[HN Gopher] Net neutrality is about more than just blocking and ...
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Net neutrality is about more than just blocking and throttling
Author : elashri
Score : 85 points
Date : 2023-11-05 09:34 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.brookings.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.brookings.edu)
| skybrian wrote:
| Apparently it's also about not having paid prioritization. What
| else? The article doesn't seem to say.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| The article puts it in plain terms:
|
| > that the nation's most important network has no public
| interest supervision
| 4RealFreedom wrote:
| The article mentions supervision once and "blocking,
| throttling, and paid prioritization" about half a dozen
| times. Is the idea to just have some bearucracy around ISPs,
| then? It really isn't clear what the point is.
| skybrian wrote:
| That's abstract jargon I'm not familiar with. What sort of
| changes might an ISP have to make (or be prevented from
| making) as a result of "public interest supervision?"
| jupp0r wrote:
| Those are not plain terms to me. Can you describe something
| that ISPs are doing right now that they couldn't do under
| "public interest supervision"?
| onionisafruit wrote:
| In general terms I'm in favor of public interest supervision
| where it's needed, but I would also be interested in knowing
| some details of what that supervision is going to be looking
| at.
|
| Further down the page he brings up the "just and reasonable"
| standard from Title II. I want to know what behavior he (or
| the FCC) would consider unjust or unreasonable that isn't in
| the realm of blocking or throttling.
| em-bee wrote:
| this. while i agree with the claim in the article on
| principle, it left me wanting.
|
| _It is the conduct of the ISPs that is in question here.
| Because telephone companies were Title II common carriers,
| their behavior had to be just and reasonable. Those
| companies prospered under such responsibilities; as they
| have morphed into wired and wireless ISPs, there is no
| reasonable argument why they, as well as their new
| competitors from the cable companies, should not continue
| to have public interest obligations._
|
| what were those responsibilities and obligations?
| 1equalsequals1 wrote:
| Not again...
| Guthur wrote:
| Wait to we are fighting for net neutrality in the power
| transmission network.
| onionisafruit wrote:
| Are you faulting the former FCC chairman for calling the
| Internet America's most important network when speaking in the
| context of FCC regulations? Obviously he isn't making a claim
| that it is more important than power transmission or our
| transportation networks because those don't exist in the domain
| being discussed.
| wslh wrote:
| I wonder why the author doesn't mention robots.txt if you only
| give "permissions" to be crawled by Google and/or Bing you are
| part of the problem not leaving space for new search innovations.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Isn't that just an issue of individual choice though? What's
| wrong with a site admin deciding how they would like their
| content to be used?
| wslh wrote:
| Because search engines were built because they can crawl
| sites and if there is a monopoly, adhering to robots.txt just
| support them.
|
| It is important to note that I am not saying that there
| should be indiscriminate crawling that breaks your site, just
| saying that robots.txt is not the solution.
| jupp0r wrote:
| Are there legal obligations to adhere to robots.txt?
| butlerm wrote:
| Net neutrality is largely about blocking, throttling, and paid
| prioritization. Treatment of Internet access and transit services
| under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934 is about much
| more than that, and potentially dangerously so, because Title II
| gives the FCC vast powers over telecommunications, and there is a
| history of a heavy handed regulatory approaches authorized by
| laws like that making things worse rather than better in many
| respects, especially cost and flexibility.
| jupp0r wrote:
| What can be worse than the major ISPs in the US? They offer
| last decades technology (cable) at extremely high prices
| (compared to other western countries), have frequent outages,
| questionable business practices (have you gotten your internet
| security package surcharge yet?) and generally make you want to
| move somewhere where Fiber is available. I have no doubt that
| they would want to make me pay even more money for being able
| to watch Netflix in 4k (vs their cable TV offering) if they
| legally could.
| 2devnull wrote:
| Things can always get worse. In fact, that's often the result
| when humans try to fix complicated problems.
| jancsika wrote:
| Things can also stay bad in favor of some
| companies/organizations' bottom line. In fact, that's the
| point of FUD.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _have no doubt that they would want to make me pay even
| more money for being able to watch Netflix in 4k (vs their
| cable TV offering) if they legally could_
|
| They legally could. For years. They didn't.
| csnover wrote:
| Could you please be more specific which vast powers and heavy
| handed regulatory approaches you are referring to?
|
| The last two times net neutrality was in the news (during the
| initial reclassification, and then the repeal), the main claim
| then was that it would/did reduce investments and innovation,
| and that was a lie[0][1][2][3]. So, knowing this, what are the
| actual risks you see today in treating ISPs as common carriers?
|
| [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/02/sorry-fcc-
| charte...
|
| [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/12/attverizon-
| lobby...
|
| [2] https://www.wired.com/story/the-fcc-says-net-neutrality-
| crip...
|
| [3] https://www.investopedia.com/insights/does-net-neutrality-
| st...
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| Do you think splitting internet services into separate private
| commercial and public utility markets might decrease costs,
| improve quality, and expand access?
|
| As an example, as long as a customer has access to a public
| option for comparable internet service, private companies would
| be exempt from "net neutrality" regulation and penalties.
| amelius wrote:
| It's also about the free market, and why sometimes you need
| regulation.
| drdaeman wrote:
| I'm of a firm belief that Net Neutrality (for Tier 2 and 3
| operators) is mostly a US-specific issue that primarily stems
| from the extra difficulty of running lines (I mean, in addition
| to normal difficulty) to the customer added by market-
| disruptive means like lobbying (e.g. exclusivity agreements).
| That's a bad kind of a free market.
|
| In other words, net neutrality is only a thing because of lack
| of competition. If all providers are bad, and you can't have or
| start a good one because of some barriers, then net neutrality
| becomes a topic. But it's not a solution for the core problem,
| it's merely a band-aid that tries to ignore the core issue. I'm
| not against it - it surely works for the interim, but it's
| important that NN is not in the focus.
|
| I've worked for an ISP in another country, with heavy
| competition in early '10s, where many households had an option
| of at least 4+ different providers, and switching was as easy
| as calling a phone number (no long-term contracts or any BS
| small print). There and then, ISPs had to tread very carefully
| to not make their customers unhappy, or they'll start losing
| them in droves. Rate limiting and blocking was only ever
| employed to block malware or as emergency measure for network
| stability issues that would've otherwise caused worse outage.
|
| (Later on, that country became a dictatorship, telecom became
| heavily regulated, competition had essentially stopped, and now
| ISPs do all sort of shit because they can or forced to - but
| that's another story.)
|
| <conspiracy serious="no, but you never know">
|
| It could be that Net Neutrality is a big telco distraction
| tactic, which they use to simultaneously banter with large
| services, while shifting public and government focus from stuff
| they don't want to lose (exclusivity agreements), towards
| "maybe we won't rate-limit Netflix after all, lol".
|
| </conspiracy>
| michaelmrose wrote:
| The US is 9,833,520 km2 much of it sparsely populated. Not
| only is it inherently difficult its impossible to resolve in
| any reasonable duration of time. If we wanted to drive a bit
| more competition there was a law many years ago forcing ISP
| to share their lines with the competition at cost. This is
| actually practical and able to be implemented in the short
| term. Another thing we can do is repeal all the local laws
| restricting municipal broadband.
| robocat wrote:
| The US is big is such a tired argument.
|
| An individual state can often implement a lot without
| needing federal law changes.
|
| > sparsely populated
|
| Oregon is about the same size, population and geography as
| my country New Zealand.
|
| Within a decade New Zealand (poorer country) has managed to
| roll out fibre to 85% of households using a public-private
| partnership model. Starlink serves rural areas.
| deepsquirrelnet wrote:
| > they told me that if the FCC enacted a rule dealing with
| anything other than "blocking, throttling, and paid
| prioritization," they would use their authority to make my life
| uncomfortable. When the FCC enacted a rule creating broad
| regulatory authority over ISPs, they kept their promise.
|
| This sounds like a problem...
| kyleyeats wrote:
| At first the government came right out and asked for an internet
| kill switch. Then they got smart and called it net neutrality.
| malfist wrote:
| What are you going on about? How is a neutral net an internet
| kill switch?
| 2devnull wrote:
| Did you read the brookings essay?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| There's no mention of a kill switch. Where are you and the
| OP coming from?
| kyleyeats wrote:
| If it's not, how would they possibly enforce it?
| malfist wrote:
| That's an absurd question. Do speed limits on the highway
| mean there's a kill switch for transportation?
|
| Does having a blade guard on a lawnmower mean there's a
| kill switch in agriculture?
|
| Does having copywrite length codified in law mean there's a
| kill switch for books?
| kyleyeats wrote:
| So what would the mechanism of enforcement be?
| basique wrote:
| Jail time and fines? I don't get what you're talking about
| LikelyABurner wrote:
| I thought "finally, maybe someone gets it" and did the
| unspeakable sin at Hacker News and read the article.
|
| Did they talk about efforts by governments to censor the Internet
| "for the {children,terrorism,morals}? Nope.
|
| Did they talk about efforts by corporations to control access by
| adding proprietary DRM layers on top of the open protocols, a la
| Google WEI? Nope.
|
| Nope, as the article states, "It is the conduct of the ISPs that
| is in question here".
|
| Just like the last round of "net neutrality", I see Tom Wheeler's
| lips moving, but I only hear FAANG talking points coming out of
| his mouth.
| orev wrote:
| You're falling right into the ISP playbook. ISPs absolutely
| need far more oversight, due to the fact that they have
| received billions in public money to subsidize their buildouts,
| but then complain that they should be able to operate like a
| private business with only free market competition to guide
| them.
|
| The first time NN came up, there was a huge whataboutism
| campaign by them pointing at FAANG to redirect attention to
| them instead of the monopoly abuses from the ISPs themselves.
| And the misdirection worked in many case (as evidenced by your
| comment).
|
| Does FAANG need to be looked at? Yes. But it's not an NN issue,
| just regular anti-trust. ISPs are at a whole other level that
| needs regulation. They should not be able to sell all my DNS
| queries, monitor all my traffic, scan my internal network from
| their modems, or give zero ratings to their own bundled
| streaming apps. All of that is related to the fact that they
| are the sole available option for Internet service in almost
| all markets.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _[ISPs] should not be able to sell all my DNS queries,
| monitor all my traffic, scan my internal network from their
| modems, or give zero ratings to their own bundled streaming
| apps_
|
| Only the last is relevant to net neutrality. From what I can
| tell, it's not an issue--streaming is competitive.
|
| Debating net neutrality seems a convenient way to avoid
| scrutinising the pricing and privacy problems at ISPs. In
| that sense, it seems more profitable--for the ISPs--to centre
| the debate around net neutrality versus their actual profit
| centres.
|
| In summary, I'd much prefer an ISP customer bill of rights,
| and release of exclusivities granted to ISPs that didn't meet
| their ends of the bargains, than this seemingly-performative
| debate about net neutrality, which is largely about
| increasing the scope of the FCC's portfolio than doing
| anything meaningful for ordinary Americans.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| It's not clear that network neutrality wouldn't be much
| more of an issue if government and citizens hadn't shown
| some degree of will to protect it in name or nature since
| the inception of the internet. The counterargument sounds a
| bit like a diabetic dismissing the importance of insulin.
|
| > I'd much prefer an ISP customer bill of rights
|
| This relies on a wholly imaginary choice between net
| neutrality and the the rights you would prefer. It's not
| dissimilar to the argument that is made in response to gun
| violence for instance. For instance "I'd much prefer we
| focused on the root cause of mental health than potentially
| infringing on the rights of honest gun owners."
|
| In fact mental health is an important issue but there is no
| particular reason to believe that a government with a
| budget in the trillions can't do you know TWO THINGS.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _relies on a wholly imaginary choice between net
| neutrality and the the rights you would prefer_
|
| This isn't how politics works. Crowding out an issue with
| a filibuster is a valid political tactic. Net neutrality
| seems, to me, like that when it comes to ISP regulation.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| This is how politics works. We have a maximum of 535 law
| makers with out 18,000 staffers. The reason there is
| constant discussion about net neutrality is because it is
| real and actual. There is no connection whatsoever
| abandoning the actuality of net neutrality and the
| fanciful notions you imagine would be virtuous. There is
| no reason to imagine your ideas are ever liable to be
| made real even if useful.
|
| Abandoning the actual for the fanciful nets us only a
| loss of both.
| exabrial wrote:
| That's correct. Net Neutrality is above solving a problem that
| doesn't actually exist, even after 12 years and cementing
| existing internet providers into place by making sure regulations
| are too costly to allow innovative players into the provider
| space.
| malfist wrote:
| This is a gish gallop of a response.
|
| Net hasn't been neutral for a lot less than 12 years.
|
| California's law prevented the worst harms of un neutral net.
|
| This regulation has not anticompetitive costs. In fact, it
| forces a level playing field so monopolies can't prevent
| competition.
|
| The problem does exist. Look no further than your cellphone
| plan.
| charcircuit wrote:
| The blocking / throttling is the most important part because of
| the lack of competition. A server can burn through available ISPs
| if they don't like your site for whatever reasons. If a client's
| ISP doesn't like your site they can block it and prevent them
| from connecting. There are many clients who may only have 1 or 2
| options for an ISP and switching over a single blocked site is
| not a big enough reason to switch. In cases like this I just use
| Tor and hope the exit node has an ISP that doesn't block the
| site.
|
| Allowing ISPs to all have their own standards on who they block
| can be frustrating for both end users and site operators.
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