I feel like there's not much more to be said at this point.
Almost every argument I've heard against Net Neutrality that isn't based on "this is the way Peering agreements have always worked" and "its my network, Ill do what I want" have been disproven, or have been shown to be straw-men. Are there any new discussion points that haven't been debated to death?
The FCC Chairman himself has been involved with a company that was shutdown due to lack of open access.
I am completely against net neutrality. The problem I have is that people think it's a solution rather than a stop-gap. The problem is still, ultimately, that we have monopolies at play. That's the real issue. But for some reason, all of this effort and energy has been focused on getting net neutrality, rather than fixing the actual problem.
I also don't think that ISPs would ever do some of the things that people are spreading fud about. I have serious doubts they would ever block certain sites for business reasons. We already have laws against that. I doubt they'd ever turn sites into a package you need a monthly access fee for either. People don't like paying more for less. They'd never so blatantly piss off their entire customer base like that when they really only stand to lose money. It's much more in their favor to keep things working the way they are now, except to allow some sites that need a lot of bandwidth the speeds they need.
Verizon FIOS effectively blocks Netflix RIGHT FUCKING NOW.
There is no question about it, they setup their network specifically to reduce completion between Netflix and their own video services. Perhaps if we had completion that might not happen, and perhaps in that same magical la la land if I could see the future I would win the lottery.
Shooting your self in the face on principle might make you feel better. But, please don't pretend it's a reasonable response to the situation at hand.
PS: Yada, Yada. If you really want to troll people on this man up and use your actual account.
> Verizon FIOS effectively blocks Netflix RIGHT FUCKING NOW.
How so?
> Shooting your self in the face on principle...
Please don't be so hyperbolic. We're talking about equal access to information here (entertainment in this case). Not exactly a basic necessity like what people actually do shoot faces off for.
Refusing to add capacity is not the same as blocking. If I don't sell my car to you, I'm not depriving you of transportation. If I don't upgrade my car, I am not blocking the company making the upgrade that you want to buy along with my car.
Ehh no. It's more like you've sold me a car that says it'll go 100 mph (ISPs selling me 85mbit internet), but when I drive in certain parts of town, the car won't go faster than 10 mph. (netflix streams, which require < 5 mbit sometimes degrade, even though speed tests show full speed).
Did they promise that you would always be able to drive 100mph? Does any product marketer promise or infer that you will be able use 100% of the capabilities all the time and forever, even those outside it's control like congestion and other environmental factors (e.g. lack of gas or proper maintenance)? That kind of naive thinking is why we have endless fine-print and thousands of greedy class action attorneys.
Look, I hate huge corporations that don't have to compete because of government protections, but calling a non-expansion of bandwidth to a third-party "blocking" is abusing the term. The goal should be to break up these monopolies while respecting property rights. That is critical for would-be ISPs and other innovation.
Verizon sells their service to their customers under the terms of providing a "best effort" to reach the advertised speeds. Fulfilling a promise of "best effort" does not require attaining the advertised speeds to every endpoint, but it does require some effort. Given that Level 3 has offered to pay all of the equipment and labor costs of upgrading the peering connection, and Verizon has stated that their network is not congested internally, what Verizon is refusing to do is literally the smallest possible non-zero effort that they could make towards alleviating the congestion.
Nobody is calling for anything that would fail to be "respecting property rights". Verizon is not fulfilling their obligations to their own customers; that needs to be corrected. Changing the regulatory landscape to remove the perverse incentives that have led to Verizon's misbehavior is a bigger and separate project.
Look, in this situation, we aren't getting slower speeds because of some upstream issue that's out of Verizon's control. We're getting the limited speed because of actions due to throttling by Verizon themselves, the people that promised those speeds.
I even understand if I am able to get 50mbps out of the 85mbps. But we're talking about 2mbps streams that are suffering.
I even understand if it's outside their control. I'm not unreasonable. But it's in their control, and caused by them, so yes, this situation is unique.
I'm honestly a little surprised that your comment isn't already gray, but you've (more eloquently) expressed the view I've attempted to express at numerous points in the past.
I very sincerely believe that the most rabid proponents for net neutrality are overlooking the root cause of the issue, which is that the government has created this system in which competition isn't really a viable option for the immediate future.
As a libertarian, I agree with you 100%.
As a pragmatist, I (begrudgingly) acknowledge that because the system is rigged, net neutrality is likely our only option to prevent the existing telecoms from completely screwing over their customers (whichever end of the pipe they happen to be on).
This was not a view I came to on my own, and it was an argument within the HN community that enlightened me, but while I freely agree with your assertion that a truly free market would certainly force the telecoms into being more honest and forthright, I also, and regrettably agree with your assertion that such a free market does not exist in this realm, as it has never been free of the shackles that made it.
Suppose you have a market, to enter which you need to invest capital C. It you get a monopoly, you get profits having net present value M, while if there is competition the total profits from the market have net present value R, where R<M. If R<C then a monopoly is inevitable, and it is likely even when R is somewhat larger, because a new entrant can expect to get only a fraction of the market.
It is true, of course, that government regulations can reduce R and therefore make a monopoly more likely (or indeed by making some dumb exclusive deal). But there is absolutely no reason that government must be the cause. In fact, since R<M there is always some C for which a monopoly is inevitable, and we see this in the ISP market: in areas of low density population, C is higher, and there is more likely to be a telco monopoly. Hence, neutrality laws are likely to be needed anyway.
>As a pragmatist, I (begrudgingly) acknowledge that because the system is rigged, net neutrality is likely our only option to prevent the existing telecoms from completely screwing over their customers
I completely agree on this point. We need net neutrality for now. But what I'm worried about is people losing steam after this. We've seen more energy put into rallying people around net neutrality than anything else like it. Now, if and when we get it, people will think the fight's won.
> I have serious doubts they would ever block certain sites for business reasons.
Comcast and other ISPs have blocked (by massively reducing the data rate) entire PROTOCOLS, in this case BitTorrent. Irrespective if you downloaded a Linux ISO or the latest fetish porn movie.
Well, it's actually well within their right to do that as a business. It's also well within your right, as a customer not to do business with them. However, this whole situation would be solved if we just focused on what was important, like I said: fixing the monopoly problem rather than the "net neturality" problem, if it even is one.
>>> I have serious doubts they would ever block certain sites for business reasons.
Someone replied:
>> Comcast and other ISPs have blocked (by massively reducing the data rate) entire PROTOCOLS, in this case BitTorrent. Irrespective if you downloaded a Linux ISO or the latest fetish porn movie.
So then you reply:
> Well, it's actually well within their right to do that as a business.
What I see here is a contradiction. First you say "I doubt they'd ever do that!" and then when provided with an example of them doing very nearly (if not precisely) that, you then say "Well they're within their rights!"
I agree with you that fixing the monopoly problem is the real solution. I personally think that muni-run last mile networks are the way to do that and to write new laws that authorize, encourage and otherwise enable neighborhoods to run co-ops be they fiber, copper, wifi, etc.
But until such a time as there is robust competition (meaning any one person has say 10 broadband options) I am in favor of net neutrality as patchwork and evolutionary as it is. At least then the "best practices" that ISPs generally lived by for some years would be codified and allow people to sue, thus providing SOME recourse against abusive monopolies. I realize that regulatory capture is a real risk so I'm not overwhelmingly in favor of, it's by a slim margin.
The reason I picked a number like 10 instead of say 3 or 5 is basically "look at the cell phone market" It's pretty terrible and I think some of that can be attributed to the big four (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile) and not much else at least in the way of good coverage national carriers.
In the wireless data sector, which operates under separate and looser "net neutrality" rules, there are already packages to allow "unlimited" access to preferred applications.
T-mobile does this[1] as well as Virgin[2]. Scroll down to see packages like:
* "Unlimited Instagram — Monthly $5.00"
* "Unlimited Pinterest — Monthly $5.00"
* "Unlimited Social — Monthly $15.00"
If you are a web or app startup, it's gonna be might hard to get people to use your product when they can use Facebook or other preferred apps for free.
Sure, the above plans are made for low income demographics but it is a looking glass of what the ISP/telecom companies view as the future of the internet.
> I also don't think that ISPs would ever do some of the things that people are spreading fud about.
The whole net neutrality debate grew out of things that ISPs started doing that violated expectations people had of the way the internet worked, that were the subject of case-by-case actions by the FCC. So, while some of the specific things people are worrying about may be somewhat speculative, the general pattern that the regulations are designed to address has been evident in reality, it is not a speculative threat.
And it frightens me to see a blatant ad hominem attack without any substance to back it up, and it's not down-voted. Your comment adds no value to the discussion, and actually harms "a tech forum like HN".
I think the strongest argument against net neutrality is that the US has gone through long periods without it and none of the doomsday scenarios have occurred.
I see no reason why we shouldn't take a wait and see approach.
I could see paid prioritization having some benefits. The average internet service provider customer is cheap as fuck. They buy the cheapest service and bitch about rising costs.
Though if isps going crazy we can always just pass net neutrality.
>I think the strongest argument against net neutrality is that the US has gone through long periods without it and none of the doomsday scenarios have occurred.
Incorrect, the Internet in the United States has been under de-facto net neutrality rules through a patchwork of agreements, policy statements, and regulations.
The current debate is just about formalizing the legal method & the scope of any rules to maintain a "Open Internet". (That is the term that the FCC uses for the various net neutrality issues.)
> As far as I can tell, there was no regulation before the 2005 open internet regulations.
Before around 2005 there was competition. Regardless of who your phone company was you could get internet access from AOL, CompuServe, Prodigy, Earthlink or any number of local hole in the wall ISPs with a couple of T1s and a bank of modems. Those companies had every intention of leasing DSL and cable lines in the same way they traditionally leased phone lines.
The FCC decided that broadband ISPs didn't have to lease their lines to competitors, which essentially killed all of the competitors.
We can have a competitive market with little regulation. We can have a monopoly with strong regulation. What we absolutely cannot allow is a monopoly with little regulation.
They all generally obeyed them because those ISPs didn't want to tangle with the FCC and their Open Internet order. (Who does?) Also at various times before the 2005 regulations, certain parts of the internet infrastructure were under regulations that had the side effect of having a neutral internet.
The reason why the formalizing the rules is now an issue is because a federal court has thrown out the legal method the FCC had been using to wave at ISPs to be neutral.
So now there is no ruling, and the ISPs wouldn't have spent all that time & money on lawyers to preserve what they just took down.
So right now, the FCC is going to release new rules on the Open Internet. The question is, will it be under a new interpretation of the old method that was thrown out of court (Section 702), or by calling ISPs common carriers and then forbearing most of the sections in Title II (as the court alluded is possible).
Almost every argument I've heard against Net Neutrality that isn't based on "this is the way Peering agreements have always worked" and "its my network, Ill do what I want" have been disproven, or have been shown to be straw-men. Are there any new discussion points that haven't been debated to death?
The FCC Chairman himself has been involved with a company that was shutdown due to lack of open access.