Keep the Internet Open • Hacker News Board

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#311

Post by aurelianito » Wed, Mar 15, 2017, 1:22 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #142

dsr_ wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google and Facebook now run networks larger than most major ISPs -- among the largest on the planet. Demand for Youtube and FB are so high and ubiquitous that pretty much any ISP will immediately cave in. Comcast is the most disliked company in the USA. Guess what happens when G runs a banner under each search or Youtube video mentioning that performance is bad because Comcast is blocking things, here's Brian Roberts…

> Guess what happens when G runs a banner under each search or Youtube video mentioning that performance is bad because Comcast is blocking things, here's Brian Roberts's phone number? The ISP filters the banner before it reaches the customer, and replaces it with their own message (or just advertising from someone who has paid the ISP.)

I don't think they can break SSL in order to do that.

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#312

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 15, 2017, 1:22 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #142

dsr_ wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google and Facebook now run networks larger than most major ISPs -- among the largest on the planet. Demand for Youtube and FB are so high and ubiquitous that pretty much any ISP will immediately cave in. Comcast is the most disliked company in the USA. Guess what happens when G runs a banner under each search or Youtube video mentioning that performance is bad because Comcast is blocking things, here's Brian Roberts…

> Guess what happens when G runs a banner under each search or Youtube video mentioning that performance is bad because Comcast is blocking things, here's Brian Roberts's phone number? The ISP filters the banner before it reaches the customer, and replaces it with their own message (or just advertising from someone who has paid the ISP.)

[deleted]

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#313

Post by tomcam » Wed, Mar 15, 2017, 1:23 AM UTC

I think Sam needs to clarify some terms.

> The internet is a public good

Black's Law says a public good is "An item that taxation is used to finance, the consumption of which has been decided by the whole of society. It is not an item for consumption that an individual has decided upon."

Does Sam want to tax all of us for net access, then have the government decide how it should be allocated? Do ISPs disappear under this scenario? Does Sam want the same government that has gone insane collecting personal data to have further control over net our access? Does he trust them to do the right thing with it? If so, does he have any evidence it would do so?

> I believe access should be a basic right.

"Basic right" is not defined and doesn't have a legal tradition, so I'm not sure what it means. Is it meant to be a constitutionally delineated right like (in the USA) freedom of the press, or to worship, or to bear arms? Because none of these require that we have the government confiscate our money in order that others may exercise those rights.

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#314

Post by bo1024 » Wed, Mar 15, 2017, 1:23 AM UTC

dsr_ wrote: post #100

guelo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's right. It will be a major shift of power from Google/Facebook/Amazon to the ISPs. Comcast could charge Google or Facebook extortionate prices to keep their websites fast. Theoretically there would be nothing stopping Comcast from completely blocking a website. Cable vs TV channel negotiations periodically end up with blackouts for the channels.

Google and Facebook now run networks larger than most major ISPs -- among the largest on the planet. Demand for Youtube and FB are so high and ubiquitous that pretty much any ISP will immediately cave in. Comcast is the most disliked company in the USA. Guess what happens when G runs a banner under each search or Youtube video mentioning that performance is bad because Comcast is blocking things, here's Brian Roberts…

> Demand for Youtube and FB are so high and ubiquitous that pretty much any ISP will immediately cave in.

Unfortunately I don't think this is totally true, e.g. in many places in the USA (even large cities and tech hubs), consumers only have one ISP option fast enough to stream YouTube.

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#315

Post by sour-taste » Wed, Mar 15, 2017, 1:29 AM UTC

bifrost wrote: post #167

guelo wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "net neutrality" extremism So the NN side are the extremists. Not the side that wants to radically change the way the internet has worked for 40 years. Not the side that wants to upend the most innovative segment of the economy in favor of dinausour monoplies, radically reshaping the foundations of billions of dollars in investment and billions more in created wealth. Those guys are "conservative" right?

I think you misunderstand - NN is new, the internet worked fine on its own prior to it. NN is not a colloquial "neutrality" agreement, its a "lets force carriers to do things because we don't understand how it works". I've worked on the carrier side, on the last mile side and on the consumer side and I'm not a fan of most of the proposed legislation. We need to prevent anticompetitive practices, but thats about it.

NN was never codified but it has always been the agreed upon practice. Except for a few exceptional breaches (like the netflix/comcast deal https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/24/business/media/comcast-an...) it's just what carriers have always done. It's only now that they're getting greedy that they demand to be paid to deliver content to their customers.

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#316

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 15, 2017, 1:36 AM UTC

mmanfrin wrote: post #131

dsr_ wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google and Facebook now run networks larger than most major ISPs -- among the largest on the planet. Demand for Youtube and FB are so high and ubiquitous that pretty much any ISP will immediately cave in. Comcast is the most disliked company in the USA. Guess what happens when G runs a banner under each search or Youtube video mentioning that performance is bad because Comcast is blocking things, here's Brian Roberts…

Demand for Youtube and FB are so high and ubiquitous that pretty much any ISP will immediately cave in. Yep, Comcast better be careful lest I leave them for the 6mbps competitors I have as options in the backwater community I live in called Berkeley, CA. I utterly fucking loathe Comcast, and yet they get thousands of my dollars because of an unspoken of oligopoly among ISPs that has grown out of the tacit agreement t…

[deleted]

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#317

Post by erikpukinskis » Wed, Mar 15, 2017, 1:41 AM UTC

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…

The internet is not free and open because some companies are complying with regulations. The internet is free and open because that's what the internet is. If ISP's, content providers, whoever else wants to provide services which aren't free and open then they're not part of the internet. It's sad if lots of people lose internet access because Comcast stops offering it, but the internet won't go away. Other companies will offer free and open access and the internet will live on with those folks.

If it comes to it, you can come over to my house and plug into my ethernet and we'll grab a Slackware CD and start a new internet if we have to. Deal?

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#318

Post by TOMDM » Wed, Mar 15, 2017, 1:48 AM UTC

noobiemcfoob wrote: post #198

TOMDM wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a way, I'd say what your describing as far as power utilities is already in effect. There are a good number of people that charge their batteries off peak when the power is cheaper such that they can either use it later on peak when they would have to pay more, or even sell that power back to the grid when it's in more demand. I think the issue here is that power is binary as far as the argument here is concerned,…

> power is binary as far as the argument here is concerned, you have it or you don't Power is not binary. It is fundamentally analog. You can certainly have different degrees of power. See brownouts. Consumers only tend to see power as binary because of deep standards penetration in the electronics market.

Don't get me wrong, I certainly understand that power is anything but binary in it's function, however, as far as how consumers interact with it, very very few care as to what the copper in their walls is doing, only that it turns on the lights.

To extend the argument of net neutrality in this direction, I think an important distinction needs to be made, because surely you could argue LED's over florescent bulbs due to power consumption, but consumers already pay for different speeds and data caps, the argument shifts to your utility offering different prices based on who is making your LED's, even if they are functionally identical. This is where the comparison breaks down, because the bulbs don't magically become more efficient for your utility because they are somehow peering with the manufacturer.

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#319

Post by aplummer » Wed, Mar 15, 2017, 1:51 AM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #94

bo1024 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I don't think it would be good for consumers, but it wouldn't be very good for Google if every youtube video people watch buffers slowly and flickers, meanwhile $ISP has created a competing website that runs fine. Nor would it be good for Facebook if $ISP replaces all advertisements on their page with $ISP's own ads. (Hmm, I guess HTTPS should be able to prevent this?)

meanwhile $ISP has created a competing website that runs fine. It wouldn't be good for Google, but this seems as likely as an ISP beating SpaceX to the moon. It's hard enough to get an ISP to provide internet service most of the time.

Telstra in Australia invests a phenomenal amount of money into "Stan" / this.

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#320

Post by woah » Wed, Mar 15, 2017, 1:53 AM UTC

rhcom2 wrote: post #257

bifrost wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstand - NN is new, the internet worked fine on its own prior to it. NN is not a colloquial "neutrality" agreement, its a "lets force carriers to do things because we don't understand how it works". I've worked on the carrier side, on the last mile side and on the consumer side and I'm not a fan of most of the proposed legislation. We need to prevent anticompetitive practices, but thats about it.

> "lets force carriers to do things because we don't understand how it works" Are you suggesting pro-NN people don't understand how it works? This is a strange summary of NN to me.

What do you think about YouTube and Facebook's edge servers?