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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

This is why we need to use encryption for everything, not just shopping, SSH, and banking. The less distinguishable packets are from noise, the more open the Internet can be.

Sadly, I'm beginning to envision the future of the Internet as a bunch of point-to-point VPN connections to trusted sites, almost exactly like UUCP or the BBSes of days past. VPNs are already essential if you live in certain countries (China, the US if COICA had passed, etc.) or want to BitTorrent your TV shows without getting sued for 30 million dollars. Someday, it might be required just to watch Netflix or search with Google. Sad.

In what world do 65536 octets representing a video cost more to deliver than 65536 representing an email? A world where greedy ISPs can tell the difference.

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The ISP can still tell where the data is coming from/to and how much of it there is. Encryption is not a solution to the threats against net neutrality.

Entirely valid point, but there are ways to handle that as well (tor networks come to mind), but it does devolve into an arm's race. Where each side is spending more time/energy protecting or cracking a packet to charge it at a specific rate.

If you think a party the size of netflix is going to use the likes of tor to stream their video I suggest you use tor right now and try to view a netflix movie through it.

"there are ways to handle that as well (tor networks come to mind)"

That's not a viable solution. Unless the TorProject has made MASSIVE gains since last I checked, it's simply not viable for low-latency or high-bandwidth use. It's not like everyone on Comcast could feasibly switch to getting their Netflix through Tor.

tor just doesn't cut it. I have tried to use or similar services like yourfreedom.net with VPN (german tor) but there is no way to stream even half-way decent video through these... They usually top around 350 kb and you need at least twice that to start to stream well.

It's not clear that encryption would make any difference in this case, because presumably Comcast can easily measure the traffic going through their direct links to Level 3.

And they can easily measure the outrage from their customers when they stop routing any traffic to or from Level 3.

You're doing that whole "charge by cost" thing that everyone here seems to frown upon, preferring instead to recommend "charge by value".

In what world can you extract more cash from 65536 octets representing a video than 65536 octets representing an email? A world where end users value them differently.

However in a truly competitive commodity market (and surely bits moving from A to B are a perfect example of a commodity), "charge by cost" and "charge by value" should converge, and when they don't we should be alarmed. If ISP X is making 1% profit on regular bits and then decides to make 10% on premium bits, why couldn't ISP Y come along and undercut them? Because the market is being manipulated through monopolies on infrastructure and lobbying for special treatment.

This truly is the clearest articulation of the economic danger of net neutrality I've ever heard.

Everyone prefers to sell on value. Everyone prefers to buy on cost. Which end it falls on reflects who has the stronger negotiating position. More money can be extracted from the video bandwidth in a world where the person buying the bandwidth doesn't have another option.

Good argument, but you've got the main point backwards. Byte-for-byte people will value the email more. It's an incredibly economical use of bandwidth. A given 64KB chunk of my video may not even arrive and it's just a momentary annoyance in the stream, if not entirely error-corrected away.

Proof in point: When IT blocks YouTube, the slackers groan. but if the exchange server goes down...

Nobody would mind Exchange being down if Youtube was available :)

After further consideration of your argument, I stand corrected.

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