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Comment by awj | Hacker News Reader

> prior to the rule change in 2014 did we have such a problem?

No, we didn't, mostly because ISPs didn't have the technical capability or demonstrate the intent to violate net neutrality. We didn't need rules to stop people from doing something they were simply incapable of doing.

Once they got that ability, and showed signs they would use it, we needed the rules.

The better question here is why are ISPs lobbying so hard for the right to do something they are also promising they would never do? Companies don't fight to overturn regulations they have no interest in violating. Or, at the least, if they do they tend to make a better argument for why that's happening.

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Consider also that the major ISPs are more desperate for new income now than they have ever been. Especially the cable TV providers.

I would have a hard time believing that they are NOT looking to compete directly with us (actual information services); considering the massive advantages they are technically capable of providing their own hypothetical services while they own the pipes. I imagine they won't do a very good job of it, considering how easily they can throttle, manipulate packets of, introduce latency to, and just plain break competition (or anything they don't like). Or they'll just take the easy route and tax both ends and sell your personal information to advertisers.

Dystopian future, here we come!

The only silver lining I can imagine is that we may get LAN parties back. I miss LAN parties. Everything else about this very likely version of the future is pretty depressing.

Maybe next the water companies will lobby not to be utilities anymore and provide clean, and mostly clean water. $20 premium for water guaranteed not to cause brain-damage.

Come to think of it, will there be anything stopping ISPs from literally injecting their own ads into our applications as they move along the pipe? I can see SSL offering some protection, unless they get to pick and choose who can use SSL (which they will be able to). That's a troubling thought.

This is mostly very good, but it wasn't a lack of technical capability that kept the ISPs in line. It was the continued threat of having net neutrality legislation updated to apply to them (or worse, for them, having internet access regulated completely as a public service).

> mostly because ISPs didn't have the technical capability

The major UK ISPs have been deploying deep-packet inspection since well, well before 2014. And this is in a jurisdiction subject, at least for now, to the EU's NN rules.

They use that to throttle 'bulk' traffic such as P2P in the evenings.

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