Keep the Internet Open - <AUTHOR> http://blog.samaltman.com/keep-the-internet-open <comment><USER3> Because of the massive amount of consolidation over the last few years, the death of Net Neutrality would be the best competitive moat imaginable for Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc.

While all their CEOs will make faint noises in favor of Net Neutrality, SV outspends Wall Street 2:1 on lobbying[1], the goal of which is to cement monopoly status, not to make the world a better place. Most of it goes to Republicans.

Things have changed fast; Google's lobbying spend has increased by over 50% since the SOPA blackout.

The technology industry serves the interests of capital/share-holders, not technologists.

[1]: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-18/outspendi...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-18/outspending- wall-street-2-to-1-silicon-valley-takes-washington)

EDIT: "Google hardly even had lobbyists back during the SOPA blackout." > "Google's lobbying spend has increased by over 50% since the SOPA blackout." h/t DannyBee below.

<comment><USER4> 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.

<comment><USER5> 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's phone number?

<comment><USER6>
      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 to not enter in to each others fiefs.

<comment><USER7> Does Sonic.net not provide service in Berkeley? Back when I lived in the Bay Area, I switched from Comcast purely because Sonic.net isn't an utterly loathsome company. Turns out with Sonic I didn't have to reboot my modem every other week either.

<comment><USER8> sonic speeds in many parts of the bay area (even in SF) is not competitive with comcast. they are rolling out fiber in select neighborhoods and can't wait until they come to my part of town.

<comment><USER9> I had to switch from Sonic (to Comcast) for just that reason. I had a bonded DSL connection from Sonic that could just barely get 10Mbps. And the bonding really wasn't even worth it because one line was at 8 and the other at 2. And it was all due to the unmaintained copper coming from AT&T. I agree with their new strategy though - the only way to have any control over their service quality was to own their own fiber.

Now, I'm in Cincinnati and have excellent fiber service from Cincinnati Bell, so it's possible to have good quality from the incumbent carrier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> We see the consequences of a non-open Internet every day where we work in Uganda. It is common there for people to have "social bundles" that only work for Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, etc. Our users believe they have Internet access but don't understand why data from our app is not syncing when Facebook is working. It's a large barrier for us and adds a huge moat for the incumbents. We're considering more integration over WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger so we too can benefit from the cheaper data but that only locks us into those platforms and strengthens their position.

<comment><USER11> > We see the consequences of a non-open Internet every day where we work in > Uganda. It is common there for people to have "social bundles" that only > work for Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, etc.

This is an important perspective. Recommend sharing this insight with the article author to consider appending to their original article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> 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 hitting the cache, and still provide more limited access to other stuff. I'd prefer high bandwidth everywhere, but that isn't always an option. It should be a market decision, not a national government decision.

2) The real problems with lack of NN are due to lack of competition in the access provider market. Focus on fixing that. A lot of this is due to local governments requiring providers cover entire markets to cover any of a market -- if someone wants to build another WebPass or CondoInternet and only serve high-density developments, that's great! Trenching fiber to single family homes is marginal anyway, but if you have low take-up in a neighborhood it is even worse. If you are going to push for regulation, have it be regulation to empower actual competition in the network access market.

3) Zero-rating in emerging markets (e.g. FB in India) is really the only way for many lower income users to afford services at all -- particularly for video services.

<comment><USER4> > "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?

<comment><USER13> 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.

<comment><USER14> 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 underinvesting for years. (Investing in regulatory capture is a lot more), there's many other nations with significantly better networks and speeds, and it's a joke stock for the rest of the world to see the country which created the internet writing the book on how to not enjoy it.

<comment><USER15> 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?

<comment><USER14> The assumption of honesty on HN. I really don't get anything out of this place, and afaik I'm not even contactable.

But yeah, if you don't believe me, feel free to look at a bunch of financial statements and lavish over as many models as you like. Check ARPU numbers or read up on the history of your own markets. In true finance fashion, do your diligence and reach your own conclusions.

It's a lot less morality based once you look at the numbers. It's just business.

<comment><USER15> More non-points.

To summarize your statement: "I am correct because I have read the data. Since you have not read the data, you should go read the data, because then, and only then, will you see that I am correct. Until then, just accept that I am correct."

I still reject your claims because you have not provided any meaningful measure of support for them.

<comment><USER14> Feel free to reject them. You'll still only truly know when you see the data.

If I knew the world was round, and you kept saying it was flat - why would I have any reason to do more than let you know it wasn't so?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> 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-competitive, granular market. The way it should be.

<comment><USER17> Isn't that what happened to the DSL market? No one will bother laying new infrastructure because anyone can use it.

<comment><USER18> You can always make the government take care of what is becoming increasingly fundamental infrastructure.

But then you'll be called a communist.

<comment><USER19> And rightfully so, since taking care of it would mean the Ministry of Communications has deemed the current available bandwidth sufficient for serving the government's approved content (propaganda), thus eliminating the need for improved infrastructure. People should be in the fields growing food for their comrades anyways, not sitting on the internet.

<comment><USER18> How are the Ministries of Firefighting, of Police and of Roads going?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is a difficult question. Emotionally, I am a net neutrality absolutist, but I think I can talk myself out of it, which to me means that the conversation is complex.

Should the power company be able to offer you a discounted rate if you host equipment that offsets their cost (for instance: a powerwall)[1]?

I think that the answer to that question is yes.

Well okay, then should your ISP be able to offer you a discounted rate to use services that offset their cost (youtube, which has an cache near you, vs vimeo, which doesn't)? If the power company can do this, then why can't the ISP?

Again, I don't _like_ this, but I can't think of a consistent explanation for why they shouldn't be allowed to dynamically charge you based on their cost.

[1]: I don't know enough about the electrical grid to know if a powerwall could actually be used in a way that offsets the cost to a power utility or not. I don't think that the correctness of this statement matters to the example. Substitute "a powerwall" for "equipment that saves the power company money".

<comment><USER21> I think a closer analogy would be: Should the power company be able to offer you a discount based on the brand of appliance you use. e.g. If you had a GE fridge in your house should you get a discount on your power usage (all other things being equal). So if you have a GE fridge you pay $0.10 per kilowatt, but a Samsung fridge will cost you $0.15

From my perspective, along the last mile a bit is a bit. The fact that they may have some back-bone infrastructure that optimizes delivery of traffic to an edge-node for youtube or Facebook doesn't really apply to me (e.g. it is not something I control). The fact that e.g. Comcast and Facebook can do a deal that monopolizes in their favor vs. other social networks/ISPs is not exactly to my benefit. I can't control that deal like I can control adding "a powerwall" in my house.

<comment><USER20> I really want the electricity analogy to be good, but the reality is that it isn't.

A bit is _not_ a bit. Some bits actually are cheaper to deliver than others.

<comment><USER22> How so?

<comment><USER20> Because net neutrality already doesn't exist for ISPs: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_transit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_transit)

Also, because of things like edge caches, there are bits that have to travel a shorter distance, and interact with less hardware, than other bits.

Your GE microwave doesn't require that it gets electricity from a GE power turbine. All watts are the same in that sense. The watts can come from a GE generator (in the town over) or a westinghouse generator (in the local town). It doesn't matter.

But a youtube application _does_ require that the bits come from youtube servers. Youtube cannot use bits from vimeo, and because of network topology, the vimeo bits might be more costly for the ISP to deliver than the youtube bits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The internet is what makes Silicon Valley go round. Everyone, including Sam Altman, needs to be an activist. Asking for someone else to take point on something so fundamental is like asking Natives to take point on water prot-- wait.

<comment><USER24> I am happy to help, and honestly if I had more time right now I'd take this on directly--right now is an unusually busy time for me. I agree with you it's critical to Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER25> Given Elon & Thiel are both in contact with Trump, if you haven't already done so, it would be worth mentioning it directly to both that this is important to you.

For that matter, maybe this is a chance to you yourself reach out to Trump on an issue and invite him to meet at the White House or come to the Bay Area to meet the next batch of YC startups.

<comment><USER26> If anyone does this in the bay area and it's public, they will likely be burnt at the stake.

<comment><USER25> You mean like Elon, Thiel, etc.? If so seems to me as if they're all doing just fine. [1]

Beyond that, point of engaging Trump would be on a topic I would assume everyone agrees is important - and if you think hidding and hoping things will magically get better, well, good luck!

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-meeting-photo-jeff- bezo...](http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-meeting-photo-jeff-bezos-elon- musk-tim-cook-2016-12)

<comment><USER26> Thiel was attacked nonstop and people were organizing to stop using PayPal which he is only tangentially affiliated with.

Uber CEO had to stop his collaboration as Lyft started catching up for the first time in a long time.

Elon also faced a lot of heat and had to qualify his statements. Negative reactions towards him were counteracted by his accomplishments and clean energy contributions.

I think people should collaborate but in a clandestine fashion.

Inviting Trump to Bay area would unleash all the rage against Trump towards the startup community. I'm just afraid it would be a bigger "throw stones at Google buses"

<comment><USER25> Be afraid all you want, doesn't matter to me.

Thiel knew he'd be attacked, took a risk, and there's zero reason to believe he's not happy with the results; if you think Thiel cares what the "Bay Area" thinks, I'd be interested in your reasoning.

Uber's not even worth covering, they're currently a cluster F$&@ waiting to happen and the idea that it was somehow born of talking with Trump is what it is.

Bay Area and for the matter the greater tech community needs to engage the world, not withdraw from it.

<comment><USER27> >Bay Area and for the matter the greater tech community needs to engage the world, not withdraw from it.

> Be afraid all you want, doesn't matter to me.

One of these things is not like the other.

<comment><USER25> Right, one is addressing a single person that's said they afraid of talking in public for fear of blowback and another is directed to the Bay Area and greater tech community asking them to engage the world.

What am I missing?

<comment><USER27> That the blowback from tech employees is a real thing which directly contributes to lack of dialog between people with different political opinions, and not caring about the individual while imploring the community at large to engage is a ridiculous and contradictory position.

A pair of riots in Berkeley within a month, San Jose during the election, the Brendan Eich situation, myriad letters from CEOs post election. To quote sama's recent post [1], "Almost everyone I asked was willing to talk to me, but almost none of them wanted me to use their names—even people from very red states were worried about getting "targeted by those people in Silicon Valley if they knew I voted for him". One person in Silicon Valley even asked me to sign a confidentiality agreement before she would talk to me, as she worried she'd lose her job if people at her company knew she was a strong Trump supporter."

Care as much or little about the concerns of people not like you as you want, just don't act like you want to have a conversation with them too in the same breath.

1\. [http://blog.samaltman.com/what-i-heard-from-trump- supporters](http://blog.samaltman.com/what-i-heard-from-trump-supporters)

<comment><USER25> There is no contraction, engaging the world, especially those that may not agree with you, is potentially dangerous and if you're afraid to do so, then don't.

<comment><USER27> > going out and engaging the world is potentially dangerous

Do you think this is reasonable in the context of expressing your support for the leader of your nation at your workplace? I certainly don't think so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > 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 only media channel where we don't get all of our information from the same three or four mega conglomerates. But if net neutrality is eliminated then ISPs are going to pull a Martin Shkreli, and overnight your cost of hosting a Wordpress blog is going to go from $5 a month to $25,000 per month or whatever.

When this happens the only way to have a blog will be to host your content on Facebook, who will be able to decide which points of view are allowed and which are banned. If we lose the Internet, the last free media channel, then there is no going back. Not just on this issue, but on _every_ issue.

<comment><USER29> The best argument I've found for convincing conservatives is to stress that the internet is a platform for commerce, and healthy commerce requires equality of opportunity -- specifically, the opportunity for consumers to access your business.

ISPs literally "own the road", to create an analogy for internet businesses. If the only road company in town installs a toll booth or a series of speed bumps in front of McDonald's because Burger King paid them to, it artificially distorts the market in a way that allows successful companies to pay to entrench themselves and fend off competition.

Innovation and disruption inherently require free and fair access to the storefronts of upstarts, whether physical or digital. To slant the playing field with throttling or zero-rating is tantamount to a big box corp having the ability to pay someone to install a toll booth in front of my competing mom and pop business.

<comment><USER30> > If the only road company in town installs a toll booth or a series of speed > bumps in front of McDonald's because Burger King paid them to

This kind of thinking will lead to a big debate about what exactly is a speed bump -- how high can they be? Do rumble-strips count? What about potholes?

A better solution would be to just let more companies build roads in your town. Then all the people who want to go to McDonalds will take their business to the other road companies.

<comment><USER29> >A better solution would be to just let more companies build roads in your town.

That sounds great, except the roads have all been built. It's prohibitively expensive and risky to try to build out your own parallel set of infrastructure, whether it's roads or cable. I mean, if _Google_ tried and failed to do it, who else is going to be able to succeed?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I don't think that NN legislation is the answer. It's a social solution to a technical problem. We shouldn't be making it illegal to discriminate between traffic types, we should be making it impossible. Encrypt everything by default, encrypt and anonymize DNS, and generally get rid of the ability for ISPs to tell one data stream from another. Unfortunately this requires re- architecting quite a lot of the Internet, so it's even less likely to happen quickly than getting a bunch of politicians to stop listening to lobbyists or ISPs to actually compete with one another.

<comment><USER32> I don't think that will solve the problem. Even if the ISP can't tell where most of your traffic is going after it leaves their network, they're still going to be able to be able to differentiate between that traffic and traffic destined for a service they control or a third party service that cooperates with them. It stops them from penalising a particular third party service, but not from penalising everything they don't recognise in favour of what they do.

</comment></comment><comment> d--b Like Altman, I am amazed that this is not inflaming the community again. In order to pass an unpopular law, you just need to try to pass it several times, until the public gets tired of protesting?

<comment><USER33> I suppose the next question is: should the voice of protesters matter more than the overall opinion of the populace, which come election time is that Net Neutrality isn't even worth talking about?

<comment><USER34> Sanders did fwiw [1] [https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press- releases/sande...](https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press- releases/sanders-statement-on-net-neutrality)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > But this idea is under attack, and I'm surprised the tech community isn't > speaking out more forcefully. Although many leading tech companies are now > the incumbents, I hope we'll all remember that openness helped them achieve > their great success. It could be disastrous for future startups if this were > to change--openness is what made the recent wave of innovation happen.

Is it surprising? What organization is supposed to speak up? Tech workers don't have a union so nobody is lobbying for us in DC. We have to hope that enough huge companies and their leaders will act in the way we want and I don't exactly expect Zuckerberg and Thiel to represent me and my interests in Washington.

<comment><USER36> If there was a tech workers union, presumably it would cover employees at Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, and many other companies they are not pro net neutrality. So it wouldn't even be in the self interest of the union to get into the battle.

It needs to be the consumers who speak up, and the businesses that would be negatively affected.

<comment><USER37> The Communications Workers of America (CWA), the biggest communications labor union, covers workers at Verizon and AT&T, but last time around they sided with AT&T and Comcast back in 2014.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/21/naacp-union-net- neu...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/21/naacp-union-net- neutrality_n_5606854.html)

<comment><USER36> Isn't that mostly call center workers, and installers?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> As I have said before during previous net neutrality "crises", this is just a symptom of _extreme centralization_.

The same thing that caused the Indian public to reject internet.org curated by Facebook.

Once we get massive consolidation, whether of banks, telcos, cable companies, social networks, phone makers or whatever else is "too big to fail" then your choice is illusory in the first place. Title I vs Title II isn't the most meaningful choice.

Originally the Internet was designed with no single point of failure, but now email, the web, streaming video, etc. has been centralized.

What we need to do is greenlight technology to enable decentralized:

\+ Social Networking _instead of server farms whose engineers post on highscalability_

\+ Mesh Networking _instead of cellphone carriers whose networks go down in an emergency_

\+ Power Generation _instead of a power grid that can cut you off anytime_

Bitcoin decentralized money. Git decentralized version control. Look at how the power and trust dynamics shifted. That's what we need.

The best way to do that is to fund open source hardware and software projects that will enable this technology to be widely available, and then regulators will have to expand their frameworks to allow it, as they did with bitcoin.

Disclaimer: I am the architect of [http://github.com/Qbix/Platform](http://github.com/Qbix/Platform)

</comment><comment><USER39> I think the tipping point last time (SOPA/PIPA protests) was when Reddit, Wikipedia, Google, etc. went dark. It's sad we don't have Aaron Swartz to help this time around. It's good to see Sam offering help, but who is actually going to step up?

<comment><USER40> What's needed for "another Aaron"? I know he had a pre-existing following; is that required? Do you think someone could fill those shoes this time around, starting from scratch?

<comment><USER41> > What's needed for "another Aaron"?

Courage. The cynic in me answers "Someone who doesn't mind being becoming a target?" I notice nobody is jumping up and down volunteering to be "another Assange" or "another Snowden". Different topics but similar level of fortitude needed.

<comment><USER42> And best of luck finding these in immigrant rich silicon valley who are already petrified of losing their visa with the new government change.

<comment><USER43> That's a whole nother issue and equally messed up.

<comment><USER42> Sorry, to put that comment in context.. There was an article a couple of days back of how immigrants are creating massive value by starting startups in the valley. Well, these guys have the most incentive to stand up for an open internet but they won't/can't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I don't think activism is the answer to these problems. Instead, we need to show consumer benefits of an open internet. Right now, people are totally loving the mono-culture and the internet silos that the mega corps are building (facebook, whatsapp, gmail, google, chrome, apple app store, github to name a few). It's going to hard to convince them unless you can show them tangible benefits.

I think the big companies have totally nailed it. They have kept things free. And they have kept the population sufficiently distracted that there is no time for 'activism' or thinking of society. This means that the big corps can now push reforms unquestioned in their favor.

<comment><USER44> I don't know how many people are totally loving the mono-culture and many of the "free" social networks are not profitable at all. Very few of them are actually succeeding.

Also, you say activism is not the answer, and then say that the companies have succeeded in part because they have prevented activism from happening by 'distracting' people. I don't think any of this is true and that the argument you make here is self-contradictory.

I really just don't think your comment holds any water at all.

<comment><USER42> > I don't know how many people are totally loving the mono-culture

Huh? Just see all the gmail ids. Just ask any company as to how many email ids are gmail and prepared to be stunned. Same goes for GitHub, medium. Even so called "decentralized" projects are happily hosting code on github and blogging on medium. (I am not judging the users here by any means. I am just saying they are "happy").

> Also, you say activism is not the answer, and then say that the companies > have succeeded in part because they have prevented activism from happening > by 'distracting' people.

Keeping products free is the distraction. People give away all sorts of things and start rationalizing in curious ways to get freebies.

<comment><USER45> A major factor is the unbelievable pain of doing one's own IT work.

Even hosting a blog with Wordpress or Ghost can be a pain, let alone hosting your own git infrastructure. Then you have the whole sign-on / password / account management nightmare. Nobody wants to (sigh, grumble) create yet _another_ (grumble, grumble) account on yet _another_ site.

If there were some kind of open SSO standard that actually worked and was actually low-friction for users, that would go a long way.

That being said I don't have a problem with it. We (ZeroTier) are kind of a decentralization effort, and we use GitHub and Slack because they work and they save time. Use the present to build the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> The tech community rallied pretty hard in favor of net neutrality last go- round, they were just lucky that Wheeler (head of the FCC) agreed with them.

I think there isn't anything specific to fight against now as there was with SOPA. Once a specific legislation/regulation appears, I think the tech world will strongly oppose again. I also suspect the large tech companies are trying to use their lobbying power behind the scenes preemptively again.

</comment><comment><USER47> To the folks on HN who don't vehemently, _vehemently_ oppose a non-neutral system, your line of thinking puzzles the hell out of me. Is the idea that government regulation is bad in all cases but corporate regulation is OK in all cases? Why? Because you've bought into free market forces making _all_ things better _no matter what_?

Those forces only make things better unless they don't. To me, it's crazy that's not immediately clear.

In this case, the regulation is for keeping the system free unless you're a monopoly or part of an oligopoly. Your future chances of being in that camp are so minuscule and even smaller if you support killing off Net Neutrality. Are you fighting on behalf your future self that will likely never exist? That's arrogant and delusional.

This is not what Ayn Rand meant by espousing the public good is best served when people are self-interested. That's not the same thing as being delusional.

<comment><USER48> How about I don't know if I support or oppose net neutrality because depending on the source it means something different.

I would love to see an actual technical, written definition so that I could tell my Congress folks to put it in a bill.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interesting reviewing the list of organizations that signed the letter sent to the FCC by the ACLU & EFF on keeping the internet open: [http://www.commoncause.org/policy-and-litigation/letters- to-...](http://www.commoncause.org/policy-and-litigation/letters-to- government-officials/letter-to-chairman-pai-protect-net-neutrality.pdf)

Really makes you wonder what's going on, since Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc. are nowhere to be found on the list.

<comment><USER49> I think there was deliberate selection of the type of organizations and the interests they represent for this letter; I don't think it's an accident that it doesn't include tech firms and content hosts, but political advocacy groups and content creators.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> > There's an argument that Internet Service Providers should be able to charge > a metered rate based on usage. I'm not sure whether I agree with this, but > in principle it seems ok. That's how we pay for public utilities.

I can monitor and control the power usage of my electrical appliances.

I can control outgoing network requests from my networked devices.

I cannot control what is sent to my network from the outside. It doesn't make much sense to be charged for what someone else sends to me. Even if I shut off my network device, a particularly rude service might just continue blindly sending data my way, running up my costs with no way to opt out.

Typical postal mail delivery is paid for by the sender, not the recipient. It becomes complicated here.

<comment><USER51> Telecom companies, in general, have no scruples about charging you for what other people send you unsolicited. Up until they got the memo that SMS was on its way out, they used to charge downright extortionate rates for text messages. Same for minutes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I was convinced in favor of net neutrality by a 2007 study at the University of Florida.[1] When ISPs are allowed to charge content providers individually, there is less incentive to improve overall bandwidth. There's also an incentive to cripple the free tier, especially if it can be done subtly or by neglect over time. So net neutrality seems like good policy.

[1] [http://web.archive.org/web/20130602210518/http://news.ufl.ed...](http://web.archive.org/web/20130602210518/http://news.ufl.edu/2007/03/07/net- neutrality/)

</comment><comment><USER53> If the physical line itself was separated from the ISP providing you service on the line, this problem would solve itself through natural competition. We _almost_ saw this happen with ADSL but it lost out to the fatter pipes of coax and fiber.

Most people have either one or zero options for coax (i.e. cable) or fiber. That leads to a monopoly where you either have to take whatever Comcast / Time Warner / Verizon offer or live with craptacular DSL. Get rid of that monopoly and have the maintenance of those pipes be run by the local municipality. Then you can have real competition.

</comment><comment><USER54> >What's clearly not OK is taking it further--charging different services different rates based on their relationships with ISPs. You wouldn't accept your electric company charging you different rates depending on the manufacturer of each of your appliances.

This does happen though. Electric companies, phone companies, etc all charge different rates based on who is using the service. Based off of different programs and income based subsidies who is using the service determines the cost paid. This also effects what producers sell to the low end of the spectrum. If electricity is substantially cheaper for lower income consumers, they will care less about paying for better energy efficiency. So you are technically paying a different rate based off what your appliances are.

</comment><comment><USER55> Those involved in technology are often confronted with brutally kafkaesque situations wherein the human and the machine are starkly opposed. Fighting against the machine is often demoralizing, depressing, and dehumanizing - <USER2> not always. Not today.

Thank you, Sam, for the mote of hope.

</comment><comment><USER56> I think the appliance analogy is a pretty good one. But now imagine that on top of being able to charge different amounts for different brands of appliances, the electric company happens to manufacture their own line of not- so-quality stoves, refrigerators, etc.

</comment><comment><USER57> "I really hope an activist or tech leader will step up and organize this fight."

Sums up America 2017. Outsource everything, even your fights.

</comment><comment><USER58> Ajit Pai is public enemy number one.

<comment><USER59> I do agree net neutrality is a good thing, only major thing I disagree with gutting net neutrality as the internet is the future network for everything. But overall I support Ajit Pai because he wants to cut down on regulations it seems from reading some transcripts.

For example there's people who want to regulate Netflix, Amazon Instant video, Playstation Vue, YouTube TV as if they are a cable system, with all the extra regulations the major cable and satellite companies have to follow, and were created way before IP based networks became popular. I feel like the free market should always win, a kid in their basement should be allowed to create competitors.

I personally feel like everything should move to IP Based networks. You don't have to worry about a limited number of stations, as IP based is pretty much unlimited.

So even if people disagree with him on net neutrality, I do believe he's doing good work. Maybe if regulations are cut and made modern we'd have more options in the market. Maybe Google Fiber could be nationwide at some point if regulations were out of the way. Google already owns a bunch of dark fiber. I'd really love if the internet was just one dumb pipe.

For example I have satellite TV and cable internet. When you watch on demand content they use your internet connection to download/stream the shows instead of being beamed down by the satellite. My ISP does not have a cap, but maybe if I lived in another part of the US served by one that does it would be metered as internet traffic, compared to using cable's TV service and watching on-demand which is locally within their own network(and not counted in the internet meter).

I'd love in the future if we had internet only providers but It seems like one is so hard to get going I doubt we'll have that. I know some communities have done their own Fiber, but even were sued to stop it by the major players. Google "communities fiber lawsuit" for example. I don't know why but it seems like depending on your area there's only one cable company, one phone company, and if you are lucky one fiber company. So I really wish it was easier to do ISP startups and compete. I'm not even sure if it's possible to share the lines. The regulations, and politics around it are probably why we aren't really having new entries in the market.

TESTIMONY OF COMMISSIONER AJIT PAI, FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION- [https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-336418A1.p...](https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-336418A1.pdf)

Commissioner Pai Remarks Before the Churchill Club [https://www.fcc.gov/document/commissioner-pai-remarks- church...](https://www.fcc.gov/document/commissioner-pai-remarks-churchill- club)

<comment><USER60> Yeah, like those pesky regulations that stop your ISP from selling your entire internet history at will without telling you or your permission. Pai will finally get rid of it so ISPs can be free and the market can decide. By which I mean the ISPs can decide, since they own the market.

Public enemy number one is a pretty fair assessment as far as anyone in tech is concerned.

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/ad-industry- lobb...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/ad-industry-lobbyists- celebrate-impending-death-of-online-privacy-rules/)

<comment><USER27> Why not Google or Facebook founders, executives, and employees whose salaries are paid with the profits of selling other peoples' information? Why not the C-suite of the ISPs who will happily sell user data? Why not the entire adtech industry? Ajit Pai is one actor in a very corrupt system, and a lot of that system is based in San Francisco.

<comment><USER59> Do Google and Facebook really sell data? From my understanding, they keep the data for ad targeting, feature/content recommendations. Like if I place an ad on Facebook I could put 18 to 35, who likes travel, etc to promote a hotel booking site as an example. Even if you do retarget with Facebook advertising, they don't even show you the names of the people. You have like a retargeting list, it tells you how many people but not much information on them.

Even third party developers get an ID number per user associated to that app only(think of it as a proxy to your real id number). It seems like Facebook and Google cares a lot more about privacy than people think. If they just sold me the data, I could run off with it but by keeping the data to themselves and letting marketers pay them to make use of it they make recurring revenue.

From my understanding, LexisNexis and other data brokers were the ones that are selling the data. Here's a 60 minutes clip on it [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAT_ina93NY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAT_ina93NY)

I don't have any relationship with LexisNexis, I never agreed to anything yet they have information on me. Another example is I was looking at my credit report, and it even lists addresses from childhood. I never had a credit card back then, why do they have information on me? At least with Google and Facebook, I gave consent and I see a benefit. You can even buy lists of people and their medications(sounds like a HIPPA violation but the data brokers know this stuff)

<comment><USER27> Yes. Giving the NSA direct access to their databases doesn't seem like caring about user privacy to me. I don't perceive the 'consent' issue the same way; sending an email or uploading a picture to the internet shouldn't require 100 different data points on my device and location. YMMV, but I find working for companies who's business model is to exploit other people's personal information for profit is an enormously distasteful thing to do.

The whole discussion is a farce at this point. Tech workers who literally created the incentive to make clickbait content, filter bubbles, and data silos are now upset with "fake news", social polarization, and a "closed" net, while flatly refusing to acknowledge their role in getting us here over the last 20 years. Ajit Pai is the last person to blame when wondering who broke the net.

<comment><USER59> I haven't been following the whole NSA/CIA stuff as much lately, but from my understanding Google, Facebook never directly sold people's information. Yes, they monetize it I knew that but It was from my understanding companies mostly "rent" the data without getting a copy of the data(just using it).

> YMMV, but I find working for companies who's business model is to exploit > other people's personal information for profit is an enormously distasteful > thing to do.

For the record, I don't work for any company's that abuse people's personal information. I do have a bit of knowledge on how Facebook ads work because I've used them before.

I don't even view Google or Facebook as doing bad compared to the large data brokers.

<comment><USER27> I work in marketing. Not selling data direct to people like you or I does not mean they don't sell data. Depending on how hard you try, you can get enormously specific with just the data you are supplied by them. I perceive their business model as fundamentally bad (I would use the word wrong or repugnant), and their willingness to comply with us intelligence agencies is worse. I realize this is an increasingly uncommon sentiment in the bay, that sort of idealism died here a long time ago.

[https://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation- pranking...](https://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-my- roommate-with-targeted-facebook-ads/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> > You wouldn't accept your electric company charging you different rates for > each of your appliances.

I can get cheaper electricity for my water heater if I choose to attach it to a source that can be interrupted at times of peak load. I'm not quite sure this line of reasoning will stand.

Edit: It appears the linked article has been updated since I originally posted this. The new text is:

> You wouldn't accept your electric company charging you different rates > depending on the manufacturer of each of your appliances.

This makes the argument much clearer and my concerns no longer seem important.

<comment><USER61> Your comparison is invalid. Consumers generally tolerate that network management for some things is ok, for example, constraining the transfer speed of users at peak times.

This is a different scenario - the comparable scenario would be that your electricity company charges you a variable rate depending on which manufacturers appliances you buy, for example, if you buy and use only samsung appliances, you get a cheaper rate (and the electric company gets a kickback from samsung).

When you pay for an internet connection the only practical matter that I expect my ISP to care about is the speed I expect to get, the latency of the network, and the volume of traffic I am permitted over a period. Everything else is a congestion issue, and if they are going to manage what I can access to and modify the parameters of my connection based on resources I access, I am not buying Internet access, I am buying access to a curated online service.

<comment><USER50> > the comparable scenario would be that your electricity company charges you a > variable rate depending on which manufacturers appliances you buy

The scenario you introduce is different from the specific line I was responding to. My intention was to show that some more consideration and rework of the idea could bring more clarity. You have helped refine Sam's point and now I understand it better, but as I read it, it seemed like something that should be addressed.

> Consumers generally tolerate that network management for some things is ok, > for example, constraining the transfer speed of users at peak times.

I could have a switch to change my water heater to the non-interruptible service if I needed to use it during a time of peak demand. How does "pay more for priority" fit into the net neutrality picture? Is it okay as long as the user is the one choosing which of their traffic is in the fast or slow lane?

<comment><USER61> >The scenario you introduce is different from the specific line I was responding to. My intention was to show that some more consideration and rework of the idea could bring more clarity.

In your example you are choosing to accept interruption of service in exchange for a preferential rate.

Net neutrality preserves the integrity of internet access by stating that ISPs may not interfere with traffic based on it's origin or destination for competitive reasons (e.g. to coerce payments from service providers a consumer may choose to access). The core premise of Internet access is that a consumer is paying for access to the Internet. If a consumer chooses to permit the service provider to modulate service at the consumer side in order to gain preferential treatment (better price, etc), then this is a consumer choice.

> I could have a switch to change my water heater to the non-interruptible > service if I needed to use it during a time of peak demand. How does "pay > more for priority" fit into the net neutrality picture?

There are numerous ways to "pay for priority"; even with electricity you can pay a supplier to upgrade capacity in your area to ensure that you have the ability to more consistently draw power, especially at peak times (granted this is not a trivial process). With Internet access the same thing is available - if I want a 10Mbps connection, that has minimum bandwidth of 1Mbps at peak times, and 99% uptime, then I could reasonably expect to pay more than someone who only wants a 1Mbps connection, can tolerate a minimum bandwidth of 512Kbps at peak, and only needs 90% uptime.

This is not a net neutrality issue, and this should be consumer choice (I am old and from Canada, so the numbers above are low :P); allowing lower cost terms of service for less guarantees is a time honored tradition in delivering utilities and services, but most utilities in many parts of the world have a minimum standard that must be met to achieve regulatory compliance for consumer services (e.g. water pressure upper and lower limits, natural gas line pressure, electricity amperage and voltage, etc). Anything above that regulation-blessed "consumer grade" is an opportunity to extract value for priority, and is compatible with net neutrality.

The Net Neutrality issue is that your provider can then regulate the service which you have bought and paid for (network access to your ISPs network peers, and via those access to the Internet) to prevent you from access resources from specific sites and resources, and deliberately applying QoS to degrade a users experience with those third party sites and services in order to coerce the upstream services to pay the ISP.

This is why I say that a service that does this is not Internet Service, but rather a curated network service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> 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!

</comment><comment><USER63> I love the electricity company/appliance analogy. That seems fairly accurate and something that's easily relatable to the layman who doesn't understand the details of the internet.

<comment><USER64> Can you explain? The analogy seems like a terrible one to me.

We are not talking about charging different amounts of money depending on the brand of device you are consuming the data on. NN is about not differentiating the cost or quality of bits based on their source. In the US, can you not opt to pay a slightly higher rate for renewable energy? (This happens in Australia).

I'm all for NN, but the analogy Sam used doesn't hold in my opinion.

As an additional thought from someone outside the US: NN doesn't exist in places like Australia, and has actually overall led to better services, especially in the early days of the internet, because overseas data is significantly more costly to provide than local data. The difference is that we have more robust competition and we can more easily switch providers, where is seems in the US (purely based on things I've read on the internet) that the near-duopoly cuts consumer choice, so if NN was not in place, people would have little ability to switch providers, and they would be stuck with it.

Is the lack of competition the real issue here? If people in the US had a choice of many providers and it was easy to switch, then people would likely switch to services that are Net Neutral.

<comment><USER30> > Is the lack of competition the real issue here?

Yes. Governments -- from federal to small towns -- created rules giving de facto local monopolies to certain ISPs and making market entry of competition very difficult. And yet, people want to solve this created problem with more rules about how ISPs are allowed to compete.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> 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.

</comment><comment><USER66> Not to put a fly in the soup, but don't utilities charge different rates for different customers? for Example PG&E might have one rate for residential, one for small biz and one for large biz?

Not to say that net neutrality is different but comparing it to utilities may not be appropriate given diff classes of customers are granted different kinds of rates and service.

<comment><USER41> But they don't have one rate for powering refrigerators, a different rate for washing machines, one rate for computers, etc. Nor do they have one rate for Kenmore refrigerators, a different rate for Maytag refrigerators, one rate for Samsung refrigerators.

<comment><USER12> They do charge discounts for certain types of equipment (cars, medical devices). I don't think there are any differences between equipment vendors, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Charging per volume of traffic would eliminate the net neutrality issue.

If I use Netflix on Comcast I would pay Comcast for my use of their network. Comcast would pay Netflix's ISP for the use of that network (at negotiated rate lower than my rate because of volume). Netflix would pay their ISP For their usage as well.(also priced for volume)

The two end point rates would have to be set so carriers make a profit and the responsibility of traffic is shared between the sender and receiver. (people who get thing for free tend to treat it as worthless).

This model has to be worked out to completion to understand all the implications.

The key thing is if Comcast was getting reasonable revenue from moving Netflix traffic it would not need to throttle other people's traffic to bully consumers to buy on demand TV from Comcast.

As side effect this may reduce usage by people who download stuff just because they can because its free/already paid for. This is related to free things are treated badly concept I mentioned earlier.

<comment><USER59> It's an interesting idea, but unlimited is nice. This idea kinda reminds me of how the telephone network works. Basically everything a call is connected, there's a "dip" fee.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Location_Routing_Number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Location_Routing_Number)

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Net Neutrality absolutists need to tone down their rhetoric. When NN activists say zero rating is unfair, they are speaking from an ivory tower. It is better for a poor Iraqi to get free Wikipedia even though that hurts other upstart wikis, than for poor Iraqis to have no Wikipedia at all. Once you accept this premise, you must then accept that exceptions to NN exist. Once you accept that, you must then take every single exception to NN and weigh it on a case- by-case basis about whether it's "fair" or not.

Barring some government oversight panel that bans or allows anti-NN practices on a case by case basis, I think it's better for the market to decide. ISP's shouldn't be able to extort businesses to be allowed in at all, but offering premium speeds (as Netflix has paid for years), free data, etc. are within the realms of anti-NN practices that I feel are acceptable.

The net neutrality issue is not black and white.

<comment><USER56> > It is better for a poor Iraqi to get free Wikipedia even though that hurts > other upstart wikis, than for poor Iraqis to have no Wikipedia at all.

I don't accept this premise. This is a false dichotomy because these are not the only two options. There is a third, better option: to get access to the entire internet.

A company offering you that choice is using a classic game-theoretic bargaining approach: commit to only allowing a restricted set of possibilities, of which the other person's best option is the one you want to happen. This makes it sound like the company has no chioce in the matter: they are just presenting you with the options, and you are the one who has to choose between eliminating this poor Iraqi's internet or giving her partial access. In reality, the company has stacked the deck by presenting you with this particular pair of options.

I'm not saying it's completely illegitimate for a company to want to sponsor free partial internet for those who don't have it in some places of the world.

But I am saying it is opposite from the ideal we should be working towards in already-developed countries like the USA. Ideally, the company providing internet should not at all be vertically integrated with the company providing websites on it and should have no incentive to prioritize one over the other.

<comment><USER68> If you are a poor American on a Lifeline phone (free phone provided by the government) with a very limited data plan, no one is (at this time) willing to subsidize unlimited services for this user. But maybe some companies, for their services, are willing to subsidize them. And in my opinion, it's better for the poor person to have access to some services than no services.

<comment><USER69> There is no limit on my truconnect phone for calls texts or data. There are multiple companies set up outside the general relief office and I am eligible for a phone from each one; so, even if there wasn't a generous data plan, a combination of phones would solve that. As does using free wifi which is available at all libraries and police stations where I live.

Posting garbage about poor people's situations that is untrue only serves to hurt everybody. Please stop.

<comment><USER68> I have never heard of a government provided phone with unlimited data plan. I don't think the government should be providing a "combination of phones" for free to each poor person. I am happy you can use free WiFi. I think that if you want to watch YouTube and google is willing to pay for your data, that's OK and no one will be hurt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> I love the political and ethical debate surrounding this, both in this thread and elsewhere. As a technologist and a software developer I think we should use every means available to stop these sorts of laws from taking effect and harming what should be a completely neutral internet.

With that being said, I would like to ask from a technical perspective, what can we do if this does go into effect? I remember a quote, I want to say it was by Sit Timothy Berners-Lee, but I can't find it. So I will just state it myself.

 _Any lack of neutrality within the internet network is not a feature or a regulation but is in fact a bug within the system. When a bug is found, software engineers find ways around those bugs._

So, if ISPs finally succeed in causing our internet to no longer be neutral, how will we be moving around that bug?

<comment> wu-ikkyu >So, if ISPs finally succeed in causing our internet to no longer be neutral, how will we be moving around that bug?

It wouldnt be easy, but mesh networks are the best option I'm aware of.

<comment><USER71> The protocol cjdns and its distributed deployment at Hyperboria is the largest scale starting point I'm aware of.

I think doing this might have advantages increasing freedom at the other end of the stack too - if you can drop out to cheap Internet on a mesh network with local traffic free, you might find the advantage of having a Nextcloud Box in your house (instead of Dropbox) clearer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> I don't think anyone here is going to argue that the internet _shouldn 't_ be open.

The real question behind that – and where we differ – is how the role of government fits into that.

If you believe government is inherently good and necessary to enable a "basic right" like the internet, then yes, of course, government should be the one to keep the internet open. This is Sam's view.

On the other hand, if you distrust government and believe their own interests for power and control are always in play, then handing them even more control of the internet is absolutely _not_ the solution.

Knowing what we know of the NSA's mass-surveilance and CIA's targeted hacking and surveillance for unclear-at-best purposes, doesn't that at least give you pause about whether government should be the one to keep the internet open?

<comment><USER73> > If you believe government is inherently good and necessary to enable a > "basic right" like the internet, then yes, of course, government should be > the one to keep the internet open. This is Sam's view.

I don't believe that the government is inherently good, but at least the government is _democratically elected_. The CEOs at Comcast/Verizon are not. Allowing them to exert control over internet content while participating in a market that is inherently NOT FREE is a recipe for disaster and a closed internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> What are the technical, business & political hurdles that prevent routing level encryption from providing enough privacy that neutrality falls out automatically and the question of net neutrality legislation becomes moot?

</comment><comment><USER75> If Telco Carriers continue to invest in their wireless infrastructure, then data "fast lanes" will emerge naturally.

In the Carnegie model, 2G and 3G towers could be subsidized for accessing Wikipedia (for example) while new 5G towers are only available to premium subscribers.

Look at the Millions be spent dismantling the 2G network. That bandwidth could be subsidized by the FCC for the common good. [https://www.att.com/esupport/article.html#!/wireless/KM10696...](https://www.att.com/esupport/article.html#!/wireless/KM1069631)

</comment><comment><USER76> Other than below what are some of the other arguments against NN? I also have a number from 0 to 5 next to each indicating how plausible I find these arguments, please shed more light on this if needed as well:

\- 3 caching, if you're closer to a cache edge you pay less.

\- 1 we give you a heavily discounted data plan but show you only content we want to make money off of you, argument being at least you get something instead of nothing if you're very poor.

\- 2 regulations are mostly bad, you don't want government sticking its nose in everything.

\- 0 monopolies want their moat to grow.

</comment><comment><USER77> pro NN: "Oh my god some service I want may charge me with a pricing scheme I don't understand/like! Let's get government bureaucrats to control that for me!"

anti-NN: "If you let the federal government dictate how packets are treated.... then you let the federal government dictate how packets are treated. Perhaps you are familiar with Ed Snowden, Wikileaks and recent revelations about the NSA etc? no concern at all eh? You just want your Netflizzzzzz. Ok then"

<comment><USER78> Yeah... it's sort of a lose-lose honestly, I think the model used in Canada and the UK is quite good - the government forced the big ISPs to lease last- mile lines. Keeps a working free market with competition, many people started switching to smaller ISPs with lower rates and unlimited bandwidth caps, a few years later the big guys increased their speeds, increased their caps and made it relatively cheap to go to unlimited.

It fixes more than just the net neutrality problem, it also fixes the lack of infrastructure improvement by making big ISPs have a monopoly on last mile improvements for the first year or two - they're greatly incentivized to keep improving infrastructure and speeds or lose customers to the smaller guys who can run leaner. It's a pretty clever regulatory model that manipulates incentives quite well.

I'm sure there are flaws, regulatory models are rarely perfect, but from what I've seen over the last 10 years going from 5mbit DSL to gigabit fibre for only about 1.5x the cost, I'd say it's doing a pretty good job, without any net neutrality enforcement or any complicated legislation - just by giving the regulatory authority the ability to compel ISPs to lease lines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> It's a terrific plea from Sam. He speaks for Ycombinator and by proxy, independant hackers like myself. But there is just so much peace of mind in it for the big boys.

</comment><comment><USER80> > What's clearly not OK is taking it further--charging different services > different rates based on their relationships with ISPs. You wouldn't accept > your electric company charging you different rates depending on the > manufacturer of each of your appliances.

Some electric companies do charge different rates to different types of customers depending on what type of business those customers are in and w/o regard to actual usage (which can also vary rates).

</comment><comment><USER81> Why would anyone buy internet access from people charging like this/breaking their services? Are ISPs monopolies in the US and if so wouldn't stopping these monopolies be the surest way, allowing the market to decide a free Internet is what gets you customers?

All that this will do is move people towards obfuscation of their Internet access through technology. I say let them try to break the web; there will be technological solutions to stop this immediately I bet...

<comment><USER82> _> Are ISPs monopolies in the US_

In many parts of it, yes, they are, because of deals that ISPs have struck with local governments.

 _> wouldn't stopping these monopolies be the surest way_

Yes, and every time it's been tried, the ISPs go to court and, since they have much deeper pockets, end up getting the attempts shot down.

<comment><USER81> Okay so maybe YC should be funding a few clever ISP startups in the US?

There really is decent competition for Internet in the UK, it's surprisingly successful at stopping this type of stupid stuff from happening.

<comment><USER82> _> maybe YC should be funding a few clever ISP startups in the US?_

I think that would be a great idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> If only Sam knew someone that had the President's ear...

</comment><comment><USER84> In my opinion, the Internet is the best modern day example of something working fairly with minimal regulation.

</comment><comment><USER85> This is all very rich coming from someone who also wants a totalitarian government regime dedicated to suppressing machine learning research.

[http://blog.samaltman.com/machine-intelligence- part-2](http://blog.samaltman.com/machine-intelligence-part-2)

</comment><comment><USER86> Work on physical layer redundancy and independence. Even if you want one, primary, default network, you're going to need competition to keep it healthy.

And I for one want alternatives that work around the damage of current chokeholds.

</comment><comment><USER87> Part of the problem is that "the internet" has not provided a technical solution yet to the claimed problem (the laziness and shiftiness of ISPs not upgrading simple crossconnects is bs though).

If someone wants to stream netflix, youtube or grab something from a torrent why not have a content agnostic(safe harbor) block cache distributed around the internet?

This is most concretely expressed by ipfs [https://ipfs.io/](https://ipfs.io/) but it's an old idea -

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_centric_networking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_centric_networking)

Bittorrent itself is a limited form of it. On some level AMP from google and CDNs are trying to make up for its lack.

As long as the ISP doesn't actively force this on their users but instead its something companys and people actually want I think its a net good to make this a thing.

We should mature and adopt IPFS AND fight the net neutrality battle.

</comment><comment><USER88> Those looking to roll back net neutrality are better organized, better funded, and better connected.

I hate to say it, but this battle seems lost.

We don't need to squander our time arguing over the finer points of the policy. We need a simple way to explain it to the masses.

</comment><comment><USER89> I think lobbyists should solve this problem, but here's an idea anyway: what if we synchronized our fireworks to go off on the 4th of July at 4:04 AM in protest?

</comment><comment><USER90> The problem is that the Big Four (or five, if you count Microsoft) just aren't that interested in it. There's a lot of benefit to them to end neutrality.

<comment><USER49> I don't think there's a net benefit to them (which is why they've been mostly pro-Open Internet); OTOH, they are _better_ positioned than smaller players to deal with it, so they aren't _that_ motivated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> My entire life I have had access to only one ISP. I want very clear competition before give up on net neutrality. That's not going to happen though :-/

</comment><comment><USER92> We probably need a grassroots effort for VPNs like "Let's Encrypt" is for https. It will eat our batteries faster, but it's worth it.

</comment><comment><USER93> Do not put two spaces after a period. Please.

[http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/two- space...](http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/two-spaces-after- a-period)

[http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/01/...](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/01/space_invaders.html)

</comment><comment><USER94> > There's an argument that Internet Service Providers should be able to charge > a metered rate based on usage.

For home Utilities, this is based on the fact that, indeed, your usage pattern is a couple of things

1) In the best of Utility markets, electricity has no real elasticity. Electrical demand is a constant game of just simply keep pace with existing demand as much as possible. There is no excess capacity problems per say, as the game is trying to be as efficient as possible.

2) For the most part, people's usage patterns are routinely predicable and stable, so the demand cost associated can be metered reasonably and with _relative_ transparency (Not to say, its completely transparent, because its not, though its very well regulated in comparison to say, internet service access & quality). This allows a relatively consistent and low variable cost of delivery of this service, however its not a 'fixed' cost, with the exception usually of the wiring the house itself to the grid.

3) The device in which a home uses, in fact, can be measured in absolute terms. For instance, your appliances can be calculated to the letter how much they will cost to run (see here, for instance: [http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/cost.html](http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/cost.html)). I would argue that this is not true of internet usage, which can vary EXTREMELY widely. The EIA gives a nice summary on this too: [https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=electrici...](https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=electricity_used)

Now, often people will say, reasonably, that in an environment maintained much like the power utilities, if things could be achieved to this level of usage/monitoring/charging for use would make sense. Transparent pricing, easy ways to calculate usage based on the app or app(s) or some other methodology for chunking the pricing structure so its really transparent and stable to price out a month to month usage pattern for the average person. Sounds cool right? Well, here is some notable differences:

(As an aside, for fun, imagine a world where the app had to tell you how much on average it cost to use for an hour on a metered connection, like how energy star rated appliances tell you their yearly cost)

Broadband is a completely different story

1) Wired service has a fixed cost and tons of excess capacity. The cost, while not _cheap_ is fixed, per house or neighborhood, and that infrastructure doesn't have to be changed out for many years, in some cases a decade or more. Once the wired service has been installed to a house, thats it. the ISP then can flip the service on and start delivering product to the homes at virtually no cost after that. There is no ongoing 'generation' of bandwidth to closely meet demand. The technology itself, after all, takes care of all that. All the ISP has to do is run the ship smoothly, but they don't have to build a new bandwidth power plant to make more bandwidth.

2) Which leads me to my second point. There is a ton of bandwidth in the system already. WE know this. The system not only has a fixed cost, but the actual capacity of the wired services being deployed already have a ton of extra bandwidth capacity, in particular if we are talking about home users. From DSL Reports [https://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Deconstructing-The- Exafl...](https://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Deconstructing-The-Exaflood- Myth-97440) we get this great line (i encourage everyone to read the full report):

 _Andrew Odlyzko is one of the nation 's top experts on global Internet traffic. Stationed at the University of Minnesota, Odlyzko posts all of his data to his website, and notes that while growth is strong, it doesn't necessitate drastic new pricing model shifts (metered billing), or wailing to the heavens about the dire menace that is P2P traffic. "There is not a single sign of an unmanageable flood of traffic," Odlyzko says. "If anything, a slowdown is visible more than a speedup," he says_

And thats just from 2008, and the situation for bandwidth excess capacity has actually improved:

Tech Dirt reports from 2012 ([https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130118/17425221736/cable...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130118/17425221736/cable- industry-finally-admits-that-data-caps-have-nothing-to-do-with- congestion.shtml)):

The relevant bit, in response to a Michael Powell, a cable industry lobbyist:

 _If usage caps were about "fairness," carriers would offer the nation's grandmothers a $5-$15 a month tier that accurately reflected her twice weekly, several megabyte browsing of the Weather Channel website. Instead, what we most often see are low caps and high overages layered on top of already high existing flat rate pricing, raising rates for all users. Does raising rates on a product that already sees 90% profit margins sound like "fairness" to you?_

Even as far back as 2008, they tried to push the bandwidth hog myth ([https://www.dslreports.com/shownews/The-Bandwidth-Hog-is- a-M...](https://www.dslreports.com/shownews/The-Bandwidth-Hog-is-a- Myth-117230)):

relevant quote:

 _Assuming that if disruptive users exist (which, as mentioned above we could not prove) they would be amongst those that populate the top 1% of bandwidth users during peak periods. To test this theory, we crossed that population with users that are over cap (simulating AT &T's established data caps) and found out that only 78% of customers over cap are amongst the top 1%, which means that one fifth of customers being punished by the data cap policy cannot possibly be considered to be disruptive (even assuming that the remaining four fifths are). Data caps, therefore, are a very crude and unfair tool when it comes to targeting potentially disruptive users. The correlation between real- time bandwidth usage and data downloaded over time is weak and the net cast by data caps captures users that cannot possibly be responsible for congestion. Furthermore, many users who are "as guilty" as the ones who are over cap (again, if there is such a thing as a disruptive user) are not captured by that same net._

Also see this: [https://www.publicknowledge.org/news-blog/blogs/myth- bandwid...](https://www.publicknowledge.org/news-blog/blogs/myth-bandwidth- hog)

3) [Opinion piece here]: Fair and open internet access is in my mind, is going to become a first amendment issue, or at least should be treated as one. The growth and power of being able to be seen, heard, and read on the internet is quickly, as we all know, supplanting most if not all other forms of media. And for the media it is enabling, other mediums that carry forward, like video, are quickly consolidating onto the internet in great numbers. This makes it _the_ place for public speech. While the space may be non-physical (virtual), the ability for ISPs to pick winners and losers to access will have inevitably terrible political and economic consequences, and not just for start ups. Imagine if employees who got cancer from working in an industrial facility could not publish their stories to say, Medium, because a large ISP like Comcast will refuse to carry medium's traffic in and around that issue, or at all, if it becomes a hot bed for other interests that are willing to pay vast sums of money to filter that traffic from ever being delivered or surfacing. Does this sound farfetched? I don't think so. We know groups have tried to do this with newspapers in the past, and of course groups have also tried to do things like pressure individual websites from publishing things to. If you open the internet and mandate its traffic is treated equally regardless, it largely negates the ability for this to happen on that level, as in an ideal implementation, the ISPs would be stripped (and monitored to ensure) that they aren't reading _any_ traffic in the wild that they don't have an _explicit_ reason to do so (Say, a warrant to tap into a connection of a suspected murder looking at their network traffic or something)

4) While we are talking about this, there is no damn spectrum crunch either, its a nice myth that wireless carriers/ISPs are using to justify their underhanded tactics here, because physics dictates there _can_ be a spectrum crunch. that doesn't mean there _is_ or _soon will be_ a spectrum crunch:

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130118/17425221736/cable...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130118/17425221736/cable- industry-finally-admits-that-data-caps-have-nothing-to-do-with- congestion.shtml)

[https://www.dslreports.com/shownews/The-Bandwidth-Hog-is- a-M...](https://www.dslreports.com/shownews/The-Bandwidth-Hog-is-a- Myth-117230)

[https://gigaom.com/2012/01/30/is-the-spectrum-crisis-a- myth/](https://gigaom.com/2012/01/30/is-the-spectrum-crisis-a-myth/)

[https://gigaom.com/2012/10/21/the-myth-of-the-wireless- spect...](https://gigaom.com/2012/10/21/the-myth-of-the-wireless-spectrum- crisis/)

[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/507486/the-spectrum- crunc...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/507486/the-spectrum-crunch-that- wasnt/)

[http://www.androidauthority.com/wireless-industry-flipped- bu...](http://www.androidauthority.com/wireless-industry-flipped-business- model-3-myths-407068/)

[https://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20121004/024...](https://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20121004/02434820589/now- that-we-know-telcos-exaggerated-about-spectrum-crunch-how-about-some-more- open-spectrum.shtml)

</comment><comment><USER95> If a carrier has a "social" data plan which gives access to only Facebook, is this against net neutrality?

<comment><USER96> yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> I haven't yet made up my mind on net neutrality. But Sam says: _" I believe access should be a basic right"_.

My question is: How can something be a human right if you need to pay for it? Because as of today you still need to pay an ISP for internet access.

<comment><USER98> A lot of folks would consider personal security a basic right, but someone still has to pay for the police.

Some folks believe that healthcare should be a basic right, and people definitely have to pay for that.

<comment><USER97> I won't get into the healthcare topic as it's still a mess in my opinion, however, regarding one's right to security, as far as I know police do not have a duty to protect someone. [1]

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule- pol...](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-police-do- not-have-a-constitutional-duty-to-protect.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Net neutrality, as promoted by this article's author, requires the elimination of an open Internet because it requires a central authority which will determine who can charge what and what they can charge for.

<comment><USER73> There's already a central authority for most places - it's called Comcast/AT&T/Verizon and you don't even get a say in this authority's leadership (unlike government). By eliminating net neutrality these local monopolies now want to extend their control not only to what customers will pay but also to what internet services they wish to provide/favour.

<comment><USER49> > There's already a central authority for most places - it's called > Comcast/AT&T/Verizon and you don't even get a say in this authority's > leadership (unlike government).

Not to contradict your basic point with a this, but, technically, you do: through government. Corporations are creatures of law, and their governance is ultimately itself governed by rules set by the chartering government, and further constrained by the governments of jurisdictions in which the corporation seeks permission to operate.

<comment><USER73> > Not to contradict your basic point with a this, but, technically, you do: > through government.

Yes, that's the point of net neutrality. Whereas an internet with no net neutrality regulation means that corporations have final say.

<comment><USER15> An Internet with no net neutrality regulation means no one has a final say. An Internet with net neutrality regulation means the same people who enjoy slaughtering brown people will be in charge of the entire Internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> Does anyone else think this thread smells astroturfed?

</comment><comment><USER18> Not exactly surprising.

</comment><comment><USER100> I'm afraid we can't do the SOPA/PIPA protests again :(

<comment><USER101> The enemies of the open internet only have to win once, but to fend them off we have to win every single time. SOPA/PIPA protests had a lot of momentum, and they "won", but within weeks the same intrusive, anti-consumer practices were injected into some other bill that just got pushed through anyways.

I just don't see how we can win. Not without some seriously strong top-down consumer protection laws. Net neutrality needs to solidify into law, and get some serious teeth. And I'm talking Amendment-level protections, not something the next chump-in-chief can come along and pull the rug out from under like they're doing with health care right now.

<comment><USER102> There is no "winning" the war as long as there is disagreement - of which there always will be.

That's why the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. To overturn this law, or to make consumer protection laws force neutrality you only have to win "once" where the other side has to keep defending.

The net result is that both sides are always constantly fighting for what they want and one side wins sometimes, and the other side wins other times.

<comment><USER101> When's the last time consumer protection on the internet "won" though?

My browsing history is about to go up for sale. My emails are fair game for the US government with no warrant. My ISP is free to double-charge for peering, driving my Netflix subscription costs up. My mobile operator is streaming certain services without it counting against my data, while services I want to use still do. I have to pay ridiculous amounts of money to my ISP for a decent connection, despite the government giving telecoms huge subsidies (our own tax dollars) in exchange for building nationwide fiber, most of which went straight to the company's own coffers with no repercussions.[1]

If there was at least _some_ back-and-forth, I would see your point, but as it stands I only see one failure after another.

[1] [http://newnetworks.com/ShortSCANDALSummary.htm](http://newnetworks.com/ShortSCANDALSummary.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER103> you are a good hacker since you are good i'm going to call you "CODER 52" good job.

</comment><comment><USER104> I don't understand why a basic "pay for what you use" principle is so evil while Facebook is a much bigger threat (worse than AOL in its day).

Does 'sama have a Facebook account?

</comment><comment><USER105> Sam Altman is the Ycombinator version of Steven Anthony Ballmer you can see failure on the horizon. Its just a matter of time.

<comment><USER42> What do you mean by this? Otherwise, this should be flagged.</comment></comment>