We’re About to Lose Net Neutrality

Marvin, the author of the Wired.com opinion piece, is a smart fellow. But what he ignores is that Congress never handed the FCC the authority to impose Net neutrality regulations on the Internet. Such legislation actually came up for a vote in Congress, and it came close to passage: it was reported favorably out of a Senate committee but was defeated in a House floor vote in 2006: <a href="http://news.cnet.com/2100-1028_3-6081882.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.cnet.com&#x2F;2100-1028_3-6081882.html</a><p>Even if you <i>adore</i> the principle of Net neutrality, it&#x27;s reasonable to demand that federal regulatory agencies stick to what Congress authorized them to do. Otherwise you have illegal regulations and bureaucratic turf-grabbing that will not treat the Internet well. Remember Hollywood&#x27;s successful efforts to lobby the FCC to impose &quot;broadcast flags&quot; on computers by bureaucratic fiat? A federal appeals court correctly struck it down as exceeding the agency&#x27;s legal authority, as I wrote here in 2005: <a href="http://news.cnet.com/2100-1030_3-5697719.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.cnet.com&#x2F;2100-1030_3-5697719.html</a><p>That same appeals court is currently considering the FCC&#x27;s Net neutrality regulations. BTW, it&#x27;s also the same court that slapped down the FCC&#x27;s first attempt to impose Net neutrality regulations without legal authority in 2010: <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20001825-38.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.cnet.com&#x2F;8301-13578_3-20001825-38.html</a><p>If Net neutrality violations become an actual problem, there&#x27;s no shortage of publicity-hungry politicians in Congress (hi, Ed Markey!) who will hold hearings and push legislation forward. Obama will happily sign it. Until then, other government debacles including NSA domestic surveillance and Obamacare should make us wary of federal agencies exceeding their legal authority -- especially after Congress considered and rejected a law that would have given it to them in the first place.

I consider everybody here very smart. In many cases smarter than myself. Therefore, could somebody <i>please</i> explain why we would give the government, which has shown itself to be terribly incompetent with technology issues, the ability to enforce net neutrality? Seriously, I can&#x27;t get over the dissonance here. If it&#x27;s such a shitty idea, let consumers decide. Google Fiber et al will just eat the major telecoms&#x27; lunch sooner or later anyway. It may just take a little longer, but we&#x27;ll avoid the possibility of letting the government crush Internet innovation forever.

IMHO, this isn&#x27;t about Netflix, YouTube, or even Amazon having to pay for higher tiered access to customers. They have the deep pockets and smart lawyers to construct contracts that work out for them in the end. So I see that as the same grumpy story as California and New York forcing Amazon to collect sales tax.<p>BUT, because this does force deals to be crafted behind closed doors, they will turn out looking a lot like the deals that HBO&#x2F;Shotime have with Comcast and TWC. Plus, look at what&#x27;s going on with Facebook already... phones in some countries have &quot;facebook data&quot; only plans. Sure, this is great for emerging markets to have access to family and friends for free, but at the loss of any other social network upstart that wants in on it.<p>I don&#x27;t see indie content ever being cut off, but I do see them becoming &quot;premium&quot; subscription level services that require people to pay more to access them. Want to play COD or GOW online? You will need this level access to play with any reasonable speeds. It will happen slowly too, as people become accustom to the idea that opening a Wikipedia page will take 1000 ms then to 5000 ms to fully finish rendering. Someone at Comcast will nudge slowly testing whether people notice or care.<p>If we don&#x27;t fight the good fight and force internet providers to remain dumb pipes, we are asking to have the most expensive internet on the planet. As cable TV dies in favor of watching what you want, when you want, they will naturally move to charge you for things you want to do on the internet instead.<p>edit: autocorrect fail :-P

This might not be very popular, but I&#x27;m going to say I&#x27;m in favour of the law being struck down. I&#x27;m totally on board with ISPs <i>not</i> throttling &#x2F; extorting money out of web 2.0 companies, however, I&#x27;m not sure that trying to enforce a swiss-cheese law is the right way to do it.<p>That and I&#x27;m kind of biased, because I founded a company which is trying to level the playing field and make net neutrality <i>de facto</i> for internet services instead of <i>de jure</i>. Information is like water. Put a barrier in front of it and it will always try to find a way to flow through it.

I hate to say it, because I don&#x27;t consider myself a radical, but the US congress is in the pockets of big business, US law relating to technology is broken, and US intelligence agencies have taken liberties beyond their mandate. The consequences seem fairly straightforward. The Internet will route around the damage to the system. The outcome is predictable and the dysfunction that is leading up to it is regrettable. I don&#x27;t know what this bodes for US customers. Hopefully a coalition of forward-thinking companies will provide a genuine alternative to the US telcos.

If net neutrality was truly working, nobody would need to renew their contracts with Verizon or TMobile or anybody else. Contracts would be deprecated and all the telecoms would be forced to compete on something other than lock-in and &quot;whatever the latest trendy device is&quot; promotions. But that&#x27;s hard to do when you&#x27;re selling what essentially amounts to a homogeneous product like bandwidth. They don&#x27;t wanna do that. They like <i>guaranteed</i> income and they <i>especially</i> like it when people go over their contract data allocations.<p>In 2013 there is absolutely _zero_ rationale for contracts to play a part in either the wireless or the pipeline infrastructure. Telecoms know this and are doing everything they can to drag out the death sentence, making it as painful and expensive as possible for everybody involved.<p>If we let the telecoms do with fiber what&#x27;s been done with mobile networks not only is the web going to be less neutral, the bias will naturally lead to the dissemination of news and information as being more easily controlled and piped to the masses in sinister ways.

The toothpaste is out of the tube already, people know what freedom online tastes like.<p>Bad news for old money - the Internet has an appetite for rentier blood. This will not be tolerated long term.

It really seems a lot like CISPA and the Patriot Act. A popular outcry from the citizens of this country can stop it once, twice, three times, but how long can they hold out? Can we spread outrage about CISPA when its being voted on for the 500th time in lieu of any bill that might actually help this country? The fact that the citizens of this country are constantly having to fight their congressmen to actually do what they desire is the most clear example that our country is completely broken.

I find it amusing that those in favor of net neutrality consider themselves on the side of freedom.

Some countries, like Japan, have addressed this issue by separating infrastructure from service. One company owns the network, several other companies provided the internet access.<p>This creates a competitive market between service provides (competing on price, service quality, and customer service) while removing the high costs to enter that market.<p>Infrastructure, as opposed to service, becomes the regulated market.

The author seems to think the internet is all about America. We in Europe doesn&#x27;t give a shit whatever your court decides.<p>The best case scenario is if the US was disconnected from the rest of the worlds connectivity. Almost all evils that has generated hate from the public has been american corporations.

Any thought on the effect increased programmability in telecom networks is going to be on Network Neutrality? It seems likely to me that regular IP routing is likely to become the &quot;slow lane&quot; on the Internet?

What about all the new technologies like DPI and data analytics coupled with things like SDN and NFV which will easily technically enable any operator to have a very high level of granularity (e.g. application, user, site, device etc.) in controlling access to the network in the name of providing better QOE&#x2F;S to the customer? These technologies will easily enable operators to enable complex policies which will be difficult to track and can be modified in very flexible manner to adjust to the current workarounds around any NN laws.

I highly suggest &quot;The Master Switch&quot; by Tim Wu to this entire thread. There seems to be a bunch of people here who don&#x27;t understand common carrier services and why they are important.

Net neutrality should be extended to the mobile networks, not dropped for the landline ones. ISPs should be regulated like essential dumb data pipes.

We are doing a net neutrality IndieGogo campaign <a href="http://uplink.aero/project.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;uplink.aero&#x2F;project.html</a> <a href="http://igg.me/at/aero" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;igg.me&#x2F;at&#x2F;aero</a><p>But based on our conversion rate, I don&#x27;t think there is a market for it. Feel free to email us if you have any constructive criticism. contact@uplink.aero

I have a <i>feeling</i> that I&#x27;ve read this before, why is it making it&#x27;s way back to the front page of HN?<p>Any new developments on this matter?

While a well-intentioned article, i believe this author overlooks a few points that should be pointed out.<p>As a consumer, i would obviously be a proponent of my current ISP giving non-discriminatory access to all sites. However, aside from voicing my opinion in the form of purchasing the services of a specific ISP, i do not believe we should have the power to do much else in dictating how these companies should run their business through the passing of laws. The author points out that the loss of net neutrality would hurt small-scale ventures - yet ignores the fact that these ISPs he wishes to regulate were once the same small start-ups that he wants to protect. Was the success of these businesses the single factor that moves them from protected status to regulatory target?<p>The size of these dominant ISPs means that a great deal of the population relies on their services - but our &quot;need&quot; for these services does not give us the right to dictate how they should run their business. If enough of us feel that none of the dominant ISPs are adequate, then our need goes unserved, and sooner or later another ISP will arrive to serve these customers.<p>Again - i am strongly in favor of net neutrality. But if we resort to regulatory means to get what we want, it will lead to vastly negative consequences down the road. Why start a business if this is the reward for success?

Forget about Net Neutrality. What we need is Open Spectrum so everybody can share the waves and we stop needing the telcos altogether.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_spectrum" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Open_spectrum</a><p>As long as we have an oligopoly of telcos, they will lobby their way to destroy Net Neutrality.

Long ago the corporate oligarchy decided to let the Internet tech sector grow to the extent that it has in order to externalize the cost of deploying certain infrastructure and the cost of training the populous to become dependent on that infrastructure. Now that these tasks are complete what reason do they have to delay taking control of this particular DARPA project ?<p>You have to be willing to show them that reason in order to save your business. You all have to innovate a solution. How are you going to join together with the other businesses in your sector to PIVOT TOGETHER in order to jolt ordinary people out of their careless stupor and educate them about how to force the hand of those corporations who could easily solve the problem ?<p>Do you really think a black page background and a banner is anything more than a sloppy haphazard attempt to save your industry ?<p>Aren&#x27;t you risking shareholder value if your company is not engaging a significant percentage of it&#x27;s resources towards engineering a plan to resist the takeover of the key infrastructure that your business needs in order to survive ?<p>How can you justify that kind of risk taking to your board ?<p>VC&#x27;s what percentage of your fund&#x27;s budget is set aside for the task of preserving the Internet that your portfolio will rely on ?<p>Ordinary people won&#x27;t care if a page is black or not or if some banner is present or not, but if twitter, instagram, and pintrest for example all go offline at the same time that would send a message. Or what about if all the major social startups started paying attention to HTTP referer headers and they started redirecting inbound visitors to educational splash screens based on their referred header? The splash screens would educate these people about how they should really change their default search engine or delete their Facebook account in order to help save the Internet.<p>I&#x27;m not saying we should pick on Google or Facebook specifically per say, but I do think that if enough &quot;social pressure&quot; was applied Google alone could fix the problem by helping the Internet route around the entities who are engaged in a Denial Of Service attack on key Internet infrastructure. All Google has to do is punish a few corporate websites like they did to rapgenius the other day. That&#x27;s a good start at least. Does your startup &quot;scene&quot; have a plan to help force google&#x27;s hand ? If not then why not ?<p>If all of the major web startups started doing this kind of thinking Google would have to take this stuff more seriously REAL FAST. Think about it! That&#x27;s how you send a real &quot;social signal&quot;.<p>Why is this industry not trying to defend itself ? Ask yourself this question.. Who controls your company ? Who gets to decide how important preserving a free Internet is to the long term viability of your business? Has your company already sold out ?<p>Founders, where do you stand ? How willing are you to be public about where you stand and how long are you going to wait ? How long can you afford to wait before you take action with others in order to save your business ? Why aren&#x27;t you already more organized on this issue ? Why aren&#x27;t you ready ? Why are you not taking this threat to your business more seriously ? Why do you apparently assume you are powerless ?

Still, this is all from the implications of messing with the 1996 telecommunications act, allowing duopoly, preventing cities from offering broadband, and crushing the small guys. Too bad so few spoke up then; the balance of power has been against us ever since.

What prevents a proxy-net from starting up and flubbing the recipients&#x2F;senders of the data such that the ISP can&#x27;t see what site&#x2F;domain the traffic is coming from and can&#x27;t enforce their 1s page-load &quot;tax&quot; on them?

The best way we can get the attention of the companies is by causing them to lose profits. This is best done by an organized boycott of their goods and services. It will get their attention very quickly. But currently we don&#x27;t have a central website to browse and search boycotts and other forms of protest.<p>In addition to protesting, we should also consider building a free open source network thats protected and run by the community. (It could be run by the government, but until the government is &#x27;for and by the people&#x27;, we&#x27;ll crowdsource the maintainance and seek to rapidly automate the work that nobody would volunteer for) We can give ourselves the best, but lets start with free gigabit internet wired and wireless for all of America! What would this &#x27;cost&#x27; in terms of money? millions or billions? But the resources are here; just being hoarded until money is traded. Would AT&amp;T build a free network for us? Not if it meant losing money to Verizon. But what if it wasnt about money? The value in having a fully connected country is priceless.<p>Thankfully we have the government to protect us against trusts and monopoly&#x27;s. But what if the trust or monopoly was a community one? If AT&amp;T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile colluded to give free gigabit internet to America, they could combine their separately walled gardens and use those resources to further the human race. But this would have to be a guaranttee so that once everyone put all their time and resources into this, some CEO cant just flip a switch and start charging. Once free, always free. So if they did this it would probably mean giving up their pride and names. I mean, would this free network be called Verizon? Why do they get their name on it? So we could crowdsource a new name for our free network so no one can boast. US Telecom, US Net, Free Net, the name can be anything, something we would all be proud to get behind. the most important part is the &#x27;us&#x27; and &#x27;US&#x27;. All of us in the US have the resources to take care of all of US(just focusing on America now, but eventually we could help the world). These telecom companies will either become part of the solution or they will precipitate out.<p>Again though, this would be a huge project and there&#x27;s currently no website we can go to in order to find and take part in these country and perhaps global initiatives. Imagine a mix of Kickstarter and Change.org. First a project or idea is petitioned to the community and if enough people like it and think it would be the best solution, then its opened up to a crowdsourcing page to collect funds and not just money but people can also donate the final resources that are ultimately needed, which is what the money would eventually be traded for anyways....more to come, working on this website...

The freedom of the telcos to act as highwaymen? Consumer protections are necessary for basic utilities. Especially either the numerous de facto monopolies that exist in the consumer telco market.

It would almost be comical if it weren&#x27;t so sick: rent-seeking through a government-granted monopoly, under the premise that the providers would serve the public good.

Previous discussion: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6669298" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6669298</a>

We are getting hustled[1].<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRNGCja9mRo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=lRNGCja9mRo</a>

How is this different from Google charging bit guys for blackhat SEO, while those who don&#x27;t pay - are penalised?

What&#x27;s to stop everyone from setting up VPNs en masse? The difficulty alone?

The solution in the end is to turn internet access into common carrier services.

this article is from april?!

It&#x27;s time for a new net then.

This article is over a month old. I&#x27;m interested in the current status of NN. Could someone informed fill us in on the latest?

After basically 20 years of commerce dictating the needs of the net, I&#x27;d think we&#x27;ve already lost it.<p>The internet model worked when subsidized by a military and academic community supported by a massive industry.<p>Now that it&#x27;s trying to pay for itself, it&#x27;s looking a lot more like television or those free newspapers that are more ads than articles.

Is anybody noticing a pattern here. Every god damn 4 months.. They wont give up.