Because of the massive amount of consolidation over the last few years, the death of Net Neutrality would be the best competitive moat imaginable for Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc.
While all their CEOs will make faint noises in favor of Net Neutrality, SV outspends Wall Street 2:1 on lobbying[1], the goal of which is to cement monopoly status, not to make the world a better place. Most of it goes to Republicans.
Things have changed fast; Google's lobbying spend has increased by over 50% since the SOPA blackout.
The technology industry serves the interests of capital/share-holders, not technologists.
EDIT: "Google hardly even had lobbyists back during the SOPA blackout." > "Google's lobbying spend has increased by over 50% since the SOPA blackout." h/t DannyBee below.
I don't think that's right. It will be a major shift of power from Google/Facebook/Amazon to the ISPs. Comcast could charge Google or Facebook extortionate prices to keep their websites fast. Theoretically there would be nothing stopping Comcast from completely blocking a website. Cable vs TV channel negotiations periodically end up with blackouts for the channels.
We see the consequences of a non-open Internet every day where we work in Uganda. It is common there for people to have "social bundles" that only work for Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, etc. Our users believe they have Internet access but don't understand why data from our app is not syncing when Facebook is working. It's a large barrier for us and adds a huge moat for the incumbents. We're considering more integration over WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger so we too can benefit from the cheaper data but that only locks us into those platforms and strengthens their position.
> We see the consequences of a non-open Internet every day where we work in Uganda. It is common there for people to have "social bundles" that only work for Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, etc.
This is an important perspective. Recommend sharing this insight with the article author to consider appending to their original article.
While I like the Internet being open, I don't like "net neutrality" extremism.
1) While I dislike monopoly carrier antics, I'm even more unhappy about the idea of government bureaucrats dictating network engineering standards to carriers and ISPs. If you build a network with caches/content servers close to users, and expensive backhaul back to your network core, you can offer essentially unlimited traffic to users hitting the cache, and still provide more limited access to other stuff. I'd prefer high bandwidth everywhere, but that isn't always an option. It should be a market decision, not a national government decision.
2) The real problems with lack of NN are due to lack of competition in the access provider market. Focus on fixing that. A lot of this is due to local governments requiring providers cover entire markets to cover any of a market -- if someone wants to build another WebPass or CondoInternet and only serve high-density developments, that's great! Trenching fiber to single family homes is marginal anyway, but if you have low take-up in a neighborhood it is even worse. If you are going to push for regulation, have it be regulation to empower actual competition in the network access market.
3) Zero-rating in emerging markets (e.g. FB in India) is really the only way for many lower income users to afford services at all -- particularly for video services.
"It should be a market decision, not a national government decision."
Funny how you call other extremists. This is a pure ideological viewpoint that has proven to be wrong in how internet and telecommunications evolved. It was built on standards and it was built on national and international regulations. It's why you can take a phone used in Germany and use it in India.
"3) Zero-rating in emerging markets (e.g. FB in India) is really the only way for many lower income users to afford services at all -- particularly for video services."
What are you basing this on? Data is very cheap and cost has been decreasing rapidly the last years. If you can afford a device that can play internet video then you can afford the data. Having lived in Cambodia over a few years I have witnessed the extreme uptake in mobile phones in a developing country (a very poor one too). A GB of data is about one dollar. It's used by garment factory workers earning about $130/month. It's used by women selling their own produce at the market. We are seeing the same in Myanmar with mobile phones being used along nearly all income groups. It's really obnoxious to see Facebook and supporters making arguments of farmers earning a dollar a day when they try to introduce a closed network. Poor people got 99 problems and paying top dollars for watching a video online isn't one of them. Those who cannot afford data cannot afford a usable phone. If Facebook wants to help these people in India then there is a bunch of ways of doing so that doesn't lock people and countries into a walled garden from a tech giant.
So the NN side are the extremists. Not the side that wants to radically change the way the internet has worked for 40 years. Not the side that wants to upend the most innovative segment of the economy in favor of dinausour monoplies, radically reshaping the foundations of billions of dollars in investment and billions more in created wealth. Those guys are "conservative" right?
> you can offer essentially unlimited traffic to users hitting the cache, and still provide more limited access to other stuff. I'd prefer high bandwidth everywhere, but that isn't always an option.
If you are a small company trying to start an internet based business, I'm pretty sure you'd take "limited bandwidth for all" over "high bandwidth for the competition; limited bandwidth for me" anytime.
That is also the best way to ensure the 'lower bound' for bandwidth is kept as high as possible.
What do you mean by extremism? I view net neutrality as the requirement to treat all bits equally regardless of source, which is kind of a binary one.
I think as long as we are talking about the hardware infrastructure, (2) is a fundamental problem that cannot be fixed by adding competition, because it shares some common features with utilities like water, electricity, etc (making me believe internet access ought to be treated more like a utility). Maybe a better solution is a national commitment to fund and build quality internet access infrastrcture for the entire country, then encourage competition among what flows over those wires. (Disclaimer: not an economist and do not have expertise on this subject.)
> ...I'm even more unhappy about the idea of government bureaucrats dictating network engineering standards to carriers and ISPs.
Why? Government bureaucrats dictate aviation engineering standards to airplane manufacturers, automobile engineering standards to car manufacturers, radio engineering standards to electronics manufacturers, and so on. These are generally good things: they ensure that citizens can have a reasonable expectation of safety and that resources are shared fairly.
Even with better competition, the ISPs will still wield a tremendous amount of power - internet access is critical to modern, prosperous life, so demand will be quite inelastic regardless of what they do to consumers. Furthermore, lifting regulations that providers must service an entire market won't help the many consumers who are in single family homes. They'll be left to pay for the service of a monopoly (or a duopoly if they're lucky) who can now legally extort smaller content providers without the power and clout to negotiate better terms.
Yeah, I do think more competition between providers would naturally solve a lot of these problems. There's to much politics involved, even for a company as big as Google. At&t for example suing in Louisville.
The FCC and states should do something to help foster more competition and lowing the barrier to entry.
>Zero-rating in emerging markets (e.g. FB in India) is really the only way for many lower income users to afford services at all -- particularly for video services.
This is too insidious and must be killed
Firstly - google offers free, complete internet via wifi at train stations in India. This solves multiple problems at once and actually makes an impact. (No last mile issues, at a major node where millions of people interact every day)
Secondly - Zero rating as proposed in India, would allow for a small curated list, which of course would be done by Facebook.
As zero rating stood, it was used by college kids who wanted free Facebook. Not by Kanta Bhen, in the middle of no where trying to find medical advice.
Thirdly-importantly: Wikipedia is not the internet. Facebook is not the internet. Google is not the internet.
These are fundamentally sites on the internet, and while hugely important to the English speaking world, the real value is the place where these things were made possible. And that is the internet.
That is what India risks losing, at a time in its development when it's more prepared to make pong than it is to make candy crush.
Sure, theres huge English speaking populations in the cities.
But rural India speaks a whole menagerie of local languages, many of which don't share a common root language.
So removing the chance for people to actually see that open, flat network, connecting everyone around the world is a massive short sighted loss.
Your first point isn't traditionally included in net neutrality – that belief, and everything about bureaucrats dictating standards was created out of whole cloth by the ISP lobbying effort.
The core idea is only fairness: e.g. Comcast can't throttle or charge for connectivity based on your perceived ability to pay and their in-house service shouldn't get separate pricing.
Similarly, zero-rating isn't usually considered a network neutrality problem as long as the option is open to everyone at the same pricing. It becomes anticompetitive if e.g. you're quoted twice what Comcast charges the company they have an interest in.
> The real problems with lack of NN are due to lack of competition in the access provider market. Focus on fixing that.
Easier said than done. As with utilities like power, water, or gas, it's not exactly that easy to get multiple companies running infrastructure to every home.
And to be clear, all of Americas Internet provider problems stem from the last mile monopolies, not the core infrastructure.
I agree there is a lot of detrimental regulatory overhead, but I disagree that it is the primary hurdle.
Last mile infastructure is not fluid. If the customer doesn't buy, it can't be sold to someone else and the builder is stuck with the bill. It's just too expensive to build and maintain for investors to want to enter in saturated markets.
Actually, this is why I feel wireless networks need less regulation than wired ones. Radio spectrum is fluid and normal market marchanics are more at play.
Zero rating in India was never a move that helped anyone in India afford services, it was just designed to get them into a locked network that had access to nothing but Facebook. And it was very clear that India had no patience for that sort of thing with the way it went down.
This is not the argument you make against net neutrality.
Yet another person who views "the market" as the end all be all decision maker. Learn to think beyond money, the universe is much bigger than a pile of paper
1. Till an extent. Free markets are not always in the interest of consumers.
3. Terrible idea. No one wants FB to be the gatekeeper. And no its not the only way. Many state govts (especially Telangana) are rolling out programs to provide data access to poor people. Telangana in particular is laying out the fiber optic network statewide wherever the ground is being dug up for more critical infrastructure projects like water and gas.
Your point stand only when the markets are ideal and utopian. Unfortunately it can only happen when the companies are not beholden to shareholder interests.
> the idea of government bureaucrats dictating network engineering standards to carriers and ISPs
I have to admit I read that and I completely discount the rest of your comment. Nobody who actually believes in even the concept of sensible government regulation uses phrasing like this. I'm surprised you didn't call out "three letter agencies" too.
And besides that I believe you're just trying to fool people too stupid to know what NN is when you say net neutrality "dictates network engineering standards". I don't think your comment is intellectually honest at all.
The utility should be the fiber (or spectrum). Regulate that; leave the ISPs to then compete openly.
Today's software can enable multiple ISPs to share the fiber/spectrum. I could then have 10 ISPs today and 15 ISPs tomorrow. I might use ISP #1 for certain content, and ISP #2 for certain services.
ISPs essentially become a function of the services and content they provide, and how they provide it, in an ultra-competitive, granular market. The way it should be.
This is a difficult question. Emotionally, I am a net neutrality absolutist, but I think I can talk myself out of it, which to me means that the conversation is complex.
Should the power company be able to offer you a discounted rate if you host equipment that offsets their cost (for instance: a powerwall)[1]?
I think that the answer to that question is yes.
Well okay, then should your ISP be able to offer you a discounted rate to use services that offset their cost (youtube, which has an cache near you, vs vimeo, which doesn't)? If the power company can do this, then why can't the ISP?
Again, I don't like this, but I can't think of a consistent explanation for why they shouldn't be allowed to dynamically charge you based on their cost.
[1]: I don't know enough about the electrical grid to know if a powerwall could actually be used in a way that offsets the cost to a power utility or not. I don't think that the correctness of this statement matters to the example. Substitute "a powerwall" for "equipment that saves the power company money".
I think a closer analogy would be: Should the power company be able to offer you a discount based on the brand of appliance you use. e.g. If you had a GE fridge in your house should you get a discount on your power usage (all other things being equal). So if you have a GE fridge you pay $0.10 per kilowatt, but a Samsung fridge will cost you $0.15
From my perspective, along the last mile a bit is a bit. The fact that they may have some back-bone infrastructure that optimizes delivery of traffic to an edge-node for youtube or Facebook doesn't really apply to me (e.g. it is not something I control). The fact that e.g. Comcast and Facebook can do a deal that monopolizes in their favor vs. other social networks/ISPs is not exactly to my benefit. I can't control that deal like I can control adding "a powerwall" in my house.
Scalia gives this example in a 2005 minority opinion.[1]
If a Powerwall saves the utility money, then any discount flowing from that is just returning money to the customer. My watching a video on Facebook instead of YouTube does nothing like that.[2]
[2] As an aside, neither do Powerwalls. Utilities sell commodities, so any savings must be realizable as reduced usage. E.g. if solar were cheaper but for storage, utilities could buy storage themselves.
In a way, I'd say what your describing as far as power utilities is already in effect. There are a good number of people that charge their batteries off peak when the power is cheaper such that they can either use it later on peak when they would have to pay more, or even sell that power back to the grid when it's in more demand.
I think the issue here is that power is binary as far as the argument here is concerned, you have it or you don't, but influencing consumer patterns on data usage has the potential to seriously influence how they use the internet in a way that paying differing amounts for power doesn't.
Competition is one of the most powerful driving forces of the internet today. The idea a lone programmer can offer a service that compares to multinational companies (in some areas, obviously not others) is phenomenal. But say consumers or that developer suddenly have to pay a large ongoing entry cost due to the fact that the product that they have made and are competing with is high bandwidth.
Innovation dies overnight without net neutrality.
The comparison to the power company is natural because the hardware infrastructure is similar, but the crucial difference is that power lines don't carry communications (for the most part). Energy is more easily made into a commodity because it can be quantified in natural physical units. For communications it's much harder. The definition of "services" like YouTube will be necessarily incomplete because its definition is socially-mediated to begin with. Or, if ISPs were to charge based not on services but instead go deeper, so e.g. ICMP and UDP might be cheaper than TCP, you still need to rely on some judgment made by someone out there. These necessarily incomplete definitions will create huge inefficiencies in the system as a whole, generate useless extra work, and so on.
It hobbles the system as a whole in order to provide the justification for price differentials which would drive profits for ISPs. This is basically a money grab on the part of the ISPs (natural monopolies).
> should your ISP be able to offer you a discounted rate to use services that offset their cost (youtube, which has an cache near you, vs vimeo, which doesn't)?
I think this could be reasonable as long as it's not by having YouTube do a deal with the ISP, but is by a company-neutral measure of how much costs are actually lowered for the ISP (which is passed onto you). If Vimeo can do some engineering to reduce cost to the ISP and automatically have the lowered cost passed onto you without Vimeo having to negotiate some special deal with the ISP, then that becomes another area they can compete and innovate on, and hence harnesses the power of competition rather than foster anticompetitive practices.
By contrast, if special deals are allowed ("YouTube traffic is free"), then it would be mutually beneficial for monopolies to offer ISPs kickbacks in return for helping them maintain their monopoly by suppressing competition, while the rest of us lose out.
Maybe a better example is paying more for electricity from 'green' sources like solar/wind. This is an option offered by PG&E right now.
Comparing to websites, you can have all the "common" websites that have local caches, peered with your ISP directly, for low rate X. If you want access to a niche video streaming startup that has to go through other peers we haven't optimized for, you pay more.
It's still not a perfect analogy, but it forms a similar comparison "Where do I get (content|electricty) from?"
I am of the opinion that not only is traffic shaping not inherently evil but is a valuable feature that can be used to improve network efficiency but I cannot trust Comcast and the others to favour innovation and technological improvement over short term profits.
The internet is what makes Silicon Valley go round. Everyone, including Sam Altman, needs to be an activist. Asking for someone else to take point on something so fundamental is like asking Natives to take point on water prot-- wait.
> Doing this allows the government to ensure a level playing field
In theory this is a good argument. In practice, my experience is that this argument causes people to write off net neutrality as just being something that's about letting tech bros make lots of money. I've even heard this from folks in the tech industry, who really should know better.
An argument that may be more convincing is that the Internet is the only media channel where we don't get all of our information from the same three or four mega conglomerates. But if net neutrality is eliminated then ISPs are going to pull a Martin Shkreli, and overnight your cost of hosting a Wordpress blog is going to go from $5 a month to $25,000 per month or whatever.
When this happens the only way to have a blog will be to host your content on Facebook, who will be able to decide which points of view are allowed and which are banned. If we lose the Internet, the last free media channel, then there is no going back. Not just on this issue, but on every issue.
The best argument I've found for convincing conservatives is to stress that the internet is a platform for commerce, and healthy commerce requires equality of opportunity -- specifically, the opportunity for consumers to access your business.
ISPs literally "own the road", to create an analogy for internet businesses. If the only road company in town installs a toll booth or a series of speed bumps in front of McDonald's because Burger King paid them to, it artificially distorts the market in a way that allows successful companies to pay to entrench themselves and fend off competition.
Innovation and disruption inherently require free and fair access to the storefronts of upstarts, whether physical or digital. To slant the playing field with throttling or zero-rating is tantamount to a big box corp having the ability to pay someone to install a toll booth in front of my competing mom and pop business.
The internet is not free and open because some companies are complying with regulations. The internet is free and open because that's what the internet is. If ISP's, content providers, whoever else wants to provide services which aren't free and open then they're not part of the internet. It's sad if lots of people lose internet access because Comcast stops offering it, but the internet won't go away. Other companies will offer free and open access and the internet will live on with those folks.
If it comes to it, you can come over to my house and plug into my ethernet and we'll grab a Slackware CD and start a new internet if we have to. Deal?
I don't think that NN legislation is the answer. It's a social solution to a technical problem. We shouldn't be making it illegal to discriminate between traffic types, we should be making it impossible. Encrypt everything by default, encrypt and anonymize DNS, and generally get rid of the ability for ISPs to tell one data stream from another. Unfortunately this requires re-architecting quite a lot of the Internet, so it's even less likely to happen quickly than getting a bunch of politicians to stop listening to lobbyists or ISPs to actually compete with one another.
Like Altman, I am amazed that this is not inflaming the community again. In order to pass an unpopular law, you just need to try to pass it several times, until the public gets tired of protesting?
> But this idea is under attack, and I'm surprised the tech community isn't speaking out more forcefully. Although many leading tech companies are now the incumbents, I hope we'll all remember that openness helped them achieve their great success. It could be disastrous for future startups if this were to change--openness is what made the recent wave of innovation happen.
Is it surprising? What organization is supposed to speak up? Tech workers don't have a union so nobody is lobbying for us in DC. We have to hope that enough huge companies and their leaders will act in the way we want and I don't exactly expect Zuckerberg and Thiel to represent me and my interests in Washington.
As I have said before during previous net neutrality "crises", this is just a symptom of extreme centralization.
The same thing that caused the Indian public to reject internet.org curated by Facebook.
Once we get massive consolidation, whether of banks, telcos, cable companies, social networks, phone makers or whatever else is "too big to fail" then your choice is illusory in the first place. Title I vs Title II isn't the most meaningful choice.
Originally the Internet was designed with no single point of failure, but now email, the web, streaming video, etc. has been centralized.
What we need to do is greenlight technology to enable decentralized:
+ Social Networking instead of server farms whose engineers post on highscalability
+ Mesh Networking instead of cellphone carriers whose networks go down in an emergency
+ Power Generation instead of a power grid that can cut you off anytime
Bitcoin decentralized money. Git decentralized version control. Look at how the power and trust dynamics shifted. That's what we need.
The best way to do that is to fund open source hardware and software projects that will enable this technology to be widely available, and then regulators will have to expand their frameworks to allow it, as they did with bitcoin.
I think the tipping point last time (SOPA/PIPA protests) was when Reddit, Wikipedia, Google, etc. went dark. It's sad we don't have Aaron Swartz to help this time around. It's good to see Sam offering help, but who is actually going to step up?
I don't think activism is the answer to these problems. Instead, we need to show consumer benefits of an open internet. Right now, people are totally loving the mono-culture and the internet silos that the mega corps are building (facebook, whatsapp, gmail, google, chrome, apple app store, github to name a few). It's going to hard to convince them unless you can show them tangible benefits.
I think the big companies have totally nailed it. They have kept things free. And they have kept the population sufficiently distracted that there is no time for 'activism' or thinking of society. This means that the big corps can now push reforms unquestioned in their favor.
The tech community rallied pretty hard in favor of net neutrality last go-round, they were just lucky that Wheeler (head of the FCC) agreed with them.
I think there isn't anything specific to fight against now as there was with SOPA. Once a specific legislation/regulation appears, I think the tech world will strongly oppose again. I also suspect the large tech companies are trying to use their lobbying power behind the scenes preemptively again.
To the folks on HN who don't vehemently, vehemently oppose a non-neutral system, your line of thinking puzzles the hell out of me. Is the idea that government regulation is bad in all cases but corporate regulation is OK in all cases? Why? Because you've bought into free market forces making all things better no matter what?
Those forces only make things better unless they don't. To me, it's crazy that's not immediately clear.
In this case, the regulation is for keeping the system free unless you're a monopoly or part of an oligopoly. Your future chances of being in that camp are so minuscule and even smaller if you support killing off Net Neutrality. Are you fighting on behalf your future self that will likely never exist? That's arrogant and delusional.
This is not what Ayn Rand meant by espousing the public good is best served when people are self-interested. That's not the same thing as being delusional.
> There's an argument that Internet Service Providers should be able to charge a metered rate based on usage. I'm not sure whether I agree with this, but in principle it seems ok. That's how we pay for public utilities.
I can monitor and control the power usage of my electrical appliances.
I can control outgoing network requests from my networked devices.
I cannot control what is sent to my network from the outside. It doesn't make much sense to be charged for what someone else sends to me. Even if I shut off my network device, a particularly rude service might just continue blindly sending data my way, running up my costs with no way to opt out.
Typical postal mail delivery is paid for by the sender, not the recipient. It becomes complicated here.
I was convinced in favor of net neutrality by a 2007 study at the University of Florida.[1] When ISPs are allowed to charge content providers individually, there is less incentive to improve overall bandwidth. There's also an incentive to cripple the free tier, especially if it can be done subtly or by neglect over time. So net neutrality seems like good policy.
If the physical line itself was separated from the ISP providing you service on the line, this problem would solve itself through natural competition. We almost saw this happen with ADSL but it lost out to the fatter pipes of coax and fiber.
Most people have either one or zero options for coax (i.e. cable) or fiber. That leads to a monopoly where you either have to take whatever Comcast / Time Warner / Verizon offer or live with craptacular DSL. Get rid of that monopoly and have the maintenance of those pipes be run by the local municipality. Then you can have real competition.
>What's clearly not OK is taking it further--charging different services different rates based on their relationships with ISPs. You wouldn't accept your electric company charging you different rates depending on the manufacturer of each of your appliances.
This does happen though. Electric companies, phone companies, etc all charge different rates based on who is using the service. Based off of different programs and income based subsidies who is using the service determines the cost paid. This also effects what producers sell to the low end of the spectrum. If electricity is substantially cheaper for lower income consumers, they will care less about paying for better energy efficiency. So you are technically paying a different rate based off what your appliances are.
[+] [-] confounded|9 years ago|reply
While all their CEOs will make faint noises in favor of Net Neutrality, SV outspends Wall Street 2:1 on lobbying[1], the goal of which is to cement monopoly status, not to make the world a better place. Most of it goes to Republicans.
Things have changed fast; Google's lobbying spend has increased by over 50% since the SOPA blackout.
The technology industry serves the interests of capital/share-holders, not technologists.
[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-18/outspendi...
EDIT: "Google hardly even had lobbyists back during the SOPA blackout." > "Google's lobbying spend has increased by over 50% since the SOPA blackout." h/t DannyBee below.
[+] [-] throwaway399|9 years ago|reply
Google for ex - https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00428623
Microsoft also almost 2x to dems - https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000115&l...
[+] [-] guelo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DannyBee|9 years ago|reply
Errr, the DC office had 100+ people at that point, so ....
(IE i'm not sure why you think that, and given it's completely wrong, i'm going to go with 'you just have no idea what you are talking about')
[+] [-] azundo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MarkSummer|9 years ago|reply
This is an important perspective. Recommend sharing this insight with the article author to consider appending to their original article.
[+] [-] botverse|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lsseckman|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdl|9 years ago|reply
1) While I dislike monopoly carrier antics, I'm even more unhappy about the idea of government bureaucrats dictating network engineering standards to carriers and ISPs. If you build a network with caches/content servers close to users, and expensive backhaul back to your network core, you can offer essentially unlimited traffic to users hitting the cache, and still provide more limited access to other stuff. I'd prefer high bandwidth everywhere, but that isn't always an option. It should be a market decision, not a national government decision.
2) The real problems with lack of NN are due to lack of competition in the access provider market. Focus on fixing that. A lot of this is due to local governments requiring providers cover entire markets to cover any of a market -- if someone wants to build another WebPass or CondoInternet and only serve high-density developments, that's great! Trenching fiber to single family homes is marginal anyway, but if you have low take-up in a neighborhood it is even worse. If you are going to push for regulation, have it be regulation to empower actual competition in the network access market.
3) Zero-rating in emerging markets (e.g. FB in India) is really the only way for many lower income users to afford services at all -- particularly for video services.
[+] [-] sleepyhead|9 years ago|reply
Funny how you call other extremists. This is a pure ideological viewpoint that has proven to be wrong in how internet and telecommunications evolved. It was built on standards and it was built on national and international regulations. It's why you can take a phone used in Germany and use it in India.
"3) Zero-rating in emerging markets (e.g. FB in India) is really the only way for many lower income users to afford services at all -- particularly for video services."
What are you basing this on? Data is very cheap and cost has been decreasing rapidly the last years. If you can afford a device that can play internet video then you can afford the data. Having lived in Cambodia over a few years I have witnessed the extreme uptake in mobile phones in a developing country (a very poor one too). A GB of data is about one dollar. It's used by garment factory workers earning about $130/month. It's used by women selling their own produce at the market. We are seeing the same in Myanmar with mobile phones being used along nearly all income groups. It's really obnoxious to see Facebook and supporters making arguments of farmers earning a dollar a day when they try to introduce a closed network. Poor people got 99 problems and paying top dollars for watching a video online isn't one of them. Those who cannot afford data cannot afford a usable phone. If Facebook wants to help these people in India then there is a bunch of ways of doing so that doesn't lock people and countries into a walled garden from a tech giant.
[+] [-] guelo|9 years ago|reply
So the NN side are the extremists. Not the side that wants to radically change the way the internet has worked for 40 years. Not the side that wants to upend the most innovative segment of the economy in favor of dinausour monoplies, radically reshaping the foundations of billions of dollars in investment and billions more in created wealth. Those guys are "conservative" right?
[+] [-] thomasahle|9 years ago|reply
If you are a small company trying to start an internet based business, I'm pretty sure you'd take "limited bandwidth for all" over "high bandwidth for the competition; limited bandwidth for me" anytime.
That is also the best way to ensure the 'lower bound' for bandwidth is kept as high as possible.
[+] [-] bo1024|9 years ago|reply
I think as long as we are talking about the hardware infrastructure, (2) is a fundamental problem that cannot be fixed by adding competition, because it shares some common features with utilities like water, electricity, etc (making me believe internet access ought to be treated more like a utility). Maybe a better solution is a national commitment to fund and build quality internet access infrastrcture for the entire country, then encourage competition among what flows over those wires. (Disclaimer: not an economist and do not have expertise on this subject.)
[+] [-] rybosome|9 years ago|reply
Why? Government bureaucrats dictate aviation engineering standards to airplane manufacturers, automobile engineering standards to car manufacturers, radio engineering standards to electronics manufacturers, and so on. These are generally good things: they ensure that citizens can have a reasonable expectation of safety and that resources are shared fairly.
Even with better competition, the ISPs will still wield a tremendous amount of power - internet access is critical to modern, prosperous life, so demand will be quite inelastic regardless of what they do to consumers. Furthermore, lifting regulations that providers must service an entire market won't help the many consumers who are in single family homes. They'll be left to pay for the service of a monopoly (or a duopoly if they're lucky) who can now legally extort smaller content providers without the power and clout to negotiate better terms.
[+] [-] Keverw|9 years ago|reply
The FCC and states should do something to help foster more competition and lowing the barrier to entry.
http://www.recode.net/2016/2/26/11588286/google-fiber-swings...
[+] [-] intended|9 years ago|reply
This is too insidious and must be killed
Firstly - google offers free, complete internet via wifi at train stations in India. This solves multiple problems at once and actually makes an impact. (No last mile issues, at a major node where millions of people interact every day)
Secondly - Zero rating as proposed in India, would allow for a small curated list, which of course would be done by Facebook.
As zero rating stood, it was used by college kids who wanted free Facebook. Not by Kanta Bhen, in the middle of no where trying to find medical advice.
Thirdly-importantly: Wikipedia is not the internet. Facebook is not the internet. Google is not the internet.
These are fundamentally sites on the internet, and while hugely important to the English speaking world, the real value is the place where these things were made possible. And that is the internet.
That is what India risks losing, at a time in its development when it's more prepared to make pong than it is to make candy crush.
Sure, theres huge English speaking populations in the cities.
But rural India speaks a whole menagerie of local languages, many of which don't share a common root language.
So removing the chance for people to actually see that open, flat network, connecting everyone around the world is a massive short sighted loss.
[+] [-] acdha|9 years ago|reply
The core idea is only fairness: e.g. Comcast can't throttle or charge for connectivity based on your perceived ability to pay and their in-house service shouldn't get separate pricing.
Similarly, zero-rating isn't usually considered a network neutrality problem as long as the option is open to everyone at the same pricing. It becomes anticompetitive if e.g. you're quoted twice what Comcast charges the company they have an interest in.
[+] [-] pharrlax|9 years ago|reply
That's all well and good where competitive markets exist, but in many places, they simply don't.
Only 23% of American census blocks, for example, have more than 1 option for 25MBPS+ internet.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/08/us-br...
[+] [-] jaredklewis|9 years ago|reply
Easier said than done. As with utilities like power, water, or gas, it's not exactly that easy to get multiple companies running infrastructure to every home.
And to be clear, all of Americas Internet provider problems stem from the last mile monopolies, not the core infrastructure.
I agree there is a lot of detrimental regulatory overhead, but I disagree that it is the primary hurdle.
Last mile infastructure is not fluid. If the customer doesn't buy, it can't be sold to someone else and the builder is stuck with the bill. It's just too expensive to build and maintain for investors to want to enter in saturated markets.
Actually, this is why I feel wireless networks need less regulation than wired ones. Radio spectrum is fluid and normal market marchanics are more at play.
[+] [-] pcnix|9 years ago|reply
This is not the argument you make against net neutrality.
[+] [-] BinaryWaves|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] inapis|9 years ago|reply
3. Terrible idea. No one wants FB to be the gatekeeper. And no its not the only way. Many state govts (especially Telangana) are rolling out programs to provide data access to poor people. Telangana in particular is laying out the fiber optic network statewide wherever the ground is being dug up for more critical infrastructure projects like water and gas.
Your point stand only when the markets are ideal and utopian. Unfortunately it can only happen when the companies are not beholden to shareholder interests.
[+] [-] 1_2__3|9 years ago|reply
I have to admit I read that and I completely discount the rest of your comment. Nobody who actually believes in even the concept of sensible government regulation uses phrasing like this. I'm surprised you didn't call out "three letter agencies" too.
And besides that I believe you're just trying to fool people too stupid to know what NN is when you say net neutrality "dictates network engineering standards". I don't think your comment is intellectually honest at all.
[+] [-] gz5|9 years ago|reply
Today's software can enable multiple ISPs to share the fiber/spectrum. I could then have 10 ISPs today and 15 ISPs tomorrow. I might use ISP #1 for certain content, and ISP #2 for certain services.
ISPs essentially become a function of the services and content they provide, and how they provide it, in an ultra-competitive, granular market. The way it should be.
[+] [-] blhack|9 years ago|reply
Should the power company be able to offer you a discounted rate if you host equipment that offsets their cost (for instance: a powerwall)[1]?
I think that the answer to that question is yes.
Well okay, then should your ISP be able to offer you a discounted rate to use services that offset their cost (youtube, which has an cache near you, vs vimeo, which doesn't)? If the power company can do this, then why can't the ISP?
Again, I don't like this, but I can't think of a consistent explanation for why they shouldn't be allowed to dynamically charge you based on their cost.
[1]: I don't know enough about the electrical grid to know if a powerwall could actually be used in a way that offsets the cost to a power utility or not. I don't think that the correctness of this statement matters to the example. Substitute "a powerwall" for "equipment that saves the power company money".
[+] [-] reggieband|9 years ago|reply
From my perspective, along the last mile a bit is a bit. The fact that they may have some back-bone infrastructure that optimizes delivery of traffic to an edge-node for youtube or Facebook doesn't really apply to me (e.g. it is not something I control). The fact that e.g. Comcast and Facebook can do a deal that monopolizes in their favor vs. other social networks/ISPs is not exactly to my benefit. I can't control that deal like I can control adding "a powerwall" in my house.
[+] [-] beefman|9 years ago|reply
If a Powerwall saves the utility money, then any discount flowing from that is just returning money to the customer. My watching a video on Facebook instead of YouTube does nothing like that.[2]
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/05/net-n...
[2] As an aside, neither do Powerwalls. Utilities sell commodities, so any savings must be realizable as reduced usage. E.g. if solar were cheaper but for storage, utilities could buy storage themselves.
[+] [-] TOMDM|9 years ago|reply
I think the issue here is that power is binary as far as the argument here is concerned, you have it or you don't, but influencing consumer patterns on data usage has the potential to seriously influence how they use the internet in a way that paying differing amounts for power doesn't. Competition is one of the most powerful driving forces of the internet today. The idea a lone programmer can offer a service that compares to multinational companies (in some areas, obviously not others) is phenomenal. But say consumers or that developer suddenly have to pay a large ongoing entry cost due to the fact that the product that they have made and are competing with is high bandwidth. Innovation dies overnight without net neutrality.
[+] [-] defgeneric|9 years ago|reply
It hobbles the system as a whole in order to provide the justification for price differentials which would drive profits for ISPs. This is basically a money grab on the part of the ISPs (natural monopolies).
[+] [-] laughinghan|9 years ago|reply
I think this could be reasonable as long as it's not by having YouTube do a deal with the ISP, but is by a company-neutral measure of how much costs are actually lowered for the ISP (which is passed onto you). If Vimeo can do some engineering to reduce cost to the ISP and automatically have the lowered cost passed onto you without Vimeo having to negotiate some special deal with the ISP, then that becomes another area they can compete and innovate on, and hence harnesses the power of competition rather than foster anticompetitive practices.
By contrast, if special deals are allowed ("YouTube traffic is free"), then it would be mutually beneficial for monopolies to offer ISPs kickbacks in return for helping them maintain their monopoly by suppressing competition, while the rest of us lose out.
[+] [-] colonelxc|9 years ago|reply
Comparing to websites, you can have all the "common" websites that have local caches, peered with your ISP directly, for low rate X. If you want access to a niche video streaming startup that has to go through other peers we haven't optimized for, you pay more.
It's still not a perfect analogy, but it forms a similar comparison "Where do I get (content|electricty) from?"
[+] [-] k_lander|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brothercolor|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Alex3917|9 years ago|reply
In theory this is a good argument. In practice, my experience is that this argument causes people to write off net neutrality as just being something that's about letting tech bros make lots of money. I've even heard this from folks in the tech industry, who really should know better.
An argument that may be more convincing is that the Internet is the only media channel where we don't get all of our information from the same three or four mega conglomerates. But if net neutrality is eliminated then ISPs are going to pull a Martin Shkreli, and overnight your cost of hosting a Wordpress blog is going to go from $5 a month to $25,000 per month or whatever.
When this happens the only way to have a blog will be to host your content on Facebook, who will be able to decide which points of view are allowed and which are banned. If we lose the Internet, the last free media channel, then there is no going back. Not just on this issue, but on every issue.
[+] [-] pharrlax|9 years ago|reply
ISPs literally "own the road", to create an analogy for internet businesses. If the only road company in town installs a toll booth or a series of speed bumps in front of McDonald's because Burger King paid them to, it artificially distorts the market in a way that allows successful companies to pay to entrench themselves and fend off competition.
Innovation and disruption inherently require free and fair access to the storefronts of upstarts, whether physical or digital. To slant the playing field with throttling or zero-rating is tantamount to a big box corp having the ability to pay someone to install a toll booth in front of my competing mom and pop business.
[+] [-] erikpukinskis|9 years ago|reply
If it comes to it, you can come over to my house and plug into my ethernet and we'll grab a Slackware CD and start a new internet if we have to. Deal?
[+] [-] bifrost|9 years ago|reply
So why didn't that happen prior to now? The NN legislation as proposed is new and the internet existed just fine prior to it.
[+] [-] SAI_Peregrinus|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] d--b|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cb21|9 years ago|reply
Is it surprising? What organization is supposed to speak up? Tech workers don't have a union so nobody is lobbying for us in DC. We have to hope that enough huge companies and their leaders will act in the way we want and I don't exactly expect Zuckerberg and Thiel to represent me and my interests in Washington.
[+] [-] EGreg|9 years ago|reply
The same thing that caused the Indian public to reject internet.org curated by Facebook.
Once we get massive consolidation, whether of banks, telcos, cable companies, social networks, phone makers or whatever else is "too big to fail" then your choice is illusory in the first place. Title I vs Title II isn't the most meaningful choice.
Originally the Internet was designed with no single point of failure, but now email, the web, streaming video, etc. has been centralized.
What we need to do is greenlight technology to enable decentralized:
+ Social Networking instead of server farms whose engineers post on highscalability
+ Mesh Networking instead of cellphone carriers whose networks go down in an emergency
+ Power Generation instead of a power grid that can cut you off anytime
Bitcoin decentralized money. Git decentralized version control. Look at how the power and trust dynamics shifted. That's what we need.
The best way to do that is to fund open source hardware and software projects that will enable this technology to be widely available, and then regulators will have to expand their frameworks to allow it, as they did with bitcoin.
Disclaimer: I am the architect of http://github.com/Qbix/Platform
[+] [-] finkin1|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simplehuman|9 years ago|reply
I think the big companies have totally nailed it. They have kept things free. And they have kept the population sufficiently distracted that there is no time for 'activism' or thinking of society. This means that the big corps can now push reforms unquestioned in their favor.
[+] [-] pgodzin|9 years ago|reply
I think there isn't anything specific to fight against now as there was with SOPA. Once a specific legislation/regulation appears, I think the tech world will strongly oppose again. I also suspect the large tech companies are trying to use their lobbying power behind the scenes preemptively again.
[+] [-] johnwheeler|9 years ago|reply
Those forces only make things better unless they don't. To me, it's crazy that's not immediately clear.
In this case, the regulation is for keeping the system free unless you're a monopoly or part of an oligopoly. Your future chances of being in that camp are so minuscule and even smaller if you support killing off Net Neutrality. Are you fighting on behalf your future self that will likely never exist? That's arrogant and delusional.
This is not what Ayn Rand meant by espousing the public good is best served when people are self-interested. That's not the same thing as being delusional.
[+] [-] saycheese|9 years ago|reply
Really makes you wonder what's going on, since Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc. are nowhere to be found on the list.
[+] [-] no_protocol|9 years ago|reply
I can monitor and control the power usage of my electrical appliances.
I can control outgoing network requests from my networked devices.
I cannot control what is sent to my network from the outside. It doesn't make much sense to be charged for what someone else sends to me. Even if I shut off my network device, a particularly rude service might just continue blindly sending data my way, running up my costs with no way to opt out.
Typical postal mail delivery is paid for by the sender, not the recipient. It becomes complicated here.
[+] [-] beefman|9 years ago|reply
[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20130602210518/http://news.ufl.ed...
[+] [-] koolba|9 years ago|reply
Most people have either one or zero options for coax (i.e. cable) or fiber. That leads to a monopoly where you either have to take whatever Comcast / Time Warner / Verizon offer or live with craptacular DSL. Get rid of that monopoly and have the maintenance of those pipes be run by the local municipality. Then you can have real competition.
[+] [-] enknamel|9 years ago|reply
This does happen though. Electric companies, phone companies, etc all charge different rates based on who is using the service. Based off of different programs and income based subsidies who is using the service determines the cost paid. This also effects what producers sell to the low end of the spectrum. If electricity is substantially cheaper for lower income consumers, they will care less about paying for better energy efficiency. So you are technically paying a different rate based off what your appliances are.