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Keep the Internet Open

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: Keep the Internet Open

#361

Post by Swenrekcah »

wonder_er wrote: post #181
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?

reasonable political ideologies can lead to "extreme" outcomes. (I consider an extreme outcome to be one that requires human nature to change, in order to be successful.) Since I think bureaucrats are gonna bureaucrat, handing them power over anything is a terrible idea. Are companies good? no, many of them are terrible. But if enough people don't like a company, the company ceases to exist. I've yet to see a similar…

>But if enough people don't like a company, the company ceases to exist.

This is completely untrue. I'll give an analogy: If enough people don't like a tyrannical government, does the tyrannical government cease to exist? No, it has all the power to keep people in line and also to make life just bearable enough so people tolerate it. Any sign of uprising or resistance will be squished in infancy.

The only way is if the situation becomes so unbearable for the people that there is a massive uprising/revolution, and even then the people are not guaranteed victory. Furthermore, suppose the tyrant is overthrown, without the institutions of democracy in place it's more likely than not that there will just be another tyrant in his place.

This is the law of the jungle, and it is not the best way to run a society. That is why we have laws, and that is why we need regulations for our corporations.

Edit to clarify: On second reading the above may sound to some like hysteria but any entity that has monopoly on a very expensive but vital infrastructure in a completely free and unregulated market, has all the power over its "customers". Hence the tyrannical government analogy.

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#362

Post by yulaow »

rdl wrote: post #138
pharrlax wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It should be a market decision, not a national government decision. That's all well and good where competitive markets exist, but in many places, they simply don't. Only 23% of American census blocks, for example, have more than 1 option for 25MBPS+ internet. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/08/us-br...

Maybe the solution is to use exemption from NN as a carrot to encourage competition. "If there are two (or 3? or 4?) or more separate providers offering parity level of service to a property, all providers to that property are exempt from NN requirements for service to that property". If you combined that with allowing new entrant providers to not cover an entire geographic market, but just cherry pick the high densi…

They are just gonna create "children" companies, make a pseudo cartel with them, and charge whatever they want in the area. US antitrust law are a joke and totally useless. If you want to do something like that you should first _strongly_ improve your anti-trust legislation and really start breaking big companies (yes, also those bahamut banks) and put them in a real competitive position.

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#363

Post by thirdsun »

danielweber wrote: post #171
gz5 wrote: post #56

The utility should be the fiber (or spectrum). Regulate that; leave the ISPs to then compete openly. Today's software can enable multiple ISPs to share the fiber/spectrum. I could then have 10 ISPs today and 15 ISPs tomorrow. I might use ISP #1 for certain content, and ISP #2 for certain services. ISPs essentially become a function of the services and content they provide, and how they provide it, in an ultra-competi…

Isn't that what happened to the DSL market? No one will bother laying new infrastructure because anyone can use it.

Yes, this is/was the situation in Germany. Which basically results in Telekom being the only provider building new infrastructure while every other (DSL)-provider just rents those lines. Of course it should be shared, but it lacks incentive to actually improve the reach of infrastructure.

I always had the idea of timed exclusivity - whoever builts infrastructure first should enjoy 2-4 years of exclusive operation before other providers can join.

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#364

Post by mbishop »

Am I the only person frustrated that this article contains a call to arms and then no actionable items? I'm on board, but what should I do about it? Put that in your article!

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#365

Post by Swenrekcah »

wonder_er wrote: post #296
guelo wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comcast is one of the most hated companies ever but they only keep getting bigger. "Bureaucrats" are ultimately responsive to the politicians which are ultimately responsive to us, as we see with Trump now getting the power to reshape Obama's FCC policies. I'll tell you this, if they really go through with giving the web over to the ISPs for them to ruin with nickel and dime schemes voters will eventually force your…

Right, but Comcast doesn't imprison people for life and bomb other countries or throw you in jail for not paying for its services. Also, bureaucrats are responsible to the organizations most influential to them. "The American People" can barely be motivated to vote in a presidential election, because they rightfully perceive that their votes don't matter, and a vote between two shitty options is a shitty vote. So, bu…

>So, businesses (like Comcast) can just earmark a few million dollars a year to keep buying whatever organization has the power to regulate them, and we (the people) can do nothing about it.

You are right that this is a big problem, however it is more an implementation flaw than a flaw of regulations. A more strict enforcement of information and financial transparency could address the bribery concerns.

There is another problem that is perpetual in the interaction of government and corporations, which is that the corporation lawyer has many times, 10x or 100x, the financial incentive to make the bureaucrat ineffective, than the bureaucrat himself has to be effective.

I would suggest a (difficult) solution that any governmental office or agency should have their success evaluated in terms of economic impact by something like a team of independent economists every year or two.

The agency's funding as well as staff compensation would then be derived from that, as a fixed percentage of the societal benefit. I have no idea of the exact numbers, but the point is to create the same motivational incentives as the corporations have.

One side is working for themselves and reap the significant benefits of their hard work. The other side is working for all of society and really should also reap the benefits of their hard work.

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#366

Post by ludston »

wonder_er wrote: post #168
acalderaro wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, a member of the mythical "coastal liberal ideological vacuum," where anyone who brings up the slightest anti-government sentiment gets bombarded with ad hominem attacks and logical fallacies, instead of facts and reason. Is that because the coastal liberal is uneducated, or simply immature? If we generously assume the latter, it's important for you to know that the sort of thinking that let Trump win the white ho…

I'm with you. I still feel a bit surprised at the cognitive dissonance required to support internet privacy (on one hand) and on the other, recommend having a government body regulate _the entire internet_. I wonder if this breakdown is at least in part between populations in the USA and everyone else. I've sat down with some pro-nn folks, honestly trying to understand how they reconcile the two, and have not made mu…

I do not understand why there is cognitive dissonance here? NN gives users power. Privacy gives users power. There is no dissonance in wanting both of these things that have the same end.

Are you suggesting that all government regulation is a violation of user privacy? (If so, I would suggest you share a different definition of privacy to most people)

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#368

Post by ChefDenominator »

sleepyhead wrote: post #281
rdl wrote: post #58

While I like the Internet being open, I don't like "net neutrality" extremism. 1) While I dislike monopoly carrier antics, I'm even more unhappy about the idea of government bureaucrats dictating network engineering standards to carriers and ISPs. If you build a network with caches/content servers close to users, and expensive backhaul back to your network core, you can offer essentially unlimited traffic to users hi…

"It should be a market decision, not a national government decision." Funny how you call other extremists. This is a pure ideological viewpoint that has proven to be wrong in how internet and telecommunications evolved. It was built on standards and it was built on national and international regulations. It's why you can take a phone used in Germany and use it in India. "3) Zero-rating in emerging markets (e.g. FB in…

If they don't like it, then they can use something else.

Why assume they are stupid and unable to make decisions for themselves?

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#369

Post by ChefDenominator »

intended wrote: post #335
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.

I was a financial analyst, and I had the chance to cover the telecom sector. I know how the market works, NN is not new, it is how the world worked. Anti NN is new. It's hugely anti competitive and anti consumer. If it gets close to getting passed, I'll be really happy for the segment. Wouldn't be happy being a consumer. Edit: IMO, the American telecom industry is shafting its consumers regularly and has been underin…

Which Internet rule is it which states that we can all claim we have been any occupation that suits the discussion, and without any additional evidence to support such claims?

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#370

Post by thatcat »

MarkSummer wrote: post #355
guelo wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked in big ISPs, I know exactly how it works, and it's never to the benefit of the customers. Especially when there's zero competitive pressure.

Out of curiosity (by someone who doesn't know exactly how it works), is there no way for society to go completely off-grid with respect to ISPs, like power customers do with solar panels? Couldn't we then people build an inexpensive wireless black box server/partial cache nodes that everybody owns (stronger ones or bridges for rural users), and that communicate as a smart distributive network - physically detached fr…

Wireless doesn't scale. Municipal delivered internet is the feasible option, which Comcast has sought to prevent via regulations.

The state should file antitrust charges and use the fines to erect new infrastructure that any ISP can lease, restoring competition.

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