they might inspire other countries to follow though.

Netherlands has a net neutrality law since 2012, Chile – since 2010.

>As a Dutchie my Internet is largely unaffected by the FCC.

You can't be more wrong. Since Netflix, Amazon, youporn, imgur, reddit will be affected by this and they will have to pay more to keep their bandwidth on the same level as now, or slower by only 10% (hey, they could slow down their network links by 60%, but since they pay 20M per year, its slower by only 10%!) you as the end, you the end consumer will have to pay for this more. It doesn't matter where you live, as long as you use any of US internet services, you will pay for this more, sooner or later.

His Internet will still not be affected.

The Internet is not just Facebook, reddit, google, youporn and Netflix or the dozen or so popular companies.

Not to mention that most of those have servers in the EU which will not be affected by this. Sure they could raise prices there, but since this would just subsidize US costs a local competitor would have a competitive advantage.

What this non-Net Neutrality does is largely saying "if you want to build an internet-based startup the US may not be the place for you".

Are you saying it will create positive competitive edge for companies from Holland?

>> As a Dutchie my Internet is largely unaffected by the FCC.

> You can't be more wrong. Since Netflix, Amazon, youporn, imgur, reddit will be affected by this

The same Netflix that reportedly has very poor show selection outside US? The same Amazon that has its data centers all over the world? And the three sites that are a pastime of little use and importance?

You need to do much better job at selecting examples to make your point compelling.

I don't think you're in opposition - the argument being, what's going to happen to the location of those services if they're held to ransom by new data transfer fees?

Move them to another jurisdiction without them.

Investment into the EU (in the form of datacenters, locating jobs to prove the work is done there, and the transit costs in the new location).

That being said, the cynic in me agrees that broadly you're right, and whatever the companies do to mitigate the effects of it by moving hosting/transfer elsewhere, they'll use this as an excuse to jack the prices up regardless.

Traceroute from Germany shows that none of leave continental Europe, at least not this morning. Are you suggesting that they'll cross-subsidise? That they will raise their euro-denominated prices in order to compensate for increased costs in the US?

They might. Of course. Vendors will raise prices where they think the market will bear it. But it seems strange to assume that by default, vendors will respond to raised costs in one market by raising prices in another.

Well, the servers even of USian internet services need not be located in data centers in the US. So we'll just add the emigration of data centers to the list of negative consequences for the US.

Not really, these charges were be born by the consumer. This is about the ability to offer consumer tiers. Sure there might be companies that pay the consumer fee to be included, like QVC did to be on everyone's cable.

> Since Netflix, Amazon,

The thing is, that if that would happen, a lot of people who got onto Netflix/Amazon for streaming content because it's a good convenience/price ratio, will simply revert to illegal downloads from local servers if the prices go up much. I recommended Netflix to people here in my poor farmer village and they got off it again and went back to illegal download simply because they did not want to pay the same price Americans pay while getting much less (quality) content.

So those companies move their servers out of the USA, which would be good anyway, or their competitirs get an edge.

Most countries like to copy the most successful country on Earth. You probably think of things like software patents, that were rejected in the EU. But that was a very long fight!

I hope we don't even have to _start_ the net neutrality fight in the EU, by winning it outside.

Copy the most successful country in the world? Who would want a great firewall?

Maybe that's the plan in the USA... Without NN it's easier than with NN.

Are you sure your logic is sound here(?):

The great firewall and net neutrality are both examples of the government regulating the internet.

Edit: Just to be clear, I'm sure we all agree that our ISPs should offer neutral transmission of packets without deference to source/destination or protocol/port.

Both regulate the internet, but in complete opposite ways:

Net neutrality is the default state of computer networks (a packet is a packet), and protecting it forbids discrimination by source, destination or contents.

The great firewall discriminates by source, destination or contents.

One of the main arguments against net neutrality is disallowing offering different speed or latency depending on the type of service (VoIP, gaming, downloads), but that's false, because you can do that without looking at the source, destination or contents; you just have to compare them with other packets (as opposed to comparing them to a pre-made list).

Sorry to sound like a nationalist here (i'm not), but the US has 1/3rd the population of China yet still has the largest economy, and the goto reserve currency. China actually has an ownership stake in all of their IT companies.

Contrary to a sibling comment, NN paves the way for the government to regulate what a private company can do with their IT assets, and therefore a great firewall situation.

>but the US has 1/3rd the population of China yet still has the largest economy

USA is first by Nominal GDP, but second by PPP GDP (or third if you count the EU). I wouldn't declare a definitive winner based on that. And it's better to leave population out of that, because per capita the US is far behind countries like Norway or Switzerland, and at only half the GDP of Luxembourg (both nominal and PPP).

You people are unbelievable. Please tell me about the last tech startup from Switzerland or Luxembourg... I'm not trying to declare some definitive "winner" here, but if you don't recognize which country is clearly dominant in the world, I can't help you.

>Most countries like to copy the most successful country on Earth.

By what criteria is the USA "most successful country on earth"?

Also, by "most countries" you mean "countries with legal codes even vaguely compatible with Westminster-derived legal concepts" which is in no way "most countries" in a global sense, right?

> By what criteria is the USA "most successful country on earth"?

Power, influence, GDP. Things that matter to politicians, which are the ones that get to choose these matters.

The FCC are appointees, not elected.

US soft power and influence are waning (e.g. gutting if the state department) and the US consumer is about to take a hit with a massive transfer of wealth to the super rich. Even with the hard military power, I don’t see how the US is the “most successful country on earth”.

Net neutrality has nothing to do with the consumer. Very specifically, it has to do with peering and PNIs. There's a reason why NN is not a grassroots movement - it's literally corrupt corporations fighting each other over regulatory capture.

You make this claim as if it is a fact, and various Americans cannot have different points of view. I believe heavily in the ideas of individual liberty and private property. Even though I'm a nobody, in fly-over country does not mean I have not researched the underlying principles, and have not independently come to the same conclusion as these corporate conglomerate broadband providers.

These ISPs are insanely jealous of FANG.

> By what criteria is the USA "most successful country on earth"?

Given we're talking about the Internet. How about ARPANET?

>Most countries like to copy the most successful country on Earth.

Countries with free and universal healthcare: 117. Countries with free (but not universal) healthcare: 39. Countries with universal (but not free) healthcare: 2. Countries who copied the USA in having neither free nor universal healthcare: 42. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_univers...

Countries who voted in favour of the United Nations resolution “Combating glorification of Nazism, Neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance”: 131. Countries who abstained from voting: 48. Countries who copied the USA and voted against the resolution: 2. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-un-nazi-...

Number of countries who copy the USA and spend more than more than 4.1% if their budgets on military expenditures: China, who spends 13.0%. USA spends 36.0% https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/04/24/the-to...

Number of countries who copy the US policy of not guaranteeing paid maternal leave: 2. https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/us0211webwco...

My choice of words may not be good, but other countries (esp. allies) copied MANY more things than things they didn't copy, esp. with topics related to NN... Copyright law, patents, free speech, and internet itself... and the fight against software patents was long and difficult.

yeah, I was being a bit flippant... You are definitely right that those in other countries with anti-NN agenda's will use this to advance their cause.

What your comment misses is the commitment to the principle of liberty as set forth by Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations and its influence on the U.S. Constitution. I would suggest reading all 71 Anti-Federalist Papers. Here is a good collection that was put together:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complete_Anti-Federalist

I live in the US, and agree with most of your point, but regarding military spending, a significant portion of that is due to occupation of foreign countries and external military bases. The US is basically the last country paying to maintain an empire.

The historical norm is that a successful empire is very profitable. If you have to spend money maintaining it, you're doing it wrong.

In other words: the US is not an empire. It's something that needs a different term.

What makes you say that it isn't profitable? The US has the largest GDP of any country by a large margin. Even the entire (pre-Brexit) EU combined is about 10% smaller.

But how much of the US GDP is attributable to its 'empire', especially considering the opportunity costs of the human and other capital invested in the DoD? I'd love to see the result of a detailed analysis.

Yes, and many countries would have to pay more for their own defense were the U.S. not building those bases and helping defend them.

> As a Dutchie my Internet is largely unaffected by the FCC.

Which in turn doesn't affect my outlook or my agreement with GP. I don't want to convince you either, I just want to route around you.

From what I understand you will still be put in the slow lane if you're a Dutch startup offering services to Americans. and the US market is not exactly small. It's a loss for the Internet as a whole, not only the USA.

the EU market isn't exactly small, either. it is smaller, but not small.

Which means you're going to be in the slow lane for roughly more than a half of your market.

Your internet will not be affected for exactly as long as it takes local providers to see the proof of concept and financial benefits and lobby your government to pass similar regulation, their efforts now bolstered by the ability to point to the US as a “successful” forerunner.

> No. To save the internet, we have to make the most gigantic stink the world has seen since the Trump election.

This "call to arms" happens every year or two. Basically that's a short term solution, and sooner or later a law will manage to get the votes it needs and it's game over (will be very tough to reverse).

And even the demonstrations after the Trump election did not achieve anything, by the way, so I doubt this is a good analogy.

Your solution needs to be refreshed with each election, we need a permanent solution that won't be reversed 2 years later.

Step 1: Try to convince the FCC to not vote to kill NN.

Step 2: Call your members of Congress and tell them to enshrine NN into law.

Step 3: Vote your Rep out next year if they refuse to do what you ask for.

Step 4: Vote out the President in 2020 if he vetoes NN.

Pretty straightforward, imho.

Trouble is, Ajit gets up there and talks about competition being good for the consumer, and then all the rightwingers echo that "Bigly". As wrong as this is, it will be hard to vote someone out if the facts are muddled.

I think this can easily be made a bipartisan issue, in that it's the common man vs. big, rich, controlling corporations. If I were the telecoms (and telecom lackeys), that's the movement I'd be scared of.

I agree. It's a purely populist play, and we're in a populist mood as a country.

Yes, and the Republicans conveniently ignore that most consumers in the US have very little choice in ISPs. These days you probably have the option of DSL from your phone company or the offering from your cable company.

Luckily some communities are setting up their own broadband services, but the telecom monopolies are doing their best to make it illegal for communities to do this.

Simple solution from the FCC; they'll outdate the outrage.

Simply make some rule that to the average person looks like Net-Neutrality but in reality isn't. Or go only half way.

And with that all the average people will simply tell you "but they did bring back net neutrality!" and you'll have to update the outrage.

It's a much more efficient way to deal with outrage, currently employed by EA.

I don't see how that's straightforward, especially numbers 3 and 4. Are you gonna vote out the president just for NN? Even if you don't think the other guy is gonna be much different in that regard?

Americans cast one single vote (in presidential elections) for one of two candidates, on a myriad of issues of every level of seriousness. Leaving aside the fight to convince a majority of americans, just deciding to vote against someone for NN is anything but straightforward.

I don't see why the criticisms on the idea discussed in the article. We can try both routes, give them all the flak we can for this and also try alternative paths to NN. This is an extremely uphill battle, we should be looking for every remotely-viable path.

One reason to raise stink now is to make it clear to any candidates for 2018 and 2020 elections that this is an issue to which they can pander for the sake of good PR and votes. That applies also (and, perhaps, especially) to the primaries.

This Congress has been trying to gut healthcare and is about to pass an extremely destructive and unpopular tax “reform” bill. It is obvious they don’t care about popular opinion or even their chances for re-election.

They care very deeply about reelection. In order to get reelected, they need money and to survive a primary.

They won't get money from their big $$$ donors if they don't pass the tax cut bill. They won't survive a primary if they're seen as being 'soft' on the ACA by the true believers in their party.

They don't have any idea how they're going to make it through the general election, but that's a fight for another day. They have other priorities first.

They also have to make it past the general election. GOP House members in blue states voting for the tax bill are basically acknowledging they don’t care about re-election. I suspect they hope to get a good job with their donors in exchange for committing political suicide.

I think the GOP knows they are going to get one bite at this apple, and they are taking advantage of it. Hello tax reform and good bye NN.

Just because it's a blue state, doesn't mean that it doesn't have red districts. Washington and Oregon are pretty damn blue, but it's because the western parts are ultra-blue. Eastern ones are very conservative in comparison, though. So their representatives very much care about re-election - which is why they're voting for, and very visibly supporting, the Republican agenda, because that's what their electorate demands of them.

The ones that are on shaky ground are those in areas that previously voted Republican primarily for economic rather than social reasons (i.e. for the sake of low taxes, not because they wanted to ban abortion etc), and are now flipping to blue because Republican social policies became intolerable. This is many suburban districts. And Republicans there are listening; for example, in my district (WA-8), Dave Reichert voted against AHCA.

The catch is, Republicans in those districts know that even if they pander to the new electorate somewhat, there are still enough reasons why their Democrat opponent will likely get their vote. They'd basically need to be liberal on everything except taxes (and given the nature of the tax proposal that Republicans unveiled, not even on that, since it hurts the suburban mid/high-middle class dwellers most!), at which point they might as well just switch parties. So you see a bunch of guys saying they won't run for re-election at all, and then they treat their remaining term as a means to squeeze the few last things in while they can.

How're you feeling about the choice of (someone) vs. Rossi, out of curiosity? (also, I see we have a bunch of shared connections on LinkedIn. I'm ex-Visual Studio.)

It depends on who that someone will be, of course, but I'm feeling rather optimistic - our district went for Clinton by 3 points, and I think by 2018 any Republican candidate won't be able to clearly distance themselves away from Trump and the federal GOP platform. Reichert had the benefit of being the incumbent, and being a fairly moderate Republican (or rather a very pragmatic one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIlizXcKVLY).

If you mean who I'd vote for, it would be the Dem candidate, no question. The parties are far enough now that I don't foresee a situation where a Republican candidate would be more closely aligned with me on the issues than a Democrat, even a particularly disagreeable one. But, more importantly and urgently, I think that this administration must have some counterbalance in the Congress to check it. But this is a moot question, anyway, because I'm not a citizen and cannot vote.

I meant the former, but I appreciate the answers to both.

The vast majority of Congressional districts in US are non-competitive. This means that what matters in those is the primary, not the general election. So if you're a liberal in a solid red district, threatening your Republican elected representative probably won't do much good (unless it's a swing district - those guys actually listen to some extent, especially now that Dems won a bunch of special elections in the suburbs, and there's talk of a wave next year).

But if you're a liberal in a blue district, then you should write your rep and let them know that 1) you will vote in the primary, and 2) having a firm public position on this issue will be your litmus test for who gets your vote.

Getting my elected officials to do stuff I want is hard. I guess I'll go build an autonomous vehicle instead.

Millions of people who are registered to vote simply didn't turn out last November because they thought their vote wouldn't matter, that the candidates would be about the same, or...who knows what else. If just a few tens of thousands of them happened to have voted for Clinton last November, we wouldn't even be having this discussion right now.

And for the record, I think the President should be voted out for a couple dozen things, one of which is NN.

If next year my choice of mai party reps to vote for boths support ending net neutrality, then what? Vote third party and hope a majority of my state has also turned politics into a one issue system?

It is unlikely that both candidates will be opposed to NN. NN is part of the Democratic Party platform agreed upon at the 2016 Democratic National Convention: page 9 of http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/papers_pdf/117717.pdf

However, there are a few Democrats who have voted against NN in the past, or have indicated that they do not support it.

From this vote in 2016: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2016/roll152.xml

You have:

Jim Costa (CA-16)

Scott Peters (CA-52)

Collin Peterson (MN-07)

Kyrsten Sinema (AZ-09)

Albio Sires (NJ-08)

If you live in their districts, call up their office and tell them that you want them to change their tune on NN. Go to their town halls and tell them there.

There are also four Democratic Senators who listed as being part of 'Team Cable' according to this: https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2017-10-04-democrats-...

Again, if you live in their states (MI, MO, MT, or WV) call them up and tell their staffers that you want them to change their mind on NN and tell them why. Go to their town halls and tell them there.

Bemoaning your elected officials' choices without ever trying to influence them will not change anything.

Is Trump able to override the FCC? Talk about a clear route for easy "heroism"

He follows the money. No way.

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