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Keep the Internet Open

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: Keep the Internet Open

#221

Post by rdl »

rybosome wrote: post #212
rdl wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your examples are all safety (including public safety), or shared-resources (radio spectrum). Fiber I lay in the ground isn't a shared resource, and no one's safety is impaired by prioritizing my on-network traffic over off-network traffic. A more direct analogy is government regulation of something like how food tastes or how entertaining TV shows are. There's some justification for regulating carriers who have an e…

> Your examples are all safety (including public safety), or shared-resources (radio spectrum). Fiber I lay in the ground isn't a shared resource, and no one's safety is impaired by prioritizing my on-network traffic over off-network traffic. That's true, sort of. The fiber you lay in the ground isn't a shared resource, but the internet as a whole IS. Mediating my access to it without reasonable alternatives removes…

> I'm trying to interpret this charitably

I couldn't easily think of a non-public-safety, non-shared resource regulation that exists. (because most of those things aren't regulated). If you can think of a better example, I'm fine with using that.

> local monopoly

Local monopolies are because local governments restrict who can trench or otherwise install in an area. I believe there are local/state/federal restrictions requiring universal access. If it weren't for these monopolies you'd at least have two crappy cable companies in a region vs. one, and there would be competition. (In my market, sometimes apartment complexes and others do monopoly agreements with one or the other of the local carriers -- Wave vs. Centurylink vs. Frontier (dying) vs. Comcast -- which is an issue too, but much more open to commercial pressure.)

There are some national policies which restrict the total number of providers in the US market, but mostly it is restrictions at the local level which keep individual locations from having multiple of those providers. There are some inherent natural monopoly aspects here -- trenching has costs, etc. -- but a lot of it is a consequence of government policies.

(I want there to be open access to high speed, inexpensive Internet (with as uniform speeds across sites as possible) in as many places as possible; my disagreement with extreme NN policies is that they both violate private property rights AND are not likely to produce the desired result.)

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#222

Post by rybosome »

subverter wrote: post #209

I don't think anyone here is going to argue that the internet shouldn't be open. The real question behind that – and where we differ – is how the role of government fits into that. If you believe government is inherently good and necessary to enable a "basic right" like the internet, then yes, of course, government should be the one to keep the internet open. This is Sam's view. On the other hand, if you distrust gov…

Framing it as purely a question of trust in government and pointing out an example of our interests not being represented is not the entire surface of the argument. The government's stated purpose is inherently good (though they do not necessarily act in a manner consistently with that stated purpose). We have a limited degree of control over how we are governed, and we have ways to express dissatisfaction. None of that holds true for a corporation. Their stated purpose is to create value for shareholders, the voting power that stock gives you is a fraction of the power of your vote as a citizen, and in the case of a monopoly over an important good or service, you have ZERO ways to express dissatisfaction.

Knowing what we know of anti-competitive practices and the tragedy of the commons, doesn't that at least give you pause about whether corporations should be the one to keep the internet open?

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#223

Post by hueving »

E6300 wrote: post #158
cmurf wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or default service that blocks VPN, tracks everything you're doing and uses it for their benefit; and if you don't like that you can pay extra to opt out. It's really clear. Democrats: This is the customer's information. Republicans: This is the ISP's equipment, and therefore anything on it is fair game for the equipment owner to use however they want, deny service to whoever they want, for any reason they want. So d…

It can be argued that the ISP's equipment is useless unless it runs data lines through state-owned land, therefore no, it doesn't get to do absolutely anything it wants with it.

The equipment that would be modifying the traffic would be in privately-owned exchanges or the ISP's datacenters. None of it would happen on the fiber crossing over (or running under) state owned land.

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#224

Post by cmurf »

nocman wrote: post #136
cmurf wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or default service that blocks VPN, tracks everything you're doing and uses it for their benefit; and if you don't like that you can pay extra to opt out. It's really clear. Democrats: This is the customer's information. Republicans: This is the ISP's equipment, and therefore anything on it is fair game for the equipment owner to use however they want, deny service to whoever they want, for any reason they want. So d…

That's a pretty broad brush you are painting with. Do you have some hard data that says things break down so clearly along party lines? I'd particularly like to see data about non-politicians, if it is available, since the way Congress votes on such things is not necessarily driven by the way their constituents view the issue (if they are even aware of it).

I am referring to the statements and policies voted on and implemented by FCC regulators. Asking about non-politicians on the face of it seems pointless, my entire comment is about policy. And that is necessarily about the politics. The affiliation of plebians doesn't matter, what matters is the ideology of those with the power to enact the policy.

Ajit Pai opposes any sort of regulation that prescribes or proscribes specific activity under Title II, and Republicans in Congress likewise prefer ISP regulation under the far weaker rules in Title I, rather than Title II. And he opposes subsidies favored by the Connect America Fund in reducing the disparity in broadband performance between urban and rural areas, and also the Lifeline program which makes it more affordable. Last year Lifeline was expanded, and Pai becomes chairman and blocks it as one off his first acts. These are night and day differences. It's fairly binary.

It's forcing free market ponies on what is a deeply monopolistic and anti-competitive market. Anytime there's meaningful competition you see conglomeration or market exit. It's absolutely a philosophy of "if you can't afford access or performance, the free market says go F yourself, and we aren't going to regulate an alternative outcome to that".

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#225

Post by brothercolor »

sama wrote: post #19
brothercolor wrote: post #14

The internet is what makes Silicon Valley go round. Everyone, including Sam Altman, needs to be an activist. Asking for someone else to take point on something so fundamental is like asking Natives to take point on water prot-- wait.

I am happy to help, and honestly if I had more time right now I'd take this on directly--right now is an unusually busy time for me. I agree with you it's critical to Silicon Valley.

I hear you! I'm in the same boat, I shouldn't point fingers. I'll do what I can.

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#226

Post by hueving »

cortesoft wrote: post #204
mehaveaccount wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"pro-abortion" lol. heartless thing to laugh about

He is laughing at your loaded word choice - no one is 'pro-abortion', they are 'pro-choice'.

Why is it loaded? It's the choice to have an abortion.

It's like claiming 'pro-gun' is a loaded word when the supporters want people to have the choice to own a gun.

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#227

Post by acdha »

rdl wrote: post #156
acdha wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first point isn't traditionally included in net neutrality – that belief, and everything about bureaucrats dictating standards was created out of whole cloth by the ISP lobbying effort. The core idea is only fairness: e.g. Comcast can't throttle or charge for connectivity based on your perceived ability to pay and their in-house service shouldn't get separate pricing. Similarly, zero-rating isn't usually conside…

The first point is exactly what Comcast can do with their own video service that they can't do with a random video service. (They can do it with someone like Netflix with open content servers.) If NN were structured such that a company like Netflix had to provide content servers for internal-to-network deployment or netflix customers would higher rate or lower performance for Netflix traffic, but Comcast had to charg…

I found the wording in your second sentence a bit confusing but I think that simply goes back to the fair/open aspects: let Comcast put VOD servers in every neighborhood in the country, but require them to allow Netflix, Google, etc. to purchase rack-space at cost so they have the option of parity.

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#229

Post by Alex3917 »

bifrost wrote: post #179
Alex3917 wrote: post #78

> Doing this allows the government to ensure a level playing field In theory this is a good argument. In practice, my experience is that this argument causes people to write off net neutrality as just being something that's about letting tech bros make lots of money. I've even heard this from folks in the tech industry, who really should know better. An argument that may be more convincing is that the Internet is the…

"then ISPs are going to pull a Martin Shkreli" So why didn't that happen prior to now? The NN legislation as proposed is new and the internet existed just fine prior to it.

> So why didn't that happen prior to now?

That's a good question, and it's hard to say. Empirically we can see that it is starting to happen, e.g. with t-mobile not charging users when they consume video and audio data from certain sites.

My guess is that the reason it didn't happen historically is because content was worth almost zero. E.g. Flickr was bought by Yahoo for almost nothing, and if I remember correctly YouTube was on track to go bankrupt until Google bought them to set the legal precedent they wanted.

It's only in the last couple years that the costs of producing and distributing content have now also basically fallen to zero, so it's now possible to make a lot of money in the content business even if any individual item is still worth very little. There have obviously been companies who have made a lot of money on content previously, but mostly only when there was either some quirky situation affecting the price of display ads (e.g. Yahoo) or else when there was some quirky situation affecting the valuation of the company itself (e.g. YouTube).

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#230

Post by lr4444lr »

johnwheeler wrote: post #214

To the folks on HN who don't vehemently, vehemently oppose a non-neutral system, your line of thinking puzzles the hell out of me. Is the idea that government regulation is bad in all cases but corporate regulation is OK in all cases? Why? Because you've bought into free market forces making all things better no matter what ? Those forces only make things better unless they don't. To me, it's crazy that's not immedia…

To answer philosophically about it, because your question seems to me to ask for broad strokes, if you're using a resource acknowledged to have aspects of a "public good" to a quantitatively greater degree than other users, you should pay more for it. The footnote in the original article even admits as much. That's not to say I oppose net-neutrality, but to use your words, don't "vehemently, vehemently" oppose a non-neutral system.
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