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Comment by pbhjpbhj | Hacker News Reader

>The browser is irrelevant to net neutrality. //

It's not the currently spoken of Net Neutrality, but it's relevant to the neutral carriage of data over the internet. If browser companies pick and choose whose data to delay (or otherwise alter) then they have the power to bias the web - Firefox could always delay scripts from other companies than Google, for example, in order to preference their business associate. They presumably aren't informing users, or requiring users to enable the function.

In short it seems highly pertinent in the net neutrality debate, to me, despite perhaps not having reached problematic levels and despite not being the specific form of neutrality that has erstwhile been grabbing the headlines.

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it's an issue with similar consequences to net neutrality, but it's very much not the same issue. The network is one layer, the client is a different layer. Let's not start forcing clients to conform to network rules, or vice versa.

additionally, the reason net neutrality is so important is because there is no consumer choice in the ISP market for many users. Even when one browser is dominant, there's a lot more choice among browser vendors, so pushing out regulation to them is less important.

But let's not muddy the waters of net neutrality by injecting separate issues into the debate. Yes, browsers should treat all traffic equally, but that isn't net neutrality.

I think the anti-net-neutrality people are running out of fresh, not yet discredited arguments.

In OSI model IIRC:

Application (software) is layer 7.

Physical connection is layer 1.

I am sure somebody will correct me.

Not sure who you're claiming is anti Net Neutrality, but if that's levelled at me it's quite wrong.

See my other comment in thread, but in short I don't think a user cares really that action is at a different level of the conceptual OSI model, they care if they can consume given media, if NN legislation shifts things so that the browser blocks the media from a particular server instead of that servers upstream ISP I don't think users are going to be applauding too much.

They should be applauding though. We can always fork Firefox if it's not acting in our best interest. We cannot fork Comcast.

Sure we can: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System

Well "cant" v. "wont" is sometimes hard to distinguish. There's little practical differences here though.

Yes, but then you need to ask yourself where do we begin, and where do we stop?

Does this pertain only to browsers, or is it to all applications/clients that have a connection to the internet? What about my XMPP clients, or my IRC clients? Do they have to follow net neutrality as well? On top of that, does a FOSS project like Firefox where the user defines what is in the packaged binary have to follow it?

Net neutrality or the law in general overreaching like that could jeopardize support, especially when it is not easy to find an answer to any of the questions I listed above.

Software freedom is important.

My opinion.

There's something to be said for being wary of browser makers influencing the web unduly, which we already see to a much greater and more damaging degree from IE/Microsoft and Chrome/Google; but mixing user-agent policy with transport neutrality only serves to muddy the water around the very important and really quite straightforward issue of IP endpoint neutrality for ISPs.

They are two separate, important issues, but confusing them serves no one.

They could, in theory, have logical equivalence. If my ISP retains neutrality wrt transport between YouTube and my client [eg to comply with legislation] they can _in_theory_ pay Mozilla instead to throttle the connection at the UA for any user with an IP on the ISPs network, delay transfer, limit total data, etc. - the effect would surely be close to identical to ISP interference wrt the traffic carried between YT and my client browser.

Because of the possibility of such an equivalence it strikes me that the issues are not _separate_, though obviously not identical either. If Firefox blocked/throttled sites but allowed others [in the same category] for money, then Mozilla through my client would be enacting the same effects as net non-neutrality. They could charge for an add-on to remove all/some blocks, or charge the server endpoint company to remove the block just for them.

The point is that for a user the important endpoint is their sensory input, and that a browser manufacture can filter/throttle/block that consumption in the way that an ISP can.

Legislation could be written that would encompass preventing a browser manufacturer from covertly interfering in data transfer, whilst equally demanding ISPs carry data regardless of origin. Equally poorly drafted legislation targeting ISPs could impact browser makers ability to implement black-/grey-/white-listing of malware, etc..

Whilst we're focussing on such bias that can interfere in our web/internet consumption I think it's the perfect time to make sure we don't solve the problem in one place only to leave a gaping hole that allows the same corporations to enact the same controls.

I agree that it's definitely relevant. In theory, users can run any browser, so it's not a big issue. In practice, the web has become so complex that it's very hard to challenge established web browsers. I think we should push for simpler standards on the web, possibly "levels" of complexity. So you can have HTML-only compliant sites for which very simple HTML-only browsers suffice; sites and browsers that implement a minimum of javascript; and "full-featured" (i.e. bloated and full of adware+tracking).

This or some similar proposal could open up competitiveness and options in the browser space, which I think would go a long way toward solving some of these issues.

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