‘Break The Internet’ In Protest Of Net Neutrality Repeal

[atomicWAR]

@sharpnel_indie

You are correct there are some government control issues with NN as it stands now. This is only one of the reasons I said the internet could use a face lift. No one government should have control over the internet, period. In fact I would argue only the populous of the world should control it though to be fair that is not an easy thing to implement not to mention the fact many of the more controlling governments like China would do everything they could to prevent a free and open net. What is being purposed now won't allow any control of the net except what ISPs themselves do or don't impose. ISPs have repeatedly shown they have zero quams with "screwing" their customers (and everyone else they can if it makes them money) regardless any transparency they provide. So killing off NN is a no win for everyone save the ISPs. Then on top of the fact if this piece of legislation passes no Administration can reverse it directly as the bill is written now. It will take an act of congress to fix things. Which I can't say I would have any amount of faith that even if congress did try, we would end up with better results. Point being I believe we would be better off keeping what we have and trying to amend the sore points of control I mentioned then ripping up what we have and starting from a scratch while giving the ISPs all the control. You don't put a kid in charge of the cookie jar. Killing of NN as it written now, will do exactly that.

 

[The Original Ralph]

atomicWAR

I'll agree the ISPs will act in their own interests guided by their greed - that's capitalism. But the consumer will have a say in it by voting with their "feet", ie moving to another ISP
The fact that under the current NN the gov't can rule, depending on the party in power, can rule a certain news website as "offensive" or "hate speech" i find more dangerous.

killing off NN is a trade off i'll accept

 

[TMTOWTSAC]

atomicWAR

I'll agree the ISPs will act in their own interests guided by their greed - that's capitalism. But the consumer will have a say in it by voting with their "feet", ie moving to another ISP
The fact that under the current NN the gov't can rule, depending on the party in power, can rule a certain news website as "offensive" or "hate speech" i find more dangerous.

killing off NN is a trade off i'll accept

Voting with your feet only helps when people actually have multiple ISP's available to them. And in the US, according the FCC's latest data:

https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-16-6A1.pdf

To borrow a quick summation from Arstechnica:

At the FCC's 25Mbps download/3Mbps upload broadband standard, there are no ISPs at all in 30 percent of developed census blocks and only one offering service that fast in 48 percent of the blocks. About 55 percent of census blocks have no 100Mbps/10Mbps providers, and only about 10 percent have multiple options at that speed.

And while censorship fears are certainly warranted, there is at least a level of transparency and a burden of proof when the government takes those actions. Whereas a private corporation does not have the same restrictions. Case in point, Paxfire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paxfire

They weren't even blocking or throttling. In 2011, they were caught collaborating with ISP's to perform DNS hijacking. They were intercepting search engine requests from their users, and substituting their own results onto the search engines page. For example, a user would perform a Google search, and the Google results page would instead show Paxfire Lookup Engines results spoofed onto it. NN is an all or nothing proposition, but this is what its absence looks like.

 

[The Original Ralph]

"And while censorship fears are certainly warranted, there is at least a level of transparency and a burden of proof when the government takes those actions. Whereas a private corporation does not have the same restrictions. Case in point, Paxfire."

yeah, we thought we had that transparency with the IRS - look at the Tea Party debacle - congress got lied to on multiple occasions, and even now, with a new admin in the white house, most of those Tea Party exemption applications are still waiting approval, with no one at the IRS having suffered any consequences - this all started nearly 8 years ago.

i understand your perspective and it warrants some attention, but technology & captialism will keep the ISPs in line. Where there are limited number of ISPs there are numerous cellphone providers - same as folks "cord cutting" they will find other ISPs

i just prefer an unhindered / unrestricted internet when there's a free flow of information

 

[alextheblue]

Voting with your feet only helps when people actually have multiple ISP's available to them.

Government-sanctioned monopolies exist in a lot of areas, yes.

 

[alextheblue]

That's a nice theory but it's revisionist history and this myth was already debunked.
I]https://www.extremetech.com/g00/computing/186576-verizon-caught-throttling-netflix-traffic-even-after-its-pays-for-more-bandwidth

I read it. You'll note it predates the one I posted, and doesn't really debunk anything. It doesn't factor in later admission by Cogent that they were deprioritizing Netflix. Second, the VPN thing actually supports Verizon's claims that they were leaning on their chosen providers too hard. Third, the "you just need to plug in more wires" argument is silly. Let's say we have a deal for a 40Gb interconnect. Now, you're carrying a larger load, and you want me to boost that to say, 80Gb. That's cool... sign this new contract. You'll notice the price went up. You don't want to pay more? Sorry, not doing it for free.

The transit providers got what they paid for. Netflix went for the cheapest options. Netflix ALSO got what they paid for.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/larrydownes/2014/11/25/how-netflix-poisoned-the-net-neutrality-debate/

May have to refresh it to get it to load, Forbes site can be a little stupid. Anyway the article is well written and well sourced. Lots of good links.

Netflix offered boxes to ISPs for free in 2014 https://gizmodo.com/this-box-can-hold-an-entire-netflix-1592590450 to remove congestion over larger Internet hubs The large ISPs refused.

ISPs don't host anything for free. If a service provider is having bandwidth issues they don't just go to the ISPs of their largest customer pools and demand they host crap on their network for free (so you can avoid paying more for additional interconnects). They will host your data and alleviate your bandwidth issues - for a price. Ask Google, Apple, MS, Facebook, et al - they pay for direct interconnects with ISPs. Also, sometimes co-locating equipment DOES cost the ISP. Either way, nothing is free and if you want ISPs to host your stuff so you can save bandwidth, it's going to cost you.

 

[atomicWAR]

atomicWAR

I'll agree the ISPs will act in their own interests guided by their greed - that's capitalism. But the consumer will have a say in it by voting with their "feet", ie moving to another ISP
The fact that under the current NN the gov't can rule, depending on the party in power, can rule a certain news website as "offensive" or "hate speech" i find more dangerous.

killing off NN is a trade off i'll accept

Until all customers have access to 4 or more broadband service providers minimum, which the vast majority do not, voting with your feet is not a solution. Most folks are lucky to have 2 ISP providers. I don't have a choice at all where I live in Hawaii. My mother in Arkansas has only 2 ISPs to choose from. Many of my friends in the bay area only have 2-3 choices. There simply not enough ISPs in many areas for most folks to do as your suggesting. Another reason killing off NN is a bad solution. It will only make that situation worse. ISPs have been buying up and/or killing off the competition for years now leaving most folks with very few choices as time has past. You argument just doesn't hold water in the real world from my personal experience.

 

[kuhndj67]

A government boogeyman is nowhere near as insidious and dangerous as a monetarily motivated corporate boogeyman. Governments do meddle in internet affairs, some a lot (China), some not as much... but with money on the table, ISP's WILL eff up the whole show and do it in a hurry. The arguments against net neutrality generally amount to "Well they've not done anything yet" (of course not... they CAN'T), and "Yea but... look what the Gov. can do" (as in... don't pay attention to the ISP's chomping at the bit to get more of your money... pay attention to this shiny thing that is meaningless to the argument).

IMO the current Administration WILL end Net Neutrality because they want to and we can't do anything about it. We can only hope that a power shift in Washington changes the equation in the People's favor (possibly as early as next November) and it gets rolled back.

 

[wiyosaya]

This is not what people who support net neutrality are objecting to. The lack of net neut will amount to something like this: If you watch HBO Now, for instance, and your ISP has a monetary interest in Showtime but not HBO, your ISP could simply drop your access to HBO Now and put on their policy page something like this "We do not carry HBO Now because they are not part of our family of companies." Note the "." there. This, under the rules that would be in place if net neut is dropped, would be perfectly acceptable. So now, even though you prefer HBO Now to the similar Showtime service, you cannot get HBO Now at all because your ISP refuses to carry it, and because they have it posted in their policy section, you cannot complain to anyone because your ISP does not carry HBO Now. Like it or not, you are stuck with what your ISP decides to carry.

There are a bunch of court cases winding their way up which deal with this without invoking net neutrality. It has to do with the common carrier status of the ISPs. Common carrier means that the carrier (ISP in this case) is agnostic to the content they deliver. In exchange, they are freed from liability for any content which may be illegal.

If the ISP argues that they should be allowed to block HBO Now, then they are no longer acting as a common carrier. They are actively filtering a specific website from their "Internet" access. The moment they do that, they lose common carrier status and they become liable for all the pirated movies and music, child porn, and mafia hit arrangements being conducted via their service.

There are some tortured arguments the ISPs are making trying to have their cake and eat it too. Some successful, others not. We'll have to wait for it to eventually makes its way to the Supreme Court before we can get a final ruling.

Even if they do not outright block any site, to me, anyway, it makes sense that if an ISP charges anyone more for essentially the same connection, such as Comcast charging Netflix to move their data long their network at the speed that Netflix originally contracted for, then the ISP is treating traffic preferentially, and as such, should lose "common carrier" status. But then, I am not a lawyer.

As I see it, it only seems logical that if customer A and customer B pay for a connection that has the same rated speed, but customer B has to pay more because they move more data than customer A, then the commonality in the way that customers are treated is gone, and so should be common carrier status.

At this point, though, the courts will have to decide.

 

[wiyosaya]

"And while censorship fears are certainly warranted, there is at least a level of transparency and a burden of proof when the government takes those actions. Whereas a private corporation does not have the same restrictions. Case in point, Paxfire."

yeah, we thought we had that transparency with the IRS - look at the Tea Party debacle - congress got lied to on multiple occasions, and even now, with a new admin in the white house, most of those Tea Party exemption applications are still waiting approval, with no one at the IRS having suffered any consequences - this all started nearly 8 years ago.

i understand your perspective and it warrants some attention, but technology & captialism will keep the ISPs in line. Where there are limited number of ISPs there are numerous cellphone providers - same as folks "cord cutting" they will find other ISPs

i just prefer an unhindered / unrestricted internet when there's a free flow of information

Maybe I am misreading this, but suggesting that a cord-cutter drop a land line ISP connection with no data cap for a cellphone services seems as if it was not all that well considered, unless you live in one of the few areas in the US that have ISPs that provide comparable service.

I considered that possibility because I hate my ISP with a passion for various reasons I will not get into. It does not work at this time because the cellphone providers have data caps. True competition, IMO, will mean hard lines and equal service among competitors. Barring that, I would be limited to watching just a movie or two a month by switching to a cellphone based service. As I see it, this is in no way competition.

In my area, there is only one ISP to be found.

 

[The Original Ralph]

i realize cellphone carriers and landline carriers are not on par re data costs, but give it time.

Right now in a lot of places two ISPs are the only choice, verizon & comcast. But technology will change that, and pressure from the cellphone carriers will force them to bring down their pricing. Don't know if you were around or paying for a phone line before the gov't broke up AT&T - before the breakup, a landline phone call to switzerland from the US cost me $2.50 a minute. After the breakup, it fell to about 25 cents / minute. Now with google's phone svc, it costs about 5 cents a minute.

Last year google, with the project fi rollout, brought data down to $10/GB which i concede is expensive compared to landline data, but is cheap compared to all the other cellphone carriers, and that was using T-mobile, Spring & US Cellular networks. It did bring pressure on all the cell carriers to bring their data packages costs down.

personally i'd rather go thru a few years of adjustment and not have the gov't controling the internet. The internet flourished when it was free of control, plus you may not have been around long enough to know, when the gov't gets it's hands on something, the results are usually not good. It's always a "one size" fits all, even if it means size 7 shoes for everybody.

but that's just my opinion

 

[kuhndj67]

People have been drinking the industry koolaid... the idea that government shouldn't be involved controlling the excesses of corporations in monopolistic markets is absurd. That's one of the few things that Governments can actually do and do well. When the VAST majority of the US high speed internet market is single option, you've got yourself a monopoly situation... and that's exactly what we have. When there is no choice and there are large barriers to entry there will not be competition or fear of competition... the consumer is at the mercy of the vendor (huge power mismatch)... UNLESS some agency is able to pool customer leverage to create a power match. That's the whole point of Gov regulation of monopolies, we can't negotiate pricing, we can't go to a different provider... if we want Internet access... we deal with whatever the ISP wants to do. THAT'S where we are right now if legal challenges don't get traction.

 

[mihen]

The whole reason we have monopolistic markets in the US is because local governments enforce the monopolies. The only thing changing braodband providers as common carrier does is increase the barrier of entry into the marketplace and protect existing monopolies.
I don't think the solution for corrupt local governments is giving the FCC broad powers over the internet as the FCC is also corruptable. Any legal challenge won't work as you can't make the FCC enforce laws that don't exist.

 

[Solandri]

Netflix offered boxes to ISPs for free in 2014 https://gizmodo.com/this-box-can-hold-an-entire-netflix-1592590450 to remove congestion over larger Internet hubs The large ISPs refused.

ISPs don't host anything for free

You're assuming a false zero base state. The comparison here isn't an ISP hosting something for free vs. ISP charging money to host it.

The comparison is ISP paying for bandwidth to deliver Internet content its customers have requested (and is contractually obligated to do), vs. ISP not paying for that bandwidth because it's allowed to host that content locally (for free since Netflix made it available for free).

Basically, you're arguing that the ISP is choosing to lose money, and no sane ISP would ever do that. Yes in fact, sane companies will do that. In fact they do it all the time. If your only choices are A or B, both of which lose money, but B loses less money, the sane company will choose B. Sunk costs are a perfect example of this sort of situation.

What's happened (due to the government-granted monopolies) is that the ISPs have realized they can manufacture a choice C. Degrade Netflix's service to discourage their customers from subscribing to Netflix, so they subscribe to the ISP's similar on-demand service. Reduces their bandwidth costs, and gets more of their customers to switch to their Netflix-like service.

The problem with that is, technological progress comes from improving things. If you deliver a better product than Netflix and customers switch to your service, that's progress. You're offering people more for their money.

OTOH if you induce customers to switch because you intentionally degrade Netflix's service, that's moving backwards. You're getting them to switch by deliberately reducing what they can get for their money with Netflix. Unfortunately, nobody lives in the vacuum. If the ISPs make such a move, the next step is for website services like Netflix, Google, Facebook, etc. to band together and degrade services to ISPs which intentionally degrade service. In the end, everyone loses by going down this path.

 

[Solandri]

People have been drinking the industry koolaid... the idea that government shouldn't be involved controlling the excesses of corporations in monopolistic markets is absurd. That's one of the few things that Governments can actually do and do well.

Actually, not in this case. The ISPs do not have natural monopolies. They did not come to dominate their industry on their own merits. They came to dominate because local governments granted them local monopolies. Usually in exchange for coverage guarantees. (Although in the previous city I lived in it was a pure kickback - Verizon paid the city a fixed amount per month for each home they hooked up with FIOS. It was basically a way for the city to collect tax revenue, while hiding the fact that they were taxing their residents.)

This whole fiasco is due to a massive failure of government. They saw that it would be terrible to allow every mom and pop cable company to string up cables everywhere, so they rightly stepped in and regulated. But they regulated ineptly or corruptly, putting us where we are today - with half the country's population having only one realistic choice for broadband Internet service.

 

[TMTOWTSAC]

Let's not forget what drove broadband adoption in the first place...and it wasn't the innovation or content provided by the ISP's. Claiming that the greedy content producers are taking advantage of the poor beleaguered delivery services is silly. ISP's grew their entire business on the demand for that content. Only now, late to the party, they want to use their position to hold back their competitors while they catch up with their own services. That would be like UPS and Fedex deciding they will no longer deliver for Amazon because they're launching their own retail web store.