Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 302 posts

Re: FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

#151

Post by lr4444lr »

ejstronge wrote: post #5
cddotdotslash wrote: post #4

One of the biggest arguments I remember being made back when net neutrality was a hot topic was that ISPs would bundle and sell specific websites as tiered plans. Infographics like this one [1] were shared widely. Has this happened in the US? I’ve definitely seen ISPs start to apply data caps and throttling, but haven’t seen the aforementioned packaging (at least with the major ISPs). I ask because this is one of the…

ISPs are offering 'Netflix-included' or discounted Disney+ plans. I don't know how they account for downloads from these services but the bundling is definitely happening.

That comes with exclusive content, though - not the same thing at all as what the NN acolytes were warning us would happen if common carrier status was lost. The goal-post shifting is not admirable. We were told there would be the end of the free web, and we're almost 6 years out. Time to admit that the evidence suggests this was fear mongering, and not grasp at straws.

Re: FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

#152

Post by dragonwriter »

Karunamon wrote: post #134
wredue wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. This thread is getting to me. Okay. Net neutrality died and ISPs didn’t immediately turn the internet in to subscriptions to different cloud providers. The fact is that they CAN, and to be so deliriously ignorant as to believe that “it didn’t happen yet, so it will never happen” is just… what is happening here? Is this thread just ChatGPT bots? Regardless of if Microsoft, google, Amazon and ISPs have not yet ma…

>The fact is that they CAN, and to be so deliriously ignorant as to believe that “it didn’t happen yet, so it will never happen” is just… what is happening here? What is happening here is see you are disingenuously misrepresenting the opinion of those who disagree with you, and then dehumanizing them by comparing them to robots. Both of these are gross and should stop. The actual argument is something like this: 1. I…

> ISPs have had the opportunity to "turn the Internet into subscriptions for different cloud providers" in the United States for not just the last six years, but rather throughout most of the life of the Internet.

The FCC was acting under net neutrality principles in broadband actions starting in 2004, when its initial non-regulatory enforcement approach became legally problematic, it immediately turned to regulation around the principles (the most recent to be repealed was the last if series of regulatory packages, with lawsuits over the orevious ones each shaping the next one.) And by the time the last repeal was finalized state level NN regulations were already coming into play, as well as the clear likelihood that federal rules would be restored with the next Democratic-majority FCC.

Aside from maybe the period between the 1996 Telecommunications Act and the FCC articulation of net neutrality principles as a guiding rule for case-by-case action in 2004, I’m not sure what time you are talking about, there hasn’t been any period where there was a clear, stable situation where it amde any sense to make long-term decisions to structure business in a way that had a major conflict with neutrality.

Re: FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

#153

Post by Covzire »

bilsbie wrote: post #75

I’m pro net neutrality AFAIK. BUT We owe it to ourselves to go and look at all the fearmongering they were putting out about ending net neutrality and figuring out why it didn’t come to pass. And hopefully learning from that for future policy debates.

[flagged]

Re: FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

#154

Post by lr4444lr »

AlexandrB wrote: post #25
cddotdotslash wrote: post #4

One of the biggest arguments I remember being made back when net neutrality was a hot topic was that ISPs would bundle and sell specific websites as tiered plans. Infographics like this one [1] were shared widely. Has this happened in the US? I’ve definitely seen ISPs start to apply data caps and throttling, but haven’t seen the aforementioned packaging (at least with the major ISPs). I ask because this is one of the…

If net neutrality is not relevant anyways, why are ISPs so dead set against it?

Because it kept them under the FCC's thumb as common carriers, forcing them into inefficiencies to comply with regulations. There's a ton of stuff I want the govt. more involved with on the internet: data privacy, clamping down on CSAM, section 230 issues... forcing ISPs to take a total hands off approach to every traffic source on their pipes? That wasn't one of them.

NN harmed ISPs' incentive to innovate. I have since gotten faster speeds at cheaper prices. What would the NN crowd say if they had gotten their way, something vague about evil corporations and their profits?

Re: FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

#155

Post by Guvante »

josephg wrote: post #70
cptskippy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the guise to justify the caps but Comcast was setting caps around the data usage of someone streaming Netflix. The overage charges were ridiculous as well, if you used 2x your data cap it would cost you 100x your regular bill. I had some Nest cameras in addition to Streaming and ended up taking them down because I kept going over.

In Australia my first broadband internet connection worked like that - though when you went over, your bandwidth was heavily throttled until the end of the month unless you upgraded your plan for the month. As inconvenient as it is, honestly I think data caps are fair pricing. The load difference between a light internet user and a heavy user is orders of magnitude of capacity for the ISP to deal with. Having a flat…

A 1 gigabit connection represents 384 Terrabytes of data over a month.

You can certainly say using 100% of that is excessive and not many disagree.

The question is what is excessive? 50%? 10%? For me it is 0.4% without up charges.

Additionally on the topic of costs bandwidth is by definition free. Pretty much everybody is okay with $0/gb pricing for network traffic.

Capacity costs money. How much capacity does an excessive data user consume? Certainly not 10x as you surmise, they are only one user.

Just look at their pricing for the answer, I can pay 50% more for unlimited data which means it costs them at most 50% more (certainly less since this is a scheme to earn more revenue).

On the topic of provisioning residential is hugely under provisioned as a cost cutting measure. This isn't all bad as there is never a time where everyone wants all their bandwidth. But blaming slow downs on high bandwidth users is silly when no one bothers to track capacity in these situations.

The reality is they just throttle you to keep bandwidth evenly split during high traffic time (as they should, everyone should share the bottlenecked line equally). Which resolved any capacity problems as much as they care to.

Bandwidth caps have always been a charge that isn't technically a charge and nothing more.

Re: FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

#156

Post by pitaj »

llm_nerd wrote: post #89
dahfizz wrote: post #38

If you believed the scare tactics at the time, losing net neutrality literally threatened the end of the internet as we know it. But my internet has worked the same before, during, and after net neutrality. I really don't get what all the fuss is about. However, if you really do believe this is a civilization defining piece of regulation, Why leave it to the FCC? It seems like people on both sides are happy to leave…

Why did the mega providers so desperately want net neutrality to die? Why did so many lobbyists work to kill it? "I really don't get what all the fuss is about." This is a bit like the Y2K bug. There was a huge amount of noise and fear-mongering, and millions of developers spent an enormous amount of time fixing code and preparing systems. Y2K came and suddenly everyone is sure it was all just drama for nothing. What…

Why did the mega streamers so desperately want NN to survive?

Because the mega streamers like Netflix, Youtube, and Amazon would benefit.

Re: FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

#157

Post by ultra_nick »

shockeychap wrote: post #136

This feels a bit like arguing over the arrangement of the furniture as the house burns. The web is a hot mess of garbage SEO, ads, incendiary clickbait, and political echochambers. THIS is the thing that warrants fixing first?

Are you arguing that freedom of speech doesn't matter because people can say bad things?

Re: FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

#158

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

lesuorac wrote: post #52
UnlockedSecrets wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Exempting services from data caps is not against net neutrality, and for example has been regular practice all across Europe (which has "net neutrality"). UPS doesn't care if it is a Nike shirt or a Gucci shirt in a box, They just deliver the box where it is meant to go. Why should it be any different for an ISP?

> UPS doesn't care if it is a Nike shirt or a Gucci shirt in a box, They just deliver the box where it is meant to go. Why should it be any different for an ISP? While I like NN there is a strict different between an ISP and UPS because of the digital/physical realm. When UPS delivers a Nike shirt they have to deliver that specific shirt to that specific person. An ISP needent deliver a specific shirt that originated…

It's not particularly enlightening to point out that two things in an analogy are different – if they weren't, the analogy would be useless. "An apple is like an apple." Okay.

An ISP that wishes to store a "local copy" of t-shirts or songs, in order to make more money, can store a Nike t-shirt just as easily as a Gucci t-shirt, and can store a Nikki Minaj song just as easily as a Gucci Mane song. Thus, nothing actually blocks the ISP from treating the two equally.

Alternatively, the ISP can store nothing, and just be a basic ISP. Nobody is forcing them to store anything, much less do so preferentially depending on brand. And if they personally choose to, to make more money, it's their responsibility to make sure they don't differentiate between brands, because that violates net neutrality.

Re: FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

#159

Post by ultra_nick »

gdubs wrote: post #108

A lot of these comments reflect never having lived in a rural or underserved area. Like most services in life, if you live a relatively upper class life in a competitive market, things like net neutrality are probably not gonna be very loud on your radar.

How?

Re: FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

#160

Post by rsingel »

vel0city wrote: post #54
JohnTHaller wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have gotten it, but with services not websites. Mobile providers will sell you an "Unlimited" data plan that throttles everything after 25GB a month. Streaming Spotify and Apple Music won't count against that soft data cap. Streaming other music services will count against it. Video streaming over YouTube, Netflix, etc is capped at 480p levels. If you pay an additional monthly fee, you get upgraded to "Unlimited P…

In a more potent example, AT&T did a similar thing with streaming TV service, but they only exempted their own TV service. Using Hulu? Data cap. Fubo? Data cap. AT&T TV Now? Highest quality, no cap.

Yup, and that ended when California's net neutrality law went into effect.

Verizon still does it, except for in California.

Post reply on HN