I'm on the FCC. Please stop us from killing net neutrality

Nick Gillespie: Your plan will, according to a write up in Politico, and I think this is accurate, it quote, &quot;will jettison rules that prohibit internet service providers from blocking or slowing web traffic or creating so called paid internet fast lanes.&quot; Question for you, do you think fast lanes will become a thing? What is the value of a internet fast lane?<p>Ajit Pai: The answer to the first is we&#x27;re not sure. We&#x27;ve never seen them before and that&#x27;s part of the reason why I thought the rule in particular was, that was adopted in 2015, was very premature banning something that&#x27;s simply didn&#x27;t exist.<p>I took the time to read Ajit&#x27;s argument here. It&#x27;s completely mislead. If murder hadn&#x27;t happened in a certain area yet, would it be &quot;too preemptive&quot; to outlaw it? Fast lanes DO exist in other countries <i>right now</i>. This is outrageous.

&gt;Reach out to the rest of the FCC now. Tell them they can’t take away internet openness without a fight.<p>How?<p>As this article mentions, their comment system had issues (spam and DDoS) and the only other avenue I&#x27;ve seen is to beg our representatives (who aren&#x27;t part of the December vote) to do _something_.<p>It was a clean and concise piece, but I was hoping that an insider would provide a new course of action.<p>I&#x27;ve seen action across online media from users (reddit, Twitter, etc) as well as among peers. But not as much from the platforms themselves. Remember SOPA? Do those pushing for this really not hear the public&#x27;s outrage yet?

This is how China &quot;blocking&quot; web site from most of the world other than China. When many sites are blocked out right, many more are accessible but painfully slow. On the other hand, if you go to any major Chinese site, it would be lightning fast. By doing this, those foreign sites are rendered almost useless.

I feel helpless. In this and in many things that this administration has brought on.<p>Vote? Yeah, right.<p>Sign a petition? Yeah, right.<p>I feel like unless there are real ramifications to the people doing this stuff, nothing we do matters.

In Switzerland, any legislative action can be put on the ballot with enough signatures. Citizens can actually block what the Federal Assembly does.<p>In the US, we get to comment on it. And they get to say &quot;That&#x27;s nice.&quot;

I dont necessarily agree with the following but its a devils advocate argument I rarely see shared, and it has a lot of merit. Like everything, this issue is shades of grey.<p>Bandwidth is a limited amd expensive resource. When government mandated price controls are in effect (&quot;Net neutrality&quot; is a marketing meme) this expense is effectively socialised across the entire country. It is illegal for a telco to go to a hospital and offer a dedicated nine 9s reliable robot surgery link (technically its just illegal to charge a fair economic price for it but same&#x2F;same). So the cost gets divided up, averaged out, and smalltime users end up paying a big chunk of the cost while people above the magic median point get massive benefits. YOU subsidise the cost of the BigCorp. video conference call between Sydney and Tokyo every day. You subsidise the cost of your neighbour streaming The Bachelor every night, and make it illegal for me to pay a higher price for the quality of service I need to work. Its a total mismanagement of resources. If the consumer was forced to bear the true economic cost of their internet usage then of course heavy users (like Netflix subscribers...) would end up paying more. Not directly to Netflix but the true cost of their product still goes up. This is obviously bad for Netflix&#x2F;Youtube&#x2F;the top 1%, who are the ones <i>extracting</i> wealth from this thing we call the internet. These whales love having their infrastructure costs socialised. You dont even have to be a Google customer for you to be giving them money, no wonder they&#x27;re so rich!<p>Blocking freedom of people to publish on the web doesn&#x27;t have much to do with net neutrality. This is big company lobbying and public propaganda from the tech industry. Tech companies are the new oil barons, in 80 years when the bio lobby is pushing for access to proprietary databases and end &quot;Data detention&quot; (you heard it here first) we&#x27;ll look at tech giants the way we look at oil companies lobbying for clean coal now.

It&#x27;s probably futile, but you might sign this &quot;Do Not Repeal Net Neutrality&quot; [0] petition on the White House petitions site. It already has over 100,000 signatures -- the threshold at which the White House is supposed to, at minimum, respond to it.<p>Since we can&#x27;t vote on this and our representatives aren&#x27;t voting on it either, it&#x27;s worth a shot.<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;petitions.whitehouse.gov&#x2F;petition&#x2F;do-not-repeal-net-neutrality" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;petitions.whitehouse.gov&#x2F;petition&#x2F;do-not-repeal-net-...</a>

NN is an excellent example of framing by naming. Imagine if it was called the the &quot;More Internet Regulation Act&quot;. Prima facie it&#x27;s a more accurate name.<p>Since this is going to happen (reverting to the way it was for ~25 years), I&#x27;ll point out that an echo chamber forms by default because most of us who might spend time arguing about it don&#x27;t see a good reason to.<p>Aside... the largest cable provider decided it would be a good idea to edit a cleartext page on the way to me (&#x27;helpfully&#x27; inserting a JS popup about upcoming metering changes), I called and canceled my decade old ~$90&#x2F;mo acct on the spot when the refused to put it in writing that they would not edit my inbound data in the future. Consumer reaction is equiv to voting. See NFL. Spare me variations on the &#x27;normies don&#x27;t care&#x27; arg.

If you&#x27;re wondering, how the wonderful invisible hand of the market would use &quot;net freedom&quot; - say hello to Portugal.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mobile.twitter.com&#x2F;rokhanna&#x2F;status&#x2F;923701871092441088" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mobile.twitter.com&#x2F;rokhanna&#x2F;status&#x2F;92370187109244108...</a><p>I don&#x27;t see how this benefits anybody besides the ISP. It just makes them find a multitude of reasons why $everybody should pay double and triple to get a proper connection.

If what is happening now is that the 2015 vote for net neutrality rules is to be repealed, couldn&#x27;t a later FCC vote again to return to the 2015 rules?

It’s amazing how the FCC can go against the American people when there is such overwhelming support for net neutrality.

We don&#x27;t have a group that scares the hell out of politicians like the NRA. This crap comes up every year no matter what the party in power is. Until we find people with a killer instinct and skill, we will keep loosing. No one fears the EFF.<p>Someone with some clout needs to form a single-issue (no other politics allowed) net neutrality advocacy organization that effectively frames anyone who opposes net neutrality as an evil villain.

I think the best possible investment one can ever make is politics. These people have probably got paid million or less dollars and they would generate the reruns of literally 10s of billions of dollars. Nearly guaranteed 10000X returns in just year or two is unheard of anywhere else. I wish politicians were available as ETFs.

&quot;There is something not right about a few unelected FCC officials making such vast determinations about the future of the internet.&quot;<p>Is she talking about 2015 or 2017?

Seriously? You are on the FCC and expect other people to fix your problems? What are you doing, playing Solitaire all day?<p><i>YOU NEED TO BE DOING STUFF RIGHT NOW</i>, not tomorrow, not next week. Now.<p>Call ISPs which are against NN repeal. Tell them to pull all the strings they have available. Call senators. Do counter-lobbying, aren&#x27;t you americans big fans of lobbies? I don&#x27;t care what you do. DO SOMETHING. The internet is in danger.<p>And you come forward and tell us that <i>we</i> have to do something. Wow. We really are doomed.

What is the most effective avenue to voice my concerns?

Would someone outline the pros and cons of the FCC vs FTC overseeing regulation of the internet?

What indication is there that the current FCC would ever change course, no matter how loudly the constituents complained? Is the only goal of all the current outcry simply awareness?

Ajit Pai is an abomination. He is on the same level as Trump in shamelessness and probably more corrupt.

I was kind of confused why many big tech companies are for net neutrality. As someone who doesn&#x27;t trust big tech companies, it made me doubtful.<p>But I guess it makes sense; big tech companies have a lot of power right now because of net neutrality and they don&#x27;t want it to fall into the hands of ISPs...<p>Big internet companies that currently have direct guaranteed access to users don&#x27;t want to be forced to make deals with middlemen who work for ISPs.<p>Getting rid of net neutrality will allow ISPs to claim a piece of the pie. They will be able to cut into the profit margins of the most profitable companies while allowing the least profitable ones to get a discount.<p>Getting rid of net neutrality would be similar to how it works in commercial real estate; if your business isn&#x27;t doing well, you can make a deal with your landlord to get a discount on your rent... The rent prices are inconsistent. But if the landlord always sees a long queue of customers outside your shop, they may be tempted to increase your rent.<p>The main concern I have with removing net neutrality is what would happen to peer-to-peer services... Maybe some ISPs will attempt to block them.

Google et al want the infrastructure to be dumb pipes so they can direct traffic by manipulating search results. Ending NN is bad <i>for them</i> but it is yet to be shown it will be bad for the consumer.<p>You&#x27;re your ISP&#x27;s <i>customer</i> but Google&#x27;s <i>product</i>.

It seems each time lobbyists and lawyers achieve to pass a law against democratic will, it generates a lot of efforts to cancel it. This means many years of mess and fights where lobbyists and lawyers will make a lot of business. Bad behavior is rewarded.

I am in favor of net neutrality. But the way you win this argument is not to support it en masse, or to blindly ask your representatives to support it because you think it&#x27;s good. You have to craft an argument that overcomes the &quot;This is not the government&#x27;s right or responsibility to control&quot; response. This is what the conservative talking heads are spouting, this is what average Americans believe in and stand behind, and changing this argument is how you win.

They seem hell bent on passing these new rules regardless of what anyone else says or does.<p>I&#x27;m afraid that it will have to come to lawsuits after the fact to stop this course of action.

Nationalize the internet.<p>I&#x27;m not kidding. We paid for it in the first place, and if it&#x27;s such a critical piece of economic infrastructure that market intervention needs to be mitigated, the solution is to nationalize it.<p>How? Take the municipal broadband idea, and scale it up. It&#x27;s not really hard. Net neutrality only privileges one set of multi-billion-dollar corporations over another set of multi-billion-dollar corporations. Nationalize the lot of it.

I see a lot of the discussion revolving around price, but I don&#x27;t think this is the issue at all.<p>Wiping net neutrality would give ISPs - and by extension their shareholders &#x2F; backers - leverage over any online content producer who cares about the US market.<p>To me the most worrying scenario is &quot;hey guys, we might want to moderate our content more heavily, or we might be taken out of Comcast gold package next year&quot;.

If you thought foreign (aka Russian) interference via social media was bad, imagine your internet service provider having discretionary control over the priority of your news and information feed.<p>It would be like telephone companies being allowed to decide which calls to allow through and relegating the rest to busy signals.

Bottom line: This gov. is looking for more control. Comcast, Verizon, AT&amp;T... are looking for more profit.

Can this be realistic stopped? What if FCC just don&#x27;t give a fuck and proceed? Serious question

Wasn&#x27;t sure what being a &quot;member of the FCC&quot; meant:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fcc.gov&#x2F;about&#x2F;leadership&#x2F;jessica-rosenworcel" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fcc.gov&#x2F;about&#x2F;leadership&#x2F;jessica-rosenworcel</a>

This is just one step to internet becoming a utility. If the companies take it too far and mess with sites people like, the next set of politicians will make it a utility like water or power.

<i>&gt; I think the FCC needs to work for the public</i><p>Unfortunately Pai and Co, think that FCC needs to work for ISP monopolists and not for the public...

The obvious way to reinstate net neutrality is via legislation. Congress has the power to do this.

EME supported by the same racket that wants neutrality. What is going on?

I used to support net neutrality. Then I did my homework on the issue and realized so many of the arguments in favor of net neutrality rely on fear-mongering and a false history of the internet.

Maybe it&#x27;s time to have national referendums...

They buried this on reddit.

CSS &#x2F; JavaScript challenge: remove whatever is blocking you from scrolling on that page. I could not figure it out for the life of me after 20 min messing with the it in the dev tools. Deleting the paywall is easy enough, but what is stopping the scrolling?

nope. Small ISP&#x27;s need to thrive against monopolies.

Just for the record I support Ajit Pai on this issue. Putting this comment just to show that not all on HN disagree with FCC.

Ajit Pai&#x27;s home address is: 4868 Old Dominion Dr Arlington, VA 22207<p>That is public information.

Further thoughts on why the end of net neutrality will be fine: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15765461" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15765461</a>

Sorry I&#x27;m not buying into the panic.<p>Between wide scale TLS deployment and larger swaths of bandwidth available, I&#x27;d rather see free market solutions so these regulatory powers can&#x27;t be abused. Net neutrality only matters if your ISP can decrypt your traffic and there is a limited share of bandwidth available.