ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law • Hacker News Board

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#271

Post by vel0city » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 2:50 PM UTC

HWR_14 wrote: post #221

Bilal_io wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I'd like my ISP to get their nose out of my traffic and stop sniffing like a coke addict. One of Net Neutrality arguments is that you sell me speed (and bandwidth where data caps apply, but shouldn't) and I can do whatever I want. It is I, that pays for the service, not Netflix nor Google or any platform, and if I want to watch YouTube in 4K because my speed allows me to, or if I want to turn my PC into a seedi…

It doesn't stop you from watching in 4K video. It just provides another option. But critically, this is an option that you, the customer, negotiate with T-Mobile. You contract for X gigs plus unlimited sub-480p traffic. And tiered data (X gigs of high-speed, Y or infinite gigs of low speed) is really common in cellphone contracts. This is just making it clear you can get the low speed data without having to burn your…

> X gigs of high-speed, Y or infinite gigs of low speed

But then why even bother with the paperwork to get approved to be a part of the program? Why doesn't T-Mo just ignore usage below some average throughput speed for any traffic?

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#272

Post by ryathal » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 2:51 PM UTC

Forgeties79 wrote: post #203

jmyeet wrote: post #46

The whole net neutrality saga just exposed the deep regulatory capture between ISPs and the FCC (the Republican Commissioners at least). Pai's argument for repealing net neutrality was that it wasn't a Federal government concern. That was originally what prompted California to institute these rules. But suddenly it wasn't a state issue either. Weird . The US has some of the most expensive Internet access in the world…

This is pretty tinfoil hat of me. I have this theory that many companies that are “competing” with each other in an area (Cox and AT&T for me) seem to be ceding areas to each other by upgrading certain sections and not others while avoiding overlap for long periods, functionally only giving buyers one choice. In New Orleans, Cox has offered “gigablast” (yes that’s what it’s called) Internet in some areas while AT&T o…

I'm not sure that anyone can seriously believe there isn't collusion happening among telecom companies, the failed Comcast and Time Warner practically had it in writing that there was collusion. Anti-trust action isn't ever going to happen though, so there isn't much that can be done.

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#273

Post by username190 » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 2:58 PM UTC

bcgraham wrote: post #187

lwkl wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The road-tax is neutral, it doesn't matter what goods you transport. Imagine charging the producers of the most transported goods to pay a fee in addition to the road-tax and otherwise blocking their goods being transported for the rest of the month. Net neutrality asks the internet to work how road taxes work. You pay for a certain bandwidth (a truck) and you can transport whatever goods you want with that. It doesn…

Note that roads are not neutral in the “net neutrality” sense, since emergency vehicles are prioritized. There’s a cogent argument against net neutrality on similar grounds: i.e., prioritizing traffic with prioritized purpose, especially in the face of congestion.

In addition to what was noted by a sibling comment (emergency calls are given higher priority than your standard commercial voice or data traffic), there is specifically an exemption listed in California's Net Neutrality law [0] for emergency traffic.

> 3103. (a) Nothing in this title supersedes any obligation or authorization a fixed or mobile Internet service provider may have to address the needs of emergency communications or law enforcement, public safety, or national security authorities, consistent with or as permitted by applicable law, or limits the provider’s ability to do so.

[0] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#274

Post by imtringued » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 3:00 PM UTC

bberenberg wrote: post #7

wrycoder wrote: post #2

> California's net neutrality law is similar to the federal rules repealed under former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. California prohibits ISPs from blocking or throttling lawful traffic. It also prohibits requiring fees from websites or online services to deliver or prioritize their traffic to consumers, bans paid data cap exemptions (so-called "zero-rating"), and says that ISPs may not attempt to evade net neutrality prot…

I don't support this, but I can try to steel man this position. Largely it comes with the idea that use = cost, and that infrastructure has limited capacity and is therefore zeroish sum. For example, a common idea is that we should tax trucks more than other cars because they cause a large amount of damage to our roads. Following that logic, the companies that encourage users to consume more bandwidth should be charg…

Your argument makes zero sense and is completely divorced from what you preach. I hate this direct form of hypocrisy. People pretend to be "righteous" and then act dishonest.

Cloud providers already bill network traffic at extremely high prices. The cheap ones oversubscribe their connections, according to the motto "you get what you pay for". The current system is "use = cost".

>For example, a common idea is that we should tax trucks more than other cars because they cause a large amount of damage to our roads.

And this is exactly why we should have net neutrality. If there is net neutrality on roads then we can just tax by axle weight. If there is no net neutrality then road companies would come up with a weird classification system that is completely independent of axle weight. For example. S-Pedelecs in Germany are just unthrottled electric bicycles that go faster than 25km/h. They are basically classified as a moped even though they are much lighter. Road companies would then charge S-Pedelecs more because of what they are classified as instead of how much they weigh. Truck companies will then try to develop trucks that aren't classified as trucks to avoid those higher fees (VPNs).

> Following that logic, the companies that encourage users to consume more bandwidth should be charged a price for that since they're the ones making money on it, and we don't want to raise costs on users.

That makes no sense. Just charge all commercial internet connections by traffic or capacity (oversubscribing does not count). You are so far away from "use = cost" that it's not even funny. The amount of brain twisting that is going on here is insane.

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#275

Post by smaryjerry » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 3:02 PM UTC

drdaeman wrote: post #85

wrycoder wrote: post #2

> California's net neutrality law is similar to the federal rules repealed under former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. California prohibits ISPs from blocking or throttling lawful traffic. It also prohibits requiring fees from websites or online services to deliver or prioritize their traffic to consumers, bans paid data cap exemptions (so-called "zero-rating"), and says that ISPs may not attempt to evade net neutrality prot…

> and says that ISPs may not attempt to evade net neutrality protections by slowing down traffic at network interconnection points Here's an anecdote. Over 10 years ago, I worked for an ISP company in Russia. That was before they went draconian on the 'Net (beyond SORM-2, I mean) - I left around the time Russian government started to mandate blocking websites. Just to clarify - that was an age of rapid growth and use…

I think there are two reasons for throttling. A user due to congestion and to prioritize content. Throttling a user for congestion to give a “fair” usage of a shared resource makes perfect sense, but throttling a specific type of content doesn’t. If it needs to be done split one line into 10 equal lines, but don’t say no one can view Netflix or some other service.

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#276

Post by imtringued » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 3:02 PM UTC

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #37

smw wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But customers are already paying for 'unlimited internet' -- or for some amount of data up to a cap. You're suggesting that we should double charge the providers that the customers want to access, as well?

Unlimited internet is mostly a marketing term. Until you buy a DIA circuit you are just getting regular ISP access or prioritized ISP access.

Yes but that is the ISP's problem. They are the ones that must get their damn business model in order.

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#277

Post by imtringued » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 3:08 PM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #48

paxys wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution for that is already in place – charge for bandwidth. If users pay $30 for 100 Mpbs or $60 for 500 Mpbs etc., and on top of it there are caps on total data consumed, where does the idea of further segmenting and prioritizing traffic even come from?

Because they want to sell you 3Tb of bandwidth but you only use 2Gb, and they want you to pay extra for that 2Gb to not be slow - despite that you already paid for it to be a set speed. There's no growth left selling bandwidth. So they need to get growth by being anti-consumer.

It's almost like selling a 3TB SSD with only 500GB capacity but it dramatically throttles down once you go past 400GB so that it is impossible to fill it up to 3TB in any reasonable time frame.

To hide the scam, they want to prevent your computer from running any software that would need the whole 3TB.

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#278

Post by username190 » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 3:09 PM UTC

For those who are thinking, "why do we need Net Neutrality? When have you actually seen an example of providers throttling content?" - there's a pretty egregious one that's been present for years now.

For those with American mobile phone plans, switch over to LTE or 5G, and run two "speed tests": One on Ookla Speedtest[0], and one on Netflix's fast.com[1]. If you don't have the top-tier plan on T-Mobile or AT&T, or have the $10/line "Premium Streaming" addon on Verizon (which pushes, but doesn't remove, the throttle), your speeds on Speedtest should appear quite a bit faster than on Netflix.

If you're seeing very low speeds on both tests, there's more likely something else at play (wireless interference, circuit congestion, poor signal, etc).

California's Net Neutrality law specifically outlaws this practice, and this is one of the big reasons carriers are upset about it. I'd recommend reading the text [2] of the law - it's fairly short and easy to understand, with definitions provided.

[0] https://speedtest.net

[1] https://fast.com

[2] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#279

Post by imtringued » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 3:14 PM UTC

HWR_14 wrote: post #109

wrycoder wrote: post #2

> California's net neutrality law is similar to the federal rules repealed under former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. California prohibits ISPs from blocking or throttling lawful traffic. It also prohibits requiring fees from websites or online services to deliver or prioritize their traffic to consumers, bans paid data cap exemptions (so-called "zero-rating"), and says that ISPs may not attempt to evade net neutrality prot…

I like T-Mobile's zero-rating solution. Specific classes of data (sub-480p video) would be zero rated for all servers who filled out paperwork, no source-based discrimination. That made sense. Also, kinda obviously, government emergency services (911, weather alerts, etc) being zero-rated just make sense. I don't want zero rating to let FB subsidize plans that allow free access to FB. I think we can find some uses th…

Mobile internet companies taught me to never use mobile internet unless absolutely necessary. Now I will never need more than a 1GB plan.

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#280

Post by locallost » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 3:15 PM UTC

kfmfjfjf wrote: post #178

locallost wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not American, but I ran into this issue while discussing with some people living in the US (foreigners no less) and it's crazy how much they bought into the ISP propaganda. They're not stupid people, but they got convinced that they can't check their email because their neighbour is on Netflix and this is all Netflix's fault. When you hear the same argument repeated in the same way, it's always an indicator that…

Quoted post unavailable.

It may be, but the whole "it's Netflix's fault and they should pay" was elegantly debunked by the post I replied to: Netflix doesn't push anything, ISP customers pull. And I'll add: the customers that want to pull more already pay more to begin with.