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Comment by betterunix2 | Hacker News Reader

Not that this will make a difference in the outcome of Thursday's vote. I urge everyone to look at the actual proposed rules, and in particular the technical background and explanations. Basically, if ISPs claimed something in their comments, the FCC assumes it is true and dismisses any contradictory claims submitted by others.

The entire comment period was for show. Pai and his republican co-commissioners are going to jam this through regardless of what anyone says or does. He was brazen enough to admit, early on, that he does not care whether or not his plan is unpopular and that what the public thinks makes no difference whatsoever.

The only way to change this is to convince Congress that this is an election issue. Unfortunately there are too many other things happening right now, so net neutrality is being drowned in the noise and will likely continue to be drowned in the noise.

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I'm actually somewhat satisfied with how they're ramming this vote through right now. Not because I want to lose Net Neutrality, but because if it is going to happen, it's best that it happens now, early in Trump's term, and that the process of forcing the vote is messy.

Two possible silver linings if it does get removed on the 14th:

1. We were wrong the whole time and reversing net neutrality launches us into a golden age of fast and cheap internet for all. (Very unlikely)

2. We were right, and reversing net neutrality is as bad as we feared. While it will be painful in the short term, hopefully it's bad enough to The Internet/Net Neutrality a relevant election issue for more people.

Either way, the sure silver lining is that by hashing this out now the consequences will be fully felt by the time the next presidential election rolls around.

Can you imagine if they were trying to shove this through in the lead up to the 2020 election when everyone is distracted by all the other issues at stake in the election?

Most people are not going to realise the pain. It's one of those issues that affect people but they would never understand why. In spite of scientists saying climate change is real and it's affecting us directly (floods, heat waves,...etc) people still can't put 2 and 2 together to ask for change. I don't think ISPs would be dumb enough to drastically become cable-operatorish and charge customers for every website. The pain will be felt by small companies and competition (albeit indirectly).

I'm fairly sure they early stages will even look like it was a good change, making some people wonder why were they even fighting it.

For example excluding affiliated sites from any caps (let's stream 4k movies from Hulu, RedBox etc even if you have lower bandwidth than necessary, you would be excluded for these services) or have data caps not apply for affiliated sites.

For an extra fee you could also get similar treatment for non-affiliated sites (Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Video etc).

In the mean time everything else will gradually is getting slower and slower. Tough luck for any new startup trying to enter the market. As it already is difficult right now, it will be nearly impossible after that.

The absolutely bad things (throttling/blocking/modifying content of sites the companies don't agree with) will happen much much later.

More like they use the fees from content providers to make service nearly free, then they'll be able to plausibly say that bringing back net neutrality will make internet service more expensive. Then, no one will want to bring net neutrality back.

Like how cell phones are "free" so it's impossible to buy one without a contract.

None of the major US carriers have contracts anymore, since the start of this year.

https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/verizon-kills-two-ye...

I agree the effects won't be felt directly and probably not associated with the correct source. For example, if tiny startups have a hard time getting off the ground against competitors who have market power to get good rates from the ISPs, it will be hard to even notice the lack of something disruptive.

For example, will people notice the lack of a really great Netflix competitor that would have gotten off the ground? What about the new best search engine to topple Google Search that died out of the gates?

Most people are not going to realise the pain. It's one of those issues that affect people but they would never understand why.

I disagree. Pai and his GOP sponsors are making enemies of people who buy bandwidth by the terabyte-second. That's much worse than making enemies with people who buy ink by the barrel, as the old saying went.

Any negative consequences to this decision, real or imagined, absolutely will come back to haunt the Republicans.

That's why I don't understand why they're doing this. They are pissing off millions of people who wouldn't otherwise bother to vote against them.

> Two possible silver linings if it does get removed on the 14th:

Well, here's my bet on what will happen:

3. There will be no immediate catastrophic consequences. Over time, the Internet will become less amenable to innovation and small players and will just overall be worse than it would otherwise. But there will be no sudden dramatic change that will spur action for people who weren't already concerned.

I think this is the most likely short-term outcome, too. And what's worse is that this outcome will make it significantly harder to get back net neutrality in the future. Peeling back each anti-consumer policy one-by-one will be necessary because of the way that the ISPs will frame the debate in the future.

Over time the Internet in the United States will become less amenable to innovation. There are other countries in the world, some of which will stick to their guns and keep their net neutrality laws (or their line sharing requirements, which create the competitive pressures needed to accomplish the same thing). Startups will fare better in those other countries.

Among other things this is an issue of competitiveness for the United States.

Unfortunately the US is the biggest market. So for businesses tou habe little choice but to play by the non-neutral rules.

Worse, China is the next biggest market, but the Internet in China is even worse as far as innovation goes (censorship etc.). Europe and Japan also have various problems as far as the Internet goes, due to their strict copyright laws and other innovation-stifling rules (right to be forgotten, etc.). I doubt China will change, given their totally different view of what the Internet should look like, but there is some hope.

Eventually some country or federation of countries will recognize the opportunity to grab some of the market once America becomes less startup-friendly. It may even happen in the developing world somewhere, in countries that are being mostly ignored today, taking the rest of the world by surprise.

One of the healthy side effects can be that more frontend devs will be caring about payload their users have to download to start using the app/service/website.

Imagine a world where more people think twice before inserting tracking and adware junk into their websites!

Edit: typo

Yay! The repeal will bring Internet to it's (as FCC says) golden age times - the dialup times.

Or the ISPs just suppress all mentions of reinstating Net Neutrality.

The net could be filtered and cantonized to the point where all news about net neutrality could be blocked and people wouldn't even realize there is a majority opinion to re-instate it.

I wonder if the lack of regulatory process, and clear corruption here, would allow for a remedy in the courts. If the FCC is not fulfilling it's obligations according to the law, in terms of addressing and considering reasonable decisions, then they may be in violation of the laws that give FCC authority in the first place. I know very little about the FCC, but the DOE and FERC, up until the latest administration, were under very clear legislative imperatives in performing reasoned and justified regulation. Typically courts are quite deferential to the regulatory agencies, but when there's clear evidence of fraud, judges have been known to go with a reasoned interpretation of the law rather than just deferring to the FCC to do whatever it wants.

Existing monopoly laws could also have some bite if ISP's are not already shielded. Slow Netflix while pushing Cable subscriptions could be a rather large issue.

At this point companies like Netflix will probably do just fine (that's why they are not pressing as much about it), because of the popularity they might not even be requested to pay anything.

The issue is for companies that will try to exists after that and would offer better service than Netflix. They won't succeed because: "well, the service might be cheaper and offer more shows, but it is dogshit slow and unusable/goes against my datacap so why should I use it?"

I read...somewhere, can't find it now that I try to go looking for the source...that the most likely remedy, in that article's opinion, is the Administrative Procedures Act. The author basically said that the APA doesn't permit reversing rules without a factual basis as to why they should be reversed, particularly if the rules being reversed were recently adopted using a stronger evaluation.

I'm not versed in the APA at all so I might be remembering the article wrong but it seemed reasonable.

I think this is the piece you are referring to: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/22/opinion/courts-net-neutra...

Most relevant section:

>So drastic is the reversal of policy (if, as expected, the commission approves Mr. Pai’s proposal next month), and so weak is the evidence to support the change, that it seems destined to be struck down in court.

> The problem for Mr. Pai is that government agencies are not free to abruptly reverse longstanding rules on which many have relied without a good reason, such as a change in factual circumstances. A mere change in F.C.C. ideology isn’t enough. As the Supreme Court has said, a federal agency must “examine the relevant data and articulate a satisfactory explanation for its action.” Given that net neutrality rules have been a huge success by most measures, the justification for killing them would have to be very strong.

However, a legal challenge will likely take a while to wend it's way to the Supreme Court.

The courts that are being packed with unqualified judges?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/11/12/h...

The criticisms of Brett Talley are ignorant. The article talks about whether he has "tried a case" but he's an appellate lawyer, not a trial lawyer. Talley graduated near the top of his class at Harvard Law, completed appellate and district court clerkships, was Deputy Solicitor General in the Alabama Attorney General's office, and is currently at the Office of Legal Counsel. If he clocked in a few more years doing that line of work, he'd be perfectly qualified. But he still would never have "tried a case."

The American Bar Association unanimously declared him not qualified based on his inexperience. https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/uncategorized/GA...

The ABA criteria require a judicial nominee to generally have twelve years of legal experience, which Talley obviously doesn't. If that's all the media said about Talley, that would be fine. But the criticisms go far beyond that, misrepresent the strength of the rest of his background, and veer off into ignorant assertions about "trying cases."

Judges have lifetime tenure so maybe requiring a lengthy resume isn’t such a bad idea. This strikes me as nominating a young conservative who will serve for a long time when Republicans stonewalled Obama’s very qualified nominees.

That’s different than suggesting, as the poster above did, that someone like Talley wouldn’t be able to reach a “reasoned interpretation of the law.”

And that’s the same as ignoring the point that I made.

Senate confirmation is a political vote, one of “advice and consent”. There are no rules. Justice Thomas was not held to a “reasoned interpretation of the law” standard. Judge Garland was not rejected on a “reasoned interpretation of the law” standard. If a political hack like Talley can’t muster 51 votes in a Republican Senate, you should wonder about him.

Conversely, if a hack like Talley can muster 51 votes, I'll wonder about the Republican senators.

The ones who are mostly kind of demurring about the pedophile?

To his credit, Grassley has signaled to Trump not to proceed with the Talley nomination.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/12/politics/trump-judicial-picks/...

I'm not sure I'm willing to credit him with more than a Thank You, Captain Obvious, award.

The other nominee, Jeff Mateer, is an obscene choice by either incompetents or malicious people. Mateer has said transgender children are part of "Satan's plan." This psychotic religious nonsense injected into government should not be socially acceptable behavior in a thinking society. Someone should be fired.

But because Trump claims he hires all of the best people, we have to take the selection seriously as intentional. And since the buck stops with the president, you have to accept that he's the one whose incompetent if he isn't neither hiring good people, nor firing them when they fail this spectacularly.

I think you're talking past him. He's not saying that there aren't legitimate criticisms of the Talley nomination; he's saying that one particularly popular one happens not to be legitimate.

> I urge everyone to look at the actual proposed rules, and in particular the technical background and explanations.

They aren't even trying to make sensible, plausible justifications. For example, see paragraph 252, where they discuss paid prioritization.

They say ISPs need it because ISPs may not be able to figure out how to do usage based billing of their customers, so they need to be able to make sites like Netflix pay instead.

> He was brazen enough to admit, early on, that he does not care whether or not his plan is unpopular and that what the public thinks makes no difference whatsoever.

Looks like it. It's pretty surprising how ambivalent the guy is to public pressure.

Also, we really need to look into how government and regulation works in this country. What's the point of having a regulatory system for industries if the officials of companies in these industry lead the governmental/regulatory agencies?

If former goldman sachs officials run financial agencies and if a former verizon official runs the FCC, what's the point of these agencies?

There is nothing specific wrong with industry people working at regulatory agencies; in fact, good regulation should include the input of the regulated industries (failure to do so was a causative factor in the bankruptcy of railroads in the 60s and 70s). The problem with this proceeding is that it is based only on industry comments and ignores other voices, which is the worst way to create regulation.

Remember that Wheeler was a former cable industry lobbyist. Unlike Pai, he actually listened to non-industry voices during his proceeding and created rules based on inputs from many different sources. He did not give net neutrality advocates everything we wanted, but he did listen and did create something much better than what the industry has been demanding.

Industry people working at regulatory agencies is an obvious conflict of interest. Taking inputs from various parties, including the industry and the general public, to then make an informed decision about the best course of action in the general interest, is a completely different thing.

"Industry people working at regulatory agencies is an obvious conflict of interest."

Not necessarily. An obvious conflict of interest would be someone who has a significant financial stake in the industry, or someone who is married to a CEO in that industry, etc.

Also consider this: who is actually qualified to regulate an industry? It is often the case that the only qualified candidates are people who have worked in the industry or who have worked against it (which is just as much of a conflict of interest). Someone who is clueless could be worse: they could be more susceptible to lobbying pressure, since they have no prior knowledge of the issues they are dealing with.

In theory the job of the Senate should be to determine whether or not a candidate will be able to serve the public instead of their former industry bosses. Such people definitely exist -- Tom Wheeler is a prominent example. We also have an impeachment procedure to deal with the possibility of failure i.e. the possibility of the Senate confirming a regulator who fails to serve the public; by now there is ample evidence that confirming Pai was a mistake, but with today's hyper-partisan Congress there is not much hope for impeachment.

> Also consider this: who is actually qualified to regulate an industry?

Off the top of my head, economists and lawyers?

I don't think you need first-hand experience in an industry to regulate it. We need experts in regulation that can take input from industry and consider the public perspective.

I'm not convinced it's possible to have a career in a field and not have your opinion tainted by that experience. This is why neither industry insiders or opponents should be responsible for regulation.

> There is nothing specific wrong with industry people working at regulatory agencie

Sure. In the abstract. But in practicality, it doesn't pass the smell test. Just like if I committed a crime and my mother was judge of the case, there isn't anything specifically wrong with it. But there are potential issues of conflict of interest and she should probably recuse herself from the case.

> in fact, good regulation should include the input of the regulated industries (failure to do so was a causative factor in the bankruptcy of railroads in the 60s and 70s).

Of course regulatory agencies need input from the industry. But there is a difference between providing input and leading the agency. I'm all for input. I'm not too keen on former Directors, CEOs, etc of banks, ISPs, etc leading agencies that regulate those companies. Especially when we have people going back and forth between regulatory agencies and companies.

If you committed a crime and your mother was on the case, that would be a conflict of interest since your mother has vested interest in you.

If you have an ex-Verizon person they shouldn’t have any loyalty to the company. If they do, then there would be a conflict of interest.

I get the argument about the ex-Verizon employee - the much bigger conflict of interest is that such a person is a future-Verizon employee, as the fate of other such officials in e.g. finance sector illustrates; we get regulatory capture because the industry lobbyists promise and hand out lucrative deals to individual regulators after their term is done.

Employees do have an interest in their old companies. If nothing else working for successful companies is a good sign on a resume. But, high level employees often have close ties to other people in management and a much easier time being brought back.

> If you have an ex-Verizon person they shouldn’t have any loyalty to the company.

Yes, and people should be good at all times and not lie.

They don't necessarily have loyalty, exactly, but they do have a detailed understanding of the company's point of view and interests, coupled with possibly a much shallower understanding of the viewpoints and interests of the public.

ex-<company name> execs almost invariably have plenty of equity and personal connections with their former employer and the industry at large, so that would de facto disqualify pretty much all of them.

> It's pretty surprising how ambivalent the guy is to public pressure.

It actually could be expected. He is not an elected official, so he can easily do the bidding of corporate masters, instead of serving the public, especially if he feels that legislative power is too dysfunctional to do anything about it. It can happen even with elected officials, even more so with appointed ones.

Corporate masters implies he’s still under the employ and compensation of Verizon.

If Verizon is bribing him, they certainly wouldn’t need a former employee to do so. They can just invest in PACs or lobbyists, or even straight up bribe any elected official.

> under the employ and compensation of Verizon

Not necessarily direct employ, but serving their interest. They wouldn't be so stupid as to publicly employ him.

> they certainly wouldn’t need a former employee to do so

It was the path of least resistance for them. He was already in the FCC, and he was always backing the interests of ISP incumbents against the public, if you paid attention.

We understand his broken incentives and allegiances. But most people have at least a small amount of allegiance to and empathy with the general population. Perhaps they won't necessarily listen if the opposition is weak, or if they think they can get away with it.

But Pai has tens of millions of people vehemently opposing him. He is probably recieving jeers and hate mail and rude gestures every time he goes out in public. And people have even started harassing his family - at what point does the money cease to be worth it? Most people would have given up under a hundredth of that backlash.

One of the dirtiest aspects I've seen in this whole NN debate has been the very ugly behavior of NN proponents. That, as much as anything, has eliminated any support I might have had for NN.

Pai digs in and fights back against racist death threats? Good for him. Shame on anyone expecting him to back down in the face of that.

If you're going to dismiss a cause because some of the proponents use ugly tactics then I don't see how you can maintain any moral convictions whatsoever.

>some of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2QorHUU-Kg

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>You can't say "One thing that should remain Sacred is family, wife, and kids"... when there are families who make a living by working online. If this goes through MILLIONS of people will be fucked... I can assure you .. If this falls through, go into witness protection or some shit because you are gonna get killed. Period. 384 upvotes

>This twatwaffle needs to be burned at the stake. 301 upvotes

These are people promoting Net Neutrality. I don't support that. It is disgusting.

> I don't support that

But you implied that don't support NN itself, not disgusting comments. So do you support monopolists?

You completely ignore the actual point, logical fallacies everywhere on your part.

strawman: misrepresenting argument to make it easier to attack

ad hominem: attacking your opponent's character or personal traits instead of engaging with their argument

appeal to emotion: manipulating an emotional response in place of a valid or competing argument

texas sharpshooter: cherry-picking data clusters to suit an argument, or finding a pattern to fit a presumption

Yeah cause upvoting Reddit and Hackernews posts and typing your name into some website is really going to do anything.

If this guy is going to play dirty then I don't see why others shouldn't fight back.

That's a very self-destructive position to take. Unfortunately it also hurts the rest of us.

In that light, his performance has been stellar. Not even personal threats to him or his family sway this guy, he'll be the perfect scapegoat when this is over.

This was all Ajit's fault, but he's been sacked from public office, rejoice!

> he'll be the perfect scapegoat when this is over

Reminds me a story, where there was an official who had an arrangement to receive a payment for every day in prison (if he ever ended up there as a scapegoat for actual criminal overlords, whose crimes he was covering up).

A former Verizon employee probably has no more ties or vested interests in Verizon anymore. If they have stock or other interests then they shouldn’t be in those regulatory offices.

while the president's sons run his company and the president's daughter has an office in the White House

ethics have gone out the window for this presidency, shouldn't doesn't matter anymore

The quid pro quo usually comes later, after they leave their government post. In the form of board seats or high level positions in the companies that benefited. So, hard to police since the payoff is down the road.

Generally, you want someone who is a legal/policy nerd for the regulated industry to head that industry's regulatory agency.

For most industries, the only people who are interested enough to become legal/policy nerds are either people who work in the industry in legal/policy executive positions, or a small number of academics who specialize in those industries. The academics are usually a little too theoretical to deal with actually running an agency, and so that pretty much just leaves people from the industry.

Nothing happens in a vacuum so even telecom regulation has impacts outside the telco industry. For this reason I do not think first hand experience is that important in regulating an industry. I would much rather see someone with a history of balancing competing interests in charge rather than someone with a strong bias.

The only way to change this is to convince Congress that this is an election issue.

Here's what I don't understand, maybe someone has some insights.

Demographics is not on the side of the Republicans. It hasn't been for a long time, and the imbalance is getting worse, not only because of immigration but because the Republicans depend on older white voters. That cohort isn't growing at the rate it needs to, if the Republicans are to continue to win elections at either the local or national level. If they aren't careful, many of the gerrymandered districts they've constructed so carefully will turn into electoral deathtraps.

So, given that they must expand their appeal to younger, more diverse voters, why are they choosing this hill to die on? Internet regulation is one of the vanishingly-few issues that actually gets young people involved in the political system. It gets them to sign petitions, call their representatives, and -- who knows? -- maybe even vote.

If and when the ISPs follow through on their newly-granted powers to balkanize and channelize the Web, the outrage will be seismic. Young people and old people alike will remember who made it happen, and will respond accordingly. Every race, every gender, every faith, and almost every individual has a stake in this issue. The rest of the Republican agenda will be imperiled by the resulting groundswell, as people who wouldn't otherwise have bothered to vote do so.

In American politics, you can collude with foreign and domestic enemies to install raving demagogues, you can raise peoples' taxes, you can even start wars, but you do not mess with the Internet. The SOPA/PIPA fiasco should have made that clear enough. What exactly is the GOP expecting to happen here?

> given that they must expand their appeal to younger, more diverse voters

They gave up trying to appeal to more diverse voters long ago and are becoming increasingly desperate. So desperate that in the last election they took hacking assistance from a foreign adversary.

> why are they choosing this hill to die on?

They're not. Almost no one outside of our bubble will think about this when they go to vote.

On the other hand, this move may be expected to result in substantial campaign contributions from those who stand to benefit.

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