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Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

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Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#381
post #375
post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't a personal jeer. I was commenting on his behavior/attitude, not calling him names. There's a big difference. alternately: > You're just being (a prick | stubborn | bullheaded | rigid | perverse | unreasonable)

If there's a difference, it's one that doesn't bring the comment within the guidelines. They don't just ask us not to call people names, they ask us not to call names at all: > When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Alright let me replay this conversation:

Post:

> the free market is broken. I have a choice between two providers but one is a slight inconvenience for me to have installed so I refuse to use it.

YC Approved© Reply:

> the free market is not broken.

🆒

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The common response to this is that ISPs have access to everything you do (which is true), and that they could sell that (which is false). The regulations being overturned here are ones that have only recently taken effect, and non-anonymized, non-aggregate selling of ISP data is still outlawed by the Cable Communications Act of 1984, which protects subscriber privacy is 47USC § 551[1]. Put simply, neither the most r…

"Anonymized" aggregate data is not as anonymous as you might think. This study [1] was able to accurately de-anonymize users based on internet history and public social media 70% of the time. [1] http://randomwalker.info/publications/browsing-history-deano...

[deleted]

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That section of law says they can sell your data with prior written or electronic permission. 47 U.S. Code § 551 (c)(1) Except as provided in paragraph (2), a cable operator shall not disclose personally identifiable information concerning any subscriber without the prior written or electronic consent of the subscriber concerned So this section of the law, though another might, does not support your statement that "t…

I think you're misreading it, unless you have reason to believe that you've already given your permission. Either way, the regulation that Trump's EO overturns also allowed you to opt in if you wanted to.

Wouldn't a privacy policy cover "the prior written or electronic consent of the subscriber concerned"

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you expand on your Compuserve comment? What happened?

Presumably OP is referring to the walled garden of CompuServe, Prodigy, and others where you could only talk to other CompuServe customers on their proprietary message boards. If you wanted to talk with someone else, it was impossible (until later) because the systems didn't interoperate. CompuServe controlled the message boards, and could control which ones were created (or not created) and thus controlled the messa…

I used AOL and Compuserve, but after they had both expanded to allowing access to everything. What drove the expansion? It seems like the market worked as expected in this case...

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#386
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess you wouldn't need to as long as the ISP market is competitive How would it be competitive? If my ISP released its own Netflix and throttled my connection to Netflix to the point where Netflix seemed extremely slow but my ISP's version of Netflix was super fast, there would be no competition. My ISP would dominate. > You might go to another competitor and convince them your product is good or your product ca…

The point is that NN would be less important if there were more consumer ISPs around. Specifically if consumers had more choice. I should note that competition amongst ISPs wouldn't do much to prevent zero-rating, which is still problematically anti-competitive.

Well, NN also helps make it easier for new ISPs to compete. If there is good content (netflix) that is not owned or exclusive to other ISPs then it is much easier to launch your own ISP.

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#387

Does anyone else find the internet market odd? Up until now net neutrality and other policies have given us the following: 1. Massive monopolies which essentially control 95% of all tech (google, facebook, amazon, microsoft, apple, etc) 2. An internet where every consumer assumes everything should be free. 3. An internet where there's only enough room for a handfull of players in each market globally i.e. if you have…

Looking what you write, I think you misunderstand what NN does.

The monopolies you mentioned have very little to do with NN. Someone already gave example how Facebook replaced MySpace, similarly Google, replaced Yahoo, AltaVista etc, I suppose Amazon did not replace anything, but started e-commerce (and currently creating other markets, like cloud computing), but it is getting higher and higher competition.

Apple and Microsoft existed before Internet and are just using their old position to leverage their existence, but the fact they face competition.

> EDIT: another question :) If net-neutrality has absolutely nothing to do with the tech monopolies maintaining their power position then why do they all support it? [https://internetassociation.org/]

Simple, because it expands powers of existing monopolies making them relevant. Perfect example is Netflix. They providing service to stream movies. They pay also pay large amounts of money for Internet access and ability to send content to their users. On the other side users similarly are paying for Internet access to be able to receive the content.

You would think it's double paying (and it kind of is), but it's normal, why users should subsidize Netflix costs or why Netflix should pay for users' access (since they are not only using Netflix) they just pay for their access to the network.

But, regional ISPs (in this case Comcast) started having "problems" where packets from Netflix were dropped, because "Netflix was sending too much data to them", ignoring the fact that that data Netflix was sending was requested by ISP's users who were already paying ISP to do one thing and do it well (i.e. deliver data they requested).

Things were kind of bad for the users (and users couldn't also switch their provider because at most they only had just another option which was equally as bad), until Netflix reached deal with Comcast where they pay Comcast to deliver the content (something that Comcast users are already paying for).

Net neutrality is trying to make sure this kind of manipulation is not allowed.

The thing with Netflix already happened but could easily be translated to other companies. For example (I'm borrowing it from here [1], I think you should watch it it explains the core issue very well IMO) Microsoft could pay so Bing has always fast access at cost of Google. Don't you want as a user to not have any company dictate you what you can access or not? Similarly those Internet companies also don't want to pay extra on top of what they already are paying. That's their interest. The only companies who would benefit from lack of NN are handful companies that deliver Internet to end users (especially companies like Comcast, TimeWarner/Spectrum, AT&T, Verizon etc) and lack of NN would give them huge power to bully anyone else.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92vuuZt7wak

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably OP is referring to the walled garden of CompuServe, Prodigy, and others where you could only talk to other CompuServe customers on their proprietary message boards. If you wanted to talk with someone else, it was impossible (until later) because the systems didn't interoperate. CompuServe controlled the message boards, and could control which ones were created (or not created) and thus controlled the messa…

I used AOL and Compuserve, but after they had both expanded to allowing access to everything. What drove the expansion? It seems like the market worked as expected in this case...

When the web came along the walled gardens were immediately obsolete. By the time you joined they were trying to stay relevant by becoming portals to the web. Some people were actually fooled into thinking AOL was the web for over a decade afterwards.

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ISPs are natural monopolies due to the incredibly high infrastructure investments required. In countries or regions where there are many ISPs to choose from, it's almost always because the government has required the one or two that own all the infra to rent capacity at cost to anyone who wants to start up a competing service. In return, the governments frequently supply tax breaks. This mechanism may be a viable alt…

FYI, there is no forced rental in Romania, Ukraine or Russia. Their governments simply didn't bother to regulate ISPs at all for a long time.

Maybe this is because the market is still fresh. Give it a time, and those companies will start merge together like they just did in the US.

There's limited amount of space in the city infrastructure to use for laying all of the fiber.

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not American, so please correct me if I'm wrong but I have yet to see any proof of this whole 'sell your internet history' complaint that seems to be blatently copied by everyone without any research. The way I understand it is that ISPs can sell anonymized data from groups of users. Like: people who visit news.ycombinator.com generally also visit stackoverflow. I also don't know how an ISP would get your actual…

The common response to this is that ISPs have access to everything you do (which is true), and that they could sell that (which is false). The regulations being overturned here are ones that have only recently taken effect, and non-anonymized, non-aggregate selling of ISP data is still outlawed by the Cable Communications Act of 1984, which protects subscriber privacy is 47USC § 551[1]. Put simply, neither the most r…

47 USC 551 only applies to cable operators, and the 6th Circuit ruled that it doesn't apply to Internet service.[1]

[1] http://www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/06a0366p-06.pdf

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