F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/14/technology/net-neutrality-repeal-vote.html <comment><USER2> The voters elected a Republican government. That a Republican-led FCC would err on the side of under-regulating telecommunications companies is about the least surprising outcome you can imagine. Anybody who told you that lobbying the FCC was going to make a difference here was, whether they meant to or not, selling a bill of goods.

As someone who respects but mostly profoundly disagrees with principled Republican laissez-faire regulatory strategy (at least, once we got past 1991 or so), it is more than a little aggravating to see us as a community winding ourselves in knots over market-based regulation of telecom at the same time as the (largely unprincipled) Republican congress is putting the finishing strokes --- literally in ball-point pen --- on a catastrophically stupid tax bill that threatens universal access to health insurance, not just for those dependent on Medicare but on startup founders as well.

If you care deeply about this issue, stop pretending like filling out forms and putting banners ads is going to persuade Republican regulators to act like Democrats. "Net Neutrality" isn't my personal issue --- I worked at ISPs, have backbone engineer friends, and candidly: I think this issue is silly. But if it's yours... sigh... fine.

But do it right: get out there, to your nearest seriously threatened D districts or to the nearest plausibly flippable R district (the suburbs are great for this), open up your damn wallets, and donate.

The FCC may very well be right that it's not their job to impose our dream portfolio of rules on Verizon (certainly, a lot of the rules people are claiming NN provided were fanciful). It doesn't matter how dreamlike the rules are: Congress can almost certainly enact a law, which the FCC can't revoke.

But otherwise, be clear-eyed: elections have consequences. We elected the party of deregulation. Take the bad with whatever the good is, and work to flip the House back.

<comment><USER3> "That a Republican-led FCC would err on the side of under-regulating telecommunications companies is about the least surprising outcome you can imagine."

That is not why this is shocking. This proceeding is shocking because the legal basis for this change is dependent on a false statements about the technology involved. It goes beyond just, "Republicans prefer deregulation," or, "Republicans favor market-based approaches." There is plenty of room and a general need for debates about what policy approaches are best, but there is no room for debate about the answer to technical questions.

Engineers and researchers submitted hundreds of comments to the FCC trying to correct the falsehoods presented in the NPRM. The FCC did not simply ignore those comments. The draft rules specifically cite those comments and totally dismiss them as "not persuasive." Only commentary from ISPs was "persuasive" in this proceeding, and the ISPs omitted facts that were inconvenient for them (the point of public commentary is in part to fill in the omissions that lobbyists would obviously make).

Sorry, but I do not buy the "what do you expect from Republicans" argument. I expect Republicans to be pro-markets, even pro-big-business; I expect Republicans to favor deregulation. It is not acceptable to pursue that agenda by ignoring expert answers to technical questions, regardless of party affiliation. It is one thing to interpret facts -- for example, the draft rules _interpret_ the fact that edge services can be accessed via ISP networks as ISPs providing a capability to their customers, which is bizarre but within the bounds as far as policy debates go. To simply dismiss facts that are being presented to you by experts, when you have a legal obligation to receive and consider such facts, is another matter entirely.

Yes, I expect the party of deregulation to base its policy goals on facts, as interpreted through the lens of a pro-business/pro-markets approach, and not some convenient fantasy.

<comment><USER4> >It is not acceptable to pursue that agenda by ignoring expert answers to technical questions, regardless of party affiliation

Your entire premise can be rebutted with the policies around climate change. If something as catastrophic and irreversible as climate change can be subject to partisan nonsense, twisting of facts and delegitimization of experts; what makes anyone think that Net Neutrality would be looked upon with logic, facts, and reason.

I personally lean towards preserving NN.

I hope at some point we can return to some semblance of governance based on facts, logic, and pragmatism rather than ideology.

<comment><USER5> Or, we can accept that ideologies are how we all make the majority of our decisions and then work to create a convincing ideology which combats the systems of power/corruption we're currently dealing with. None of this going to go away with facts and logic.

Change never happened because someone spouted a couple damning facts and shamed people with power.

<comment><USER4> Oh I disagree wholeheartedly.

We're in the sh*tshow we are today not because of a lack of ideologies: Libertarian, Conservative, Liberal, Progressive, Evangelical, Green, and on and on... So clearly, there's no lack of 'convincing ideology' for any single individual's belief system and ideals.

The problem as I see it, is that the majority of people have retreated into their ideologies and just started tossing grenades and stones behind their respective walls, rather than having dialogue, understanding, and compromising.

And if your counter is that we're just lacking an even BETTEREST ideology that somehow rules them all, I think that's fallacy. Ideology is neither the solution, nor the problem.

It's the fact that ideologies have become ending points, rather than starting points of discussion. Which leads me back to my original point that we need leaders who will govern by listening to ideas, facts, counterpoints, and making tough compromises and decisions based on that.

EDIT: spelling

<comment><USER6> I _really_ want to agree with you. And in times past I absolutely would have. But I think something that's become clear over time, worldwide, is that getting incorruptible, good, and objective people into office is not really possible - certainly not on a regular basis. Really it's unclear if such people even actually exist. I think most of us believe our decisions are driven by objective merit, yet we all view most of everybody else as subjectively driven. The latter view is probably the correct one.

What we need is systems themselves that take human nature into mind. The founding fathers of the US set out to create this exact sort of system. And they really did. Lacking a super majority, literally a single senator can prevent a political appointment. So on this issue, if the senate really did not want to put into appointee into the FCC who was in favor of dismantling net neutrality - they had that power. When Pai was appointed by Obama in 2012 his views were no secret. The senate could have said no. McConnell could have proposed a new person, Obama formally nominates him, and again the senate could reject. They are under 0 obligation to approve _any_ nominee - ever.

Yes, this would be incredibly dysfunctional - but that is precisely how the US government was envisioned. The whole _checks and balances_ thing we learn about in elementary social studies is specifically about preventing something from happening unless there is mass consensus. The founding fathers did not want a huge, powerful democratic government - they wanted a small accountable republic driven to progress only on issues where there was minimal to no opposition.

You can even see this in things like the bill of rights. The bill of rights does not, for instance, guarantee you the right to free speech. It says you already _inherently_ have that right - it is inalienable. The bill of rights does not grant you a right - it prevents the government from infringing on your natural rights. In other words the view is that governments cannot grant rights, but they can take them away. A dysfunctional government maximizes the freedom of the people by preventing the infringement of such freedom except in cases such that there is a mass consensus of its merit.

The problem is that the doomsday scenario of all of congress falling into one clique happened. Politicians all need money to get elected and stay in office. Corporate donors (and influence) is where that money comes from. And _this_ is where I think the problem is. But I also don't think there's any solution to it. Imagine you take all money out of political campaigns. That don't stop already famous individuals from running for office and their advantage in these cases would be monumental. There are radical ideas like treating political duty the same as jury duty, but I'm unsure how well that would be publicly received.

The point here is that I don't think 'just get better politicians' is something that's necessarily workable in the longrun. We need to create systems that readily accept the realities of corruption, cronyism, and general pettiness -- but then operate in a publicly desirable way regardless of this.

<comment> double-a Why do Americans believe trying to interpret the Founding Father's intent is a reasonable way to debate policy? If the opinions of 18th century wealthy men have merit today it should be because we believe their reasoning applies to current circumstances, not because they were the Founders of anything.

I'm not saying I necessarily disagree that "a small accountable republic driven to progress only on issues where there was minimal to no opposition" is desirable today, but you have put forward no valid argument for it.

<comment><USER7> What the grandparent comment did was bring the Founding Fathers into the discussion, took an idea from them, and then presented it in light of current events. You can evaluate the grandparent comment's idea without including the Founding Fathers; the reference is relevant only to show the changes that have occurred in the last 200 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This wouldn't be a problem if ISP's weren't de facto monopolies. If there was competition in this space, then there would be incentive to improve the infrastructure and Internet speeds. However, ISP's kill competition by making legal arrangements with local governments to only do business with them, and by cutting competitors' cables. Since we have no way to guarantee reasonable speeds to small time websites now, we should pursue antitrust legal and foster competition in this space. Comcast didn't realize it, but net neutrality was their own safety net.

<comment><USER9> I've been thinking this over for the past couple months, because I was pretty sure this would be the outcome - that we would lose our net neutrality protection.

So let's play out the worse case - Comcast, AT&T etc wait out the shitstorm and then start throttling traffic and packaging the internet, releasing cable- esque "plans."

Is it feasible to just start running our own fiber to hubs? I want to learn more about the internet and what it would take to bypass the ISPs. Can I do this? Do I need to be incorporated to do it? What would it take to start a new ISP with the premise "unthrottled, unmonitored traffic, charged by the gigabyte - an internet utility service"?

As a private citizen, can I purchase a bunch of land between me and, I dunno, a DNS node or whatever and just lay a super long fiber cable straight to it? Who do I have to pay at the node to get to "plug into" it or whatever?

Hmm. I should see if there's some "How the Internet Works: for Dummies" book.

<comment><USER10> > As a private citizen, can I (snip) just lay a super long fiber cable > straight to (the internet).

Yes. I worked on a startup ISP for a few years, which attempted to do this. It's actually really easy to do :

1) Pick a point where you can get connection to the internet. (Backhaul). This is usually a phone companies central office, but it can also be at a data centre or other point of presence.

2) Run fiber cable from there to your customers. (You can also use wireless gear instead for a WISP. I don't like this approach, it's very 1990s despite all the newer better gear, but it's much cheaper than fiber and if your careful it can work out OK)

3) Setup some light network management.

Some cities / municipalities have signed agreements for monopoly rights to a telephone or cable provider. Many (but not all) of them can be worked around by simply not selling telephone or TV service.

The land between you and your customers is owned. You'll need space in public property (or 'right of way') to connect to them. This also varies based on city/county/state/local laws, but in Michigan there are somewhat decent rules around this. (Set rates for underground conduit access or utility pole access, rules about what can/can't be blocked, etc).

The only _real_ roadblock is money. Fiber ISPs are super cheap at scale, but are effectively impossible to bootstrap unless you are already a millionaire. In Michigan, I could easily offer everyone residential 500mbps to the home via fiber for $50/month and cover all costs, no problem. But only after we already had a few thousand customers. The cost for your _very first_ customer is somewhere north of $50k/each, and prices don't become reasonable until your in the thousands.

In most areas, the only thing you really need to start an ISP is (1) Lots of money, and (2) perseverance. There's not really any rules that prevent it, and the regulations aren't unreasonable. But the upfront cost is so high, it rules out basically any honest person from having the chance to do it.

<comment><USER11> I wonder if this would be feasible at the neighborhood level via Home owners association. The neighborhood gets a tower and microwave link to a backhaul station, and provides internet via wifi or wires to the neighborhood.

I think our neighboorhood is about 130 houses. probably not enough to make it cost effective.

On the flip side, maybe starting a local company to provide LOS microwave hookups to the various neighborhoods in the area could make it work.

<comment><USER10> If you can somehow convince your HOA to let you put up a tower, then yes, it's feasible. And if you are doing microwave link only, it's pretty cheap.

You can rent space on a nearby cell tower for a pricy-but-not-insane monthly fee, and they'll usually have decent backhaul already present. (American Tower had a WISP sales program specifically for this at one point, I'm not sure if they still do). Run point-to-point from there to your neighborhood via some microwave WISP gear.

If you had a volunteer from the HOA willing to setup and manage it (a bigger ask than it sounds like), and if all 130 houses would agree to pay $50/month, then the math would work out OK (at least, using pricing I got in suburban Michigan about 4 years ago).

<comment><USER12> > If you can somehow convince your HOA to let you put up a tower.

You don't have to convince them, let the FCC do that. I lived in an area with a heavy handed HOA. The only decent broadband was a WISP. They had a few go rounds with the HOA, but they can't regulate antennas. In the end the WISP put a tower on my roof - I never heard a word. They may try, but they don't have authority to regulate it.

<comment><USER13> > They had a few go rounds with the HOA, but they can't regulate antennas.

That's a little bit of an overstatement. HOAs can regulate antennas unless the FCC (or Congress) makes an exception.

In the case of WISP, there is an exception that applies: 47 CFR 1.4000 [1]. WISPs would fall under the exception for antennas for "fixed wireless signals". A "fixed wireless signal" is "any commercial non-broadcast communications signals transmitted via wireless technology to and/or from a fixed customer location".

[1] [https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/1.4000](https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/1.4000)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Unpopular opinion: Title II is not a great solution to Net Neutrality. The only thing I disklike is there isn't a better option already in place.

I would rather see the FTC address EULAs. If a company says, "we may from time-to-time limit your bandwidth" I think they should be on the hook to produce a report every month when and why they limited you. This is not much different than the report you get from your investments, or your cell phone carrier report when you place a call or send a text message.

<comment><USER15> Limiting bandwidth is one thing. My local Cable company is proish-NN (they have publicly stated that they have no plans to implement prioritization even if the FCC passed this vote), they still impose data caps and network management practices on consumer plans. While I hate these practices (hence paying extra for a business connection), that's not what the NN issue is about.

Comcast refused to upgrade their peering connections to the networks used by Netflix (Level3 I believe was one of them?) to extort money from them. Netflix doesn't get service from Comcast, yet Comcast decided it could charge them to get access to their customers.

The internet is built upon no-fee exchanges between Tier 1 providers, but since Comcast (and some others like CenturyLink, Verizon, AT&T) is both a consumer ISP _AND_ a major transit provider they try to make arguments like "you're sending us more traffic than we send you, this isn't fair" even though their customers are the ones requesting the data. It's total bullshit, and they will milk this for everything it's worth.

<comment><USER16> As with any other system where a product is delivered over someone else's product, a negotiation will take place, money will change hands, and business will resume. That's normal.

Google and Netflix wanted to implement rules prohibiting a perfectly normal transaction in business because it would cost them money, and framed it as the public good. I'm entirely okay with the two giants having to pay more, it provides Google and Netflix's competitors additional room to breathe and innovate.

<comment><USER17> >As with any other system where a product is delivered over someone else's product, a negotiation will take place, money will change hands, and business will resume.

I don't think this is always true, is it? The price of a phone call isn't contingent on the contents of the call. Regarding the internet, though, I'd feel better if there was any guarantee at all that these "negotiations" would be on a level playing field. If you're a startup that wants to complete with some Comcast streaming service, the Comcast ISP side of things can kill you day one. There's no negotiation possible when one party has all the power. Maybe that's the system working as intended, but if that's the case, then the system creeps me out.

<comment><USER18> If there was one company that was making 30%+ of calls at peak times, you bet there would be negotiations.

<comment><USER17> That's a good point, I hadn't thought of it that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There was a discussion about all this during NPR's Morning Edition.

The FCC chair talked about how there was very loose regulation of the Internet back in 1996 during the Clinton Administration. And this should be a model for regulation of the ISPs going forward.

Except that the world was quite different in 1996. You actually had a lot of competition with ISPs, because most people were doing dialup. If I didn't like AOL, I could just switch to Prodigy (yes, I know), or one of the local ISPs. That was easy.

People like me can and did switch ISPs on a regular basis. In my case, looking for a reliable Net News feed.

Compared to today, where there is only one (or if you are lucky) two ISPs for the area. You don't have a choice, so these ISPs are defacto monopolies.

The reasons given for repeal are just wrong, and this is a transparent attempt by the big ISPs to make more money, without benefit to the average citizen or even the other Internet companies which made the Internet awesome to begin with.

<comment><USER20> It does remind me a bit of the trickle down economics. They are making it sound like that the only thing holding them back from massive innovation is profits lost to regulations and as soon as we get rid of those the floodgates will open - but they never do. The ISPs are going to use that money to consolidate their power, buy more companies that depend on their infrastructure and shovel money back to their shareholders and drive their stock price up. This is exactly what is going to happen with the tax bill (and is already happening due to the expectation of a tax bill), we're being sold that companies have been right on the cusp of increasing wages and hiring if it weren't for those pesky taxes they had to pay. When the jobs and wages don't come, they'll blame something else and down the road they'll take away another important thing, like labor protections or something. And we'll fall for it (collectively), its like a mystery box or something, we can't resist the idea of the free market as this chained beast that just has to be released and it will solve everything with no oversight or maintenance.

<comment><USER19> _This is exactly what is going to happen with the tax bill (and is already happening due to the expectation of a tax bill), we 're being sold that companies have been right on the cusp of increasing wages and hiring if it weren't for those pesky taxes they had to pay._

Exactly.

I know business. Extra profits are extra profits. Wages won't rise unless there is a labor supply shortage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Slowly but surely, our open internet will get choked. This is just one step in horrible path that will lead to our largest corporations controlling almost everything in our lives with very little competition.

I am blaming the tech giants for this ruling. They are the only ones with enough power to challenge this horrible ruling and they sat idle and watched it happen.

They may have given lip service to net neutrality, but their lack of enthusiasm and almost zero effort speaks volumes on their true opinions.

Microsoft crossed over to the dark side a long time ago.

Now, Google, Apple, Facebook join them in completely abandoning the ethos upon which the companies were founded.

I have been skeptical of their true intentions for years, and facebook has probably been corrupt since day one, but I thought if they were able to keep net neutrality, then I would think there was a chance for them.

No longer. They are gone. Truly sad day for the world.

<comment><USER22> 21 of the last 23 years of the Internet in the US, there has not been net neutrality. Turned out really bad huh.

Net neutrality didn't exist in 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015.

<comment><USER23> Lies

<comment><USER24> Could you please stop posting flamebait to HN? We've asked you before. Eventually we ban accounts that keep breaking the rules.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Common response on HN for the past two months has been nothing short of hyperbolic. "The world will end if NN is repealed".

Speaking as a conservative: When Obama was president, I got told the same thing about the ACA. The world will end, the sky is falling, America is finished. But eight years later, here I am, nothing's that much worse.

I have no reason to believe this is "the beginning of the end" of anything. Life will carry on as normal.

Disproportionate reactions (like HN is doing right now) is not good for anyone. Take a step back from politics. Take a deep breath. Take a walk outside. This isn't the end of the world.

<comment><USER26> USA democracy is failing and this is something to freak out about.

<comment> new-account-9 It's not failing. North America is fine; people still want to move from other places to our place. Let's not be drastic. Let's sit down and listen and be calm.

<comment><USER27> The comment you replied to mentioned the USA. North America is a continent that includes 23 countries, only one of them is the USA. Living in one of the other 22 countries and looking at the USA, I would tend to agree with the comment that you were replying to, as the USA is becoming more and more an oligarchy, and less like a democracy.

<comment> new-account-9 Fair enough, I should not be saying North America when it includes so many other countries, I should be saying USA and Canada which is what I mean.

Look, it's not an oligarchy, it is a democracy. It seems to me that everyone thinks that just because Trump won the election that it is somehow not a democracy. I fear that the heavy anti-republican, anti-business sentiment will morph into a call for communism which will absolutely destroy the future of the human race.

<comment><USER28> > I fear that the heavy anti-republican, anti-business sentiment will morph > into a call for communism which will absolutely destroy the future of the > human race.

This statement is insanely detached from reality. People are "heavy anti- republican" because modern Republican policies tend to be more about throwing humanity (or just poor people) under the bus for a quick money grab under the obviously misleading and fake pretense of family values and fiscal responsibility.

<comment> new-account-9 I think my statement is not insanely detached. Let's consider that the progressive culture of the bay area more or less throws men and western culture under the bus, what with our constant pursuit of sexual misdeeds perpetrated by the same men who bring us prosperity. Or that we take random ethnic groups, or women as a whole, and make them into victims of the "patriarchy", which translates into victims of western society, thus perpetuating the idea that western values are inherently evil.

How about the fact that your company can get ripped apart for not having enough employees of certain races, or that conservatives either shut up or get ousted at big co's? There are invincible, roving SJW gangs with Google Sheets filled with names and details of tech workers that have been blacklisted for not being liberals. They enforce the ideology.

Now, on to the republicans. You're saying that they're throwing poor people under the bus, and I think you're right, a lot of their policies are downright dangerous. But I cannot listen to anti-trump, anti-republican statements anymore because the real arguments are lost in the hysteria. I believe that traditional, western values are very important. They are what brought us to the promised land we are currently in - It was our colonialism and christian morals that allowed our society to blossom. I'm not going to budge on that. Now, I do want to receive good criticism from you and to improve my viewpoint, but the problem is that criticism often devolves on the part of the liberals to claims of being a racist, homophobe, transphobe, or xenophobe; that I'm some redneck who's uneducated and does not hold a valid opinion. That's why I'm worried.

Communism worked by throwing anyone "against the state" into gulags, and against the state was a very low bar to pass. You basically had to have an uncommon or "off limits" opinion, which is what most all republicans have from the perspective of a progressive. Taken to the limit, perhaps this means that no republicans are allowed to get jobs at tech companies, they are unanimously attacked in the media, and slowly a mono-narrative emerges: Welcome immigrants, don't be straight, never express your innate male energy and aggression, and of course, if you're a woman, never have children and focus solely on your career. My imagination tells me that will happen, because the flame of that ideology has been lit and it is hard to snuff it out when the people confronted with it all hold tech jobs that they will lose if they speak out.

Now I wish that you and I could have a real discussion about this because I know I haven't adequately addressed your central points, and I know my viewpoint is terribly flawed. But I think that shit gets fucked up a lot faster and a lot harder than any of us think, especially the rich ones of us in the bay.

Good luck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This has been asked a few times but never fully answered, can someone explain why this vote in particular is a problem? I understand net neutrality and I am all for it, but there was considerable public doubt before reclassification that this was the proper way to go about it. It also doesn't seem like the internet regulatory state of pre-2015 was a disaster. Would we better off focusing our efforts on increasing competition among ISPs? The major problem in all the pre-2015 net neutrality issues was that people often did not have any other ISP to use if their current ISP introduced a policy that was anti- consumer.

<comment><USER30> Except it was a disaster. The only reason the rule got put into place was because Verizon was found to be throttling Netflix. There's no reason to suspect they won't go back to it as soon as they can.

<comment><USER31> > The only reason the rule got put into place was because Verizon was found to > be throttling Netflix.

No that's inaccurate. Title II reclassification happened in 2015. Verizon Netflix "throttling" (controversial what actually happened there) happened in 2017.

<comment><USER32> No, your reply is innacurate: [https://www.extremetech.com/g00/computing/186576-verizon- cau...](https://www.extremetech.com/g00/computing/186576-verizon-caught- throttling-netflix-traffic-even-after-its-pays-for-more- bandwidth?i10c.encReferrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8%3D&i10c.ua=1)

<comment><USER31> Edit: I'm having multiple people reply with basically the same thing which is: look here's what happened in 2014. I'm just going to reply to all of you here:

What happened in 2014 was not throttling in the last mile, which is what the 2015 Title II re-classification protects against, so this would've been legal even without the repeal (and more importantly did not meaningfully contribute to Title II classification, like parent is implying). What happened in 2017 probably wasn't either, but could more reasonably be construed that way because it was all happening inside of Verizon's network.

The Netflix Verizon case illustrates what makes Net Neutrality law so difficult to describe in technical terms. Verizon was not slowing down netflix packets, netflix was so big that it fully saturated multiple links. You can argue about what this implies for the peering agreements that are setup, but regardless this area is simply not something that net neutrality covers. Net neutrality says the last mile needs to treat all content it receives the same way. If the congestion is further up the network, NN has nothing to do with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Net neutrality was a band-aid from the start for a larger problem that was unaddressed. ISP's, big telecom, etc. are/were committing acts that are illegal under existing law. For example, they were blocking certain sites/services that were competing with their own. That's a clear cut felony of restraint of trade. And possible other felonies related to monopolistic and anti-competitive practices.

The correct solution to this was to put the people responsible for approving those actions in jail for those crimes. But we didn't do that. Instead, we got net neutrality. The Rule of Law continues to be ignored in the US and with net neutrality the offending companies were simply forced to wine and dine us with a fancy dinner before deciding to fuck us whenever they wanted.

</comment><comment><USER34> Pai says he is "helping consumers and promoting competition".

Unfortunately, half of the states have laws and regulations that hamper efforts of local governments to build out municipal broadband [1] to take their own broadband access into their hands.

Republican politicians are often [2][3] at the forefront of these state bans, despite citizens of all political leanings in favor of localities being allowed to do this [4][5].

[1] [https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband- roadbloc...](https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks- by-state/) [2] [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/another-state- la...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/another-state-lawmaker-has- proposed-banning-municipal-broadband-networks/) [2] [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/another-state- la...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/another-state-lawmaker-has- proposed-banning-municipal-broadband-networks/) [3] [https://www.fischer.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/81c82846-...](https://www.fischer.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/81c82846-aa7c-42fe- be4d-11b0f9527db0/12.11.15-letter-to-fcc-chairman-wheeler-on-municipal- broadband-final.pdf) [4] [https://muninetworks.org/content/pew-survey-reveals- overwhel...](https://muninetworks.org/content/pew-survey-reveals-overwhelming- support-local-authority) [5] [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact- tank/2017/04/10/americans-ha...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact- tank/2017/04/10/americans-have-mixed-views-on-policies-encouraging-broadband- adoption/)

</comment><comment><USER35> Here are the salient quotes from the repeal which, I think, indicate the tech reaction to it might be overblown and might be "encouraged" by big tech players who aren't doing this for altruistic reasons. The key here is that the repeal allows the FTC to regulate things, and it's better at breaking monopolistic practices. (I'm still not sold on the argument that this will push innovation, though.)

> 500-504 The FTC's unfair-and-deceptive-practices authority "prohibits > companies from selling consumers one product or service but providing them > something different," which makes voluntary commitments enforceable. The FTC > also requires the "disclos[ur]e [of] material information if not disclosing > it would mislead the consumer," so if an ISP "failed to disclose blocking, > throttling, or other practices that would matter to a reasonable consumer, > the FTC's deception authority would apply."

> 507-508 Many of the largest ISPs (Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, Cox, Frontier, > etc.) have committed in this proceeding not to block or throttle legal > content. These commitments can be enforced by the FTC under Section 5, > protecting consumers without imposing public-utility regulation on ISPs.

> Invokes Sherman Antitrust acts

FCC also reserves the right to return to Title II classification, which AT&T tried to block in this:

> 176\. We also reject AT&T's assertion that the Commission should > conditionally forbear from all Title II regulations as a preventive measure > to address the contingency that a future Commission might seek to reinstate > the Title II Order.647 Although AT&T explains that "conditional forbearance > would provide an extra level of insurance against the contingency that a > future, politically motivated Commission might try to reinstate a 'common > carrier' classification [2015 Net Neutrality Regulations],"648 we see no > need to address the complicated question of prophylactic forbearance and > find such extraordinary measures [are] unnecessary.

Edit: the vote also keeps the government from classifying the internet as a public utility. I think that's a good thing because the govt could otherwise step in and "regulate" content it doesn't agree with.

<comment> murph-almighty I'm going to bite- aside from AT&T and Time Warner, when is the last time the FTC has taken a pro-consumer action related to trusts?

<comment><USER35> I'm not very familiar with their history, honestly. But aren't you excluding two very good examples? Abstractly, I consider their effectiveness as separate from whether this should be under their purview. If they're ineffective, they should be fixed instead of having other agencies subsume their responsibilities.

<comment> murph-almighty I'm actually referring to one example. The reason why I don't count it is because it looks a LOT like it's being blocked for partisan reasons, rather than concerns about an actual monopoly. TWC owns CNN and the federal government wants them to divest it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Now, to wait for the EFF and friends to sue.

From what I've read, it seems like they've got some pretty good arguments against the FCC, so hopefully something good will come of that.

</comment><comment><USER37> It is time to make the Internet a utility. Unfortunately, it wont happen until we get Democrats back into the Senate and House.

<comment><USER38> Democrats had a chance to when they controlled both, and they didn't. This problem may not be as partisan as you think..

<comment><USER39> Democrats controlled both for a very short amount of time. Al Franken was part of their majority but had his membership delayed by a recount. Ted Kennedy then died and his seat went to a Republican. They never actually had a true supermajority.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm curious how this could impact the cryptocurrency space. If the government is effectively showing willingness to hand the Internet over to moneyed interests, does that damage the assumption that the Internet is a failsafe medium for cryptocurrency networks to operate? Should we also fear the banks using similar leverage to protect their interests if it looks like cryptocurrencies stand a reasonable chance of circumventing their oligopoly?

Anybody counting on the Internet for their disruptive future plans should hear this message loud and clear.

<comment><USER41> Check out Nick Szabo and Elaine Ou's talk from Scaling Bitcoin about broadcasting Bitcoin blocks over shortwave radio.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkYXPJMqBNk&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkYXPJMqBNk&feature=youtu.be&t=1h22m55s)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I hope all the loud voices that are against this move have codified their predictions in a way that they can look back and see if they were accurate.

<comment><USER43> Here is my prediction: they will begin slowly, but eventually ISP's will be priortizing the traffic of their shitty versions of various internet services (youtube.com, DropCam, etc...)... This will impact small new businesses the worst because large entities will be able to afford to pay... So, we'll just have less new internet startups... Will be quite hard to quantify.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Some bad policy there from the FCC. The best outcome now would be if Google + Facebook + AWS, etc partnered and started charging domestic ISPs a price to access their content. Amazon is the elephant here because they can introduce a clause in the AWS agreement giving themselves the power to negotiate like this.

If they did it now, at the outset of this policy, it would be hard for ISPs to claim "antitrust" since the four horsemen would effectively be protecting smaller websites.

The alternative is the charge going the other way, with ISPs gaining the power to slice and dice the internet up, with small websites possibly having to pay more than one ISP.

</comment><comment><USER45> Can someone clarify this for me? Perhaps my assumptions are incorrect:

> 1\. Bandwidth is limited

> 2\. Real-time streaming services, such as video, consume much more bandwidth > (by sending more packets through the pipeline) than non-streaming services

> 3\. Net neutrality guarantees that each packet is delivered with the same > priority

Say Netflix takes up 20% of the bandwidth through its streaming services - each packet must have the same priority as any Netflix or non-Netflix packet. That leaves 80% for everyone else.

People begin streaming more Netflix and it now takes up 40% of the bandwidth. This means 60% for everyone else - fewer of their non-Netflix packets are making it into the pipeline. This means their download speeds slow down.

ISPs can either (1) increase bandwidth in order to increase the amount of non- Netflix packets get through, (2) throttle Netflix or (3) neither increase bandwidth nor throttle Netflix, resulting in non-Netflix content slowing down.

Is my analysis incorrect here? Perhaps I am missing something obvious?

To me, it looks like Net Neutrality is (3). In this case, streaming services (and those consuming them) get a free ride to due to the rule mandating that packets must be delivered at the same time (so you benefit if you simply stuff the channel with a ton of your packets, a la Netflix). It would also make sense why Big Tech would support this (they receive the benefit), while Big Telecom would oppose this (they incur the costs). In an economic sense this would seem to be an inefficient market (as regulation tends to do).

However there are always noble reasons behind regulation (even if they are not implemented properly). I don't see (2) as particularly bad in an economic sense, but because these telecoms are notoriously anti-competitive, perhaps the ideal of a competitive market goes out the door?

Would greatly appreciate if anyone could clarify.

<comment><USER46> A. The rule isn't that packets must be delivered at the same time, the rule is that you can't shape based on source (but you CAN shape based on other things - so, you can prioritize VoIP for example). Basically it means the telecoms can't favor their own streaming services over Netflix. B. The clients are literally paying the telecoms in order to get access to Netflix. That's what they use their internet connection for, that's what they pay the monthly bill for. Why shouldn't they be able to stream?

<comment><USER47> I don't know about the specific rules in the US. But in Eurpean hacker circles when talking about net neutrality the strong definition is used. Meaning the provider should not be allowed to change quality at all.

Some think it would be fine as long as the user indicates the quality level he wants, others are against it completely.

There have been a number of debates of the years, at the Chaos Communication Congress for example.

<comment><USER48> In the US, under the OIO/Title II, an ISP could do basic network management (e.g. blocking ddos attacks, holding people to the bandwidth limits they paid for) and basic QoS, though I'm not exactly sure how that was defined or implemented.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Would anything stop the next administration from reinstating net neutrality?

<comment><USER50> It wouldn't, but then what would stop the administration after that from repealing the protections again?

Are going to have to take up this fight every four years?

<comment><USER51> the alternative means accepting that net neutrality is dead, so... yes.

<comment><USER52> The alternative is government power realizing that limiting internet access under the guise of free markets is a great a censorship and control tool, and getting used to that and never doing anything about it regardless of who is in power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> My prediction: One of the first actions ISPs will take will be to block ads from specific DNS names and IP addresses. Opposition to this will be fairly limited since nobody likes ads, but after the precedent is set they'll then allow ad providers who pay a toll to the ISP, and from there it'll spread to blocking/throttling of other content.

A couple years ago there was an ISP in the Caribbean who did something similar for Google and Facebook ads: [https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151001/06351732404/isp-a...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151001/06351732404/isp- announces-blocking-all-facebook-google-ads-until-companies-pay-troll- toll.shtml)

</comment><comment><USER54> Net neutrality is the solution to a sub problem. Content companies having a monopoly on the last mile. We should really be pushing for structural separation and ownership rules of communications infrastructure, which I suppose is the end game of net neutrality anyways.

Like roads, it doesn't necessarily make sense to have competition in the last mile space, two fibers/cables/etc running to the same dwelling. New Zealand and Australia have created infrastructure companies for creating a whole sale last mile network. Like deregulated electric or gas, the infrastructure provider is responsible for handling the physical connection while service provider provides the actual service over the infrastructure. In the case of internet in Australia, the NBN provides the fiber connection and the ISP provides network connectivity. It is even possible to have two ISPs over the single fiber.

Got a terrible ISP. Churn and burn. However, if all the ISPs are terrible, then you probably still need net neutrality.

Really, you need both. Structural separation, so at least there is some choice. Net neutrality rules, so companies can't monetize their customer.

Disclaimer: Australia's NBN is a bit of a mess due to politics, but New Zealand did it right with UFB.

<comment><USER55> > We should really be pushing for structural separation and ownership rules of > communications infrastructure, which I suppose is the end game of net > neutrality anyways.

Right: eliminating the synergies between owning content and owning ISPs makes it so there is little reason for a firm to want to be both an ISP and a content provider; it won't instantly cause existing combined entities to split up, but firms seeking to concentrate on lines of business with natural synergies will eventually head that way.

<comment><USER54> Well said, to that point we should at least be disincentivizing the combination of content and ISP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Ben Thompson who writes Stratechery, which is often posted here, had a piece on Net Neutrality a few weeks ago which was quite controversial. Thompson is pro neutrality, but anti-title II.

[https://stratechery.com/2017/pro-neutrality-anti-title- ii/](https://stratechery.com/2017/pro-neutrality-anti-title-ii/)

Because that article was so controversial, he wrote an update as well:

[https://stratechery.com/2017/light-touch-cable-and-dsl- the-b...](https://stratechery.com/2017/light-touch-cable-and-dsl-the- broadband-tradeoff-the-importance-of-antitrust/)

Pai was on Marketplace Tech before the vote and specifically mentioned Thompson as for Pai's stance.

marketplace tech with molly wood; 12/13/2017: Ajit Pai on what his internet will look like

[https://overcast.fm/+F6tgDywN0](https://overcast.fm/+F6tgDywN0)

I thought it was fascinating that Pai cited Thompson by name.

</comment><comment><USER18> Friendly reminder that economists surveyed are far more likely to be for paid prioritization than against

[http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/net-neutrality- ii](http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/net-neutrality-ii)

<comment><USER57> In a fully capitalist market for broadband, I would indeed feel net enforced neutrality is not quite as necessary and would agree with the pro-market economist comments more. Generally speaking, I would expect that consumers could have a choice between various tiers and qualities of service. I'm fairly sure a "net neutrality" type tier would be one of the options here (there's enough for demand for it.)

The current marketplace is a different story. In many places in America, Internet service is a defacto monopoly. And the current legal landscape is anti-competitive and protects the big players. States can't experiment with their own net neutrality policies [1]; heck, legislation is in place in many states to defacto _prevent_ municipal broadband alternatives [2]. And even with private players like Google Fiber, the "big players" show every willingness to use nuisance lawsuits in attempt to delay that pesky capitalist competition from coming into play. [3]

I did notice that a lot of the comments in that survey of economists brought up both the anti-competitive nature of the current broadband market, as well as the worry about vertical integration (which also is a monopoly concern). So it's not like they aren't aware of some of the strongest reasons (MHO) for needing net neutrality style regulations at the moment.

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/fcc-will-also- or...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/fcc-will-also-order-states- to-scrap-plans-for-their-own-net-neutrality-laws/) [2] [https://www.freepress.net/sites/default/files/resources/brie...](https://www.freepress.net/sites/default/files/resources/brief_broadband.pdf) [3] [https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20171101/10474538530/att-b...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20171101/10474538530/att- backs-off-nuisance-lawsuit-intended-to-hamstring-broadband-competitors-like- google-fiber.shtml)

<comment><USER47> Exactly. So many people don't get that. Really 'net neutrality' is sort of the wrong battle. I want to be able to write soft real time application on the internet.

You are right, the market economist are basically just misinformed about the structure of the market. Most of them are not actually people that know much about the internet or work in that space specifically.

My attempt at a solution is to equate packets with real live postal services. The postal service is not allowed to open your packets but they are allowed to look at the stamp. This is how the IP protocol was designed to work, and it would work, but that requires a change in how IP do pricing and so on and so on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Your public lands? Under attack. Your Internet? Under attack. Your government funding? Under attack. What do you get? Nothing. Prepare to get f$cked over by your friendly republican majority.

<comment><USER59> Accurate. It's bizarre that a large segment of the country considers these things "differences of opinions" or merely politics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I believe this is the Stratechery article Pai quoted and used for justification of the rollback.

[https://stratechery.com/2017/pro-neutrality-anti-title- ii/](https://stratechery.com/2017/pro-neutrality-anti-title-ii/)

</comment><comment><USER61> As I've previously said: for people that believe Pai acted according to good faith, are you willing to bet that, as soon as he is legally allowed to do so, Pai won't be given a VP-level sinecure at Verizon or Comcast?

</comment><comment><USER62> Did anyone really think that public outcry or "blacking out" the web would sway this administration?

We have to get Congress to pass that law:

[https://www.wired.com/story/after-fcc-vote-net-neutrality- fi...](https://www.wired.com/story/after-fcc-vote-net-neutrality-fight-moves- to-courts-congress/amp)

</comment><comment><USER63> Can states enact their own Net Neutrality rules? If so, is there any likelihood of it happening in places like NY or CA?

<comment><USER64> I was thinking the same thing. If they can then this doesn't seem to as big of a deal as I originally thought.

They can enforce NN which will ensure that entrepreneurship on the internet flourishes in those states, which will encourage more entrepreneurial Americans to move there, which will make them more prosperous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> From my perspective, the positive to this is that it will incentivize tech giants to accelerate the development of the web platform (WebRTC, WebGL, Web Assembly, Web Torrent and the like) as stuffing everything in HTTP and using encryption will protect them from the dirty blocking of services, and will allow them to focus their efforts on fighting throttling. For this reason, I hope Comcast and others will scare the hell out of them and do some big time media-covered dirty throttling.

I can already see for-a-better-web.org where Apple, Microsoft, Google and others explain why they have finally decided to move their ass and get serious about implementing the modern web in their browsers. With their level of funding, the time all of this is taking is ridiculous. When Netflix and YouTube get their first bill from tier 1 providers, Web Torrent and libtorrent will receive a pull request within a week and chrome will be patched overnight.

I do not think that the small guy will be hit by these rules, mostly because I think that by the time it comes to that, politics will have changed. The end result will be that everybody will benefit. Implementing the modern web seriously is the one thing that web giants can do to protect themselves, as it would enable a fully decentralized web. The difference between that and NN is that the modern web would actually help the small guy by making it easy to for example start a decentralized YouTube. So it's easier to cry fool on NN, and look like you're concerned about the small guy when in reality you too are concerned about protecting your interests in the most convenient way possible.

Not saying all of this is a conspiracy, just saying tech companies are far from being disarmed, they also have their monopolies they want to protect. Keep it in mind before crying over this vote, or spending money and time on volunteering. Let Tier 1 dudes give them the hardest time of their life and watch. If it gets to hitting the average Joe, do something but my take is it won't have the time to get to that.

<comment><USER66> Sorry but none of what you said really makes sense.

1) Websites work using FQDNs. ISPs can just throttle on that irrespective of whether the traffic is encrypted or not or what web technology is used. VPNs make that traffic somewhat hidden. But we could just see those banned outright unless you purchase a "business plan".

2) Apple, Microsoft, Google etc have already implemented the modern web. They have deviations in certain areas but there isn't some magical technology that makes it "modern".

3) The small guys absolutely will be hit the hardest. You will pay more as Netflix, Hulu etc are asked to pay more and it translates to higher subscription prices. Likewise you are going to see the richness and diversity of the web suffer as it becomes harder for startups to compete.

<comment><USER65> You may disagree but saying that it doesn't make sense is quite a stretch. I will nonetheless address your points :

1) Throttling is addressed by decentralizing the web with technologies such as Web Torrent. If every user is a seeder, there is not much the ISP can do. At the same time, the reason tech giants may not be happy with this approach can be understood, but then it is their choice and ISPs should not be blamed. Once this category of heavy traffic is out of the way, with regards to FQDNs if the traffic is lightweight, then throttling wouldn't make anysense. My guess also is that discriminating based on FQDNs provided lightweight packets would be blatantly anti-competitive. It would be similar to denying access based on race. Also, keep in mind that the only thing ISPs are saying is that companies driving more traffic (namely streaming companies) should pay more. So the chinese-like firewall you described is highly unlikely.

2) Too slowly, you can't make a product based on any of the disruptive features as of today. Support is barely existing and not mature enough. If they really wanted it, it would already be done because while the modern web is progressing slowly, these companies manage to iterate much more complex features on their other products. For example, while we've been struggling with the shitty Internet Explorer, Microsoft managed to literally roll out their very complex enterprise cloud business and scale it from zero to a multi-billion dollars segment. This and the .NET Core stuff. Similar things can be said of Apple and Google. Let's be real. In 2017, we should be at the stage where all the backbones are long done and they are rolling out their implementations of the bluetooth spec.

3) Prices may go up on Netflix, but they'll go down on comcasttube.com (if the service is not outright included in the ISP subscription price). Then they'll go down again on Netflix. Regarding the point on the richness of the web, this is not the way I think it will pan out for the reasons I explained. And part of my point was that, with this regard, tech giants getting real with the modern web has much more to do with it than NN, despite the rational currently being pushed by the valley.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> I think all comments so far have missed the point. So called "net neutrality" is really just a big government handout to Google, Facebook, Amazon and others who want a free ride on the infrastructure built over decades by private company investments of billions of dollars. Putting a chokehold on the telcos has made it so these large companies don't have to make similar investments and put large infrastructure assets on their balance sheets that would depress their stock prices dramatically. If Google, FB, etc. want a free rider internet, they can go pay for it themselves. All of these companies have enough cash on hand to make the investment right now if they wanted to -- it would just make the billionaire ceos a lot less wealthy. I'm surprised nobody has pointed this out yet.

<comment><USER68> Repealing net neutrality _helps_ FANG. They can afford to pay the consumer ISPs rent-seeking. Nascent competitors can't.

That's the future - where Comcast customers get enough bandwidth to stream 360p videos only from sites that pay Comcast for the privilege.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Congress can override the FCC using the Congressional Review Act. Simple majority in each house. The CRA also prohibits the agency from introducing similar regulations ever again. Call your Congressperson! Particularly if your members are on the Energy and Commerce Committee.

</comment><comment><USER70> "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain _unalienable_ Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the _consent_ of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes _destructive_ of these ends, _it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government_ , laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness"

This wasn't a fairy tale.

<comment><USER71> "Two things only the people anxiously desire — bread and circuses."

Or in this case, pizza and Netflix. People will probably start moving once they start visibly messing around with one or the other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Next step lawsuits, hopefully Congress can enact a law to settle the issue once and for all.

</comment><comment><USER73> India now becomes the largest consumer internet market in the world with net neutrality enforced - without China and the US in play.

</comment><comment><USER74> If "nothing is going to change" then why the repeal? What benefit will this repeal actually bring? Either they pushed for this to be petty and undo an Obama era bill or something dastardly is in the pipeline.

<comment><USER59> We have years worth of instances of telcoms already trying to throttle and filter traffic to their choosing. They were blocked each time. So we know exactly what they will do now that they are legally off the hook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> I'm in Thailand right now and everywhere I go I see about 100 wires being routed along each telephone pole. 3 utility lines across the top for power, then the most incoherent mess of cables I've ever seen. One pole I saw had become a literal birds nest. These are fiber and copper lines for individual ISPs. That's what the internet looks like in a free market.

I wish this image of free choice of ISP was used as an argument against repealing net neutrality. Nothing speaks to republicans more than showing them how their decision will fuck up their nice neighborhoods.

<comment><USER76> Except that the incumbent ISPs virtually always have right-of-way agreements with municipalities, granting them exclusive cable rights.

Many states even legally prevent municipally-run lines, which is frankly ridiculous.

Thailand is lawless individualic striving gone out of control.

The USA is monopolistic lobbying and cronyism out of control.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> The argument of NN being a preemptive regulation on hypothetical future problems and thus could lead to unintentionally hurting "good" entities got me thinking why there can't be a new regulation scheme.

I'd call it "conditional enactment".

Basically, let us assume we want to regulate A because of a, b, and c reasons. We'll create a "conditional enactment" where it states the regulation proposal with reasons for regulating and the penalty for not abiding by the regulation. This basically acts as a save point where if some entity eventually does do A and qualifies one of those a,b,and c reasons, we'll continue on from that "save point". Now that we'll have more info, we can talk about what the pros and cons of regulating A are, adjust the regulation terms, adjust the punishment, and vote on the revised proposal. If the regulation passes, that entity is now subject to punishment even if the regulation passed after the entity's action was done. Any other entities that did A before the regulation passed is not subject to punishment.

This would potentially prevent the unintended side effects of the regulation and allow us to evaluate the state of the regulation while still putting the entities that could create harm in check.

</comment><comment><USER78> Does anyone know about grassroots efforts to provide internet in major cities? Any links to follow updates or just for more info?

Being completely ignorant, it should be feasible with so many people in a few square miles.

I would absolutely contribute to an internet coop in Chicago were such a thing to get going. Even just to avoid the annual two hour phone calls to Comcast when I discover they added $100 worth of shit I didn't order to my bill without asking me.

</comment><comment><USER79> It should have been _impossible_ to make a decision on something like this without first solving the fundamental problem of giving users control over data consumption.

Just try visiting a web site or installing an app on your phone, while using a limited-data or pay-per-use plan (such as a typical cell phone plan or international "data roaming"): you will rack up _insane_ costs BEFORE you have any idea how much data was going to be required for what you wanted to do! That's insane!!

There is no practical way to find out how much data an action will take, no regulation of web sites and apps, etc. to force them to invest in minimizing their data footprint, and tools such as content blockers are fought tooth and nail in the name of "revenue" and other such crap.

Ironically, the idea of paying more for an Internet "fast lane" is exactly what companies should have done — to their own employees, investing in R&D to make their sites smaller, faster, with better experiences for everyone. Instead, those same companies will probably shovel the same money or more, except into ISPs and other entities to make their bloated experiences "fast".

</comment><comment><USER80> This seems like a last gasp attempt to tighten the monopoly, and it's doomed to fail. If nothing else, this will set the wheels in motion to bypass the established ISPs altogether, whether it's via node distribution or banking on Musk's satellite network. Or holding out hope that Google will pick up their fiber business again. Whatever happens, it's going to be interesting.

</comment><comment><USER81> Unfortunately telcos have had a great year in power consolidation in spite of everyone's opinions or demands. Representatives in government have represented the ISPs/telcos over individual demands, voting in favor of their bribes over what nearly everyone wants.

Jeff Flake started this destruction in the senate where he pushed through the ISP privacy bill that allows them monopoly power and first rights to users info that they have no choice in excluding. Google/Facebook/Amazon earned your data by giving you a service you wanted, ISPs just default get it first now and you have NO CHOICE in the matter.

Ajit Pai has now handed the keys to the ISPs further in removing title II protections and common carrier status. Net neutrality is now gone.

Underneath all the madness of 2016/2017, telcos/ISPs have been slashing and burning the internet and privacy. They better hope competition is held back for some time because people will not forget this.

ISPs are not a service friendly to consumers who want fair internet or small/medium business that want fair representation in the markets.

<comment><USER47> Satellite internet is coming fast and and from people who want you to hate your local provider and their PR will say 'we will give you free access'. Hope it will work out, the plans SpaceX and OneWeb have announced are pretty crazy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> Call your Congressperson and Senators today and tell them that you want them to enshrine NN into law. And then vote against them next time they're up for re-election if they don't. In the case of your Congressperson, this will be next November.

Phone numbers are here: [https://www.battleforthenet.com/](https://www.battleforthenet.com/)

</comment><comment><USER83> I think the cable guys just awakened the sleeping giant. By making sure they can tighten the screws on Silicon Valley they have spawned out a multitude of startups that will topple them one day. The cable companies make money by making something scarce. They will milk every penny of their investment and give it back to the investors without much reinvesting it back to create cheaper broadband for the masses. Silicon Valley's whole business model is based on cheap access to the internet that's why google Facebook etc is investing so much to connect the third world. I believe they were hedging against net neutrality dying someday. I can't imagine after winning the first battle they took a timeout. The investments in the 3rd world internet may ultimately lead to newer cheaper ways to connect the world. Cabel companies clocks started to run out the day they attacked net neutrality. Let's see how they survive in about 10 years' time.

</comment><comment><USER84> Is there anything that can be done at the protocol level to make the anti-NN goals of the ISPs unfeasible? Would a sudden surge in IPV6 adoption make the databases used to locate and label certain traffic useless? What about at the DNS level? BGP? Perhaps the best way to enforce net neutrality is by forcing the adoption of protocols that ensure it.

</comment><comment><USER85> What I don't get, is how come the advertising industry isn't opposing this?

How are the ad trackers going to track you across the entire internet now if ISPs are going to partition it into packages?

If you don't get the facebook package, or whatever, doesn't that mean that facebook won't get to know all the other sites you visit?

</comment><comment><USER86> This whole discussion is missing one point. Why are FCC members supposed to represent some parties, instead of being independent experts? It's the root of the problem. Instead of objectively addressing the issue, FCC is dominated by dumb partisan politics.

<comment><USER87> How do you expect those independent experts to be chosen? Even then, how do expect these experts to "objectively address" the issue? I don't agree with partisan politics, but the solution isn't demanding independent, magical objectivity, because that doesn't exist, regardless, everyone would claim to have it, the liars and the idiots especially.

If we want better representation of the facts and the People's opinion, we need better representation. The current system lacks nuance and seems to be subject to Elite interests over popular ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> I haven't seen anyone else post anything along these lines, but doesn't this make it legal for the the government to ask/force/pay ISPs to hide sites (e.g. wikileaks, etc)? Maybe that is why politicians didn't really try to stop it?

<comment><USER89> This is one of my biggest medium-to-long-term fears with net neutrality. I doubt that is explicitly in many politician's current game plan, but they will catch on to the possibilities sooner or later. It will start with ISP voluntary censorship of some high-profile clearly controversial sites, probably the Pirate Bay will be the first one to go. Then there will be a gradual creep (not sure what time scale to predict here), and eventually politicians will start reasoning that if ISPs are blocking sites anyway, we might as well order them to block certain others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> Here's my question: why was such a momentous decision decided by a board of five people? A decision that will affect hundreds of millions of people was decided by five people. Isn't that insane? Whatever happened to democracy in America?

<comment><USER91> This is what American voters chose last year.

<comment><USER47> People need to stop pretending that 'the people choice' about everything when they got to vote once. Even that one vote was basically sounded with lots of pre-voting and all sorts of other things.

If you look into the actual political economy of the situation it is quite clear that 'the will of the people' has little to do with the outcome of the political process. That is just a reality.

The fundamental problem is not the alt-right on twitter but the american political system with its layers of Byzantine rules and insane bureaucracies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> What's a person to do if you're generally for the concept of net neutrality (knowing the mendacity of outfits like Comcast), but you're also generally against regulating ISPs like telecoms (knowing the slowness, quantity of bureaucracy, and general incompetence of the federal government when it comes to tech)?

The FCC's Open Internet Order was damn good, and had it survived legal challenge, was one of the better and realistic options (aside from local loop unbundling which is never gonna happen). I think that legal decision was one of the worst ones in recent memory.

</comment><comment><USER93> In case you want to hear both sides of the argument:

[http://exponent.fm/episode-133-two-terrible- options/](http://exponent.fm/episode-133-two-terrible-options/)

</comment><comment><USER94> I don't think any Net Neutrality advocates have yet addressed the fact that last mile ISPs can't find new ways to subsidize broadband roll-outs and upgrades. The only way to pay for it is to charge you more. So while the internet access stays "fair" (which is already questionable at best), you pay more money, and service roll-out continues to be slow and crappy.

Some form of compromise regulation is needed to both retain the fairness of access, but also allow ISPs to find new ways to monetize. But most people don't seem open to talking about this.

</comment><comment><USER95> So can someone explain what this could mean on the consumer side? I've been mostly thinking about it from the producer side and how tech companies will have to pay a premium for fast service to be delivered to users, but I'm seeing the packages and wondering if as a consumer I would have to call up my ISP to add a random site that I want to access to my service. How would like aggregation sites like Reddit or Ycombinator even work then? I dont know enough about what ISP's can and cannot do to answer this question for myself.

</comment><comment><USER96> Could someone at Y Combinator please find a revolutionary ISP startup and add it to the W18 batch?

We got a feature request today: "My next request would be for you to save net neutrality in the U.S. Thanks."

</comment><comment><USER97> Amazingly good news!

The argument that net neutrality protects the little guy, the small startup, etc is backwards. Internet giants like Facebook, Google, Netflix et al. only want net neutrality so that their current business model is protected through government force.

There are plenty of mechanisms in place to keep telcos in check. (e.g. FTC, customer choice).

If we really want to reform Internet policy create more competition in the marketplace by making it easier to start an ISP not harder.

</comment><comment><USER98> Lobbying and money can do anything? American policy makers are more messed-up than I thought. How worst could it get?

Interesting to watch it's impact in US in the long run. At least the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India listened [0]. If not the situation in India would be really bad.

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

</comment><comment><USER99> why everyone thinks ISP will start to sell internet as tiered tv channels? this is not happening and will not happen.

what will, and is happening for the last 3 decades, is that ISP charge to do something they used to beg for: co location of high traffic services.

contente providers, lets pick netflix as an example, uses ton of bandwidth. but they already paid for their uplink. now, customers pay for the downlink. and ISP now see their oversold pipes actually being used (what a surprise). so they beg netflix to pretty please place some edge servers on their data centers so they dont pay the expensive outbound traffic. and netflix gladly did that because that cut latency from 300ms to 2ms for those customers. everyone happy.

then ISPs started to sell that as a feature for the reduced latency. but if nobody bougth, they would still fall back to begging for them to do that for free. and everyone still happy.

now they can outrigth limit how much expensive outbound bandwidth they will spend on netflix content. no matter that the ISP own customers already paid for bandwidth for that service or another. so netflix and all other providers will have to pay a huge premium for colocation (for that great latency reduction feature) or a still high premium simply to not be blocked!

the client will just see that they can't connect to netflix. the isp doesnt even have to warn their own users, because there is nothing they can do. netflix is the one who have to pay up. so they will have to charge more and pass that to ISPs. and that is the ISP end game. they can still be afloat after cable cutters moved to streaming platforms they dont own and operate (which is the likely outcome, since all their attempts are falling flat on their faces)

</comment><comment><USER100> I'm surprised I haven't heard anything along the lines of Ajit being hacked or receiving death threats.

My only hope from this is that as soon as cable companies start their bullshit, people become aware of how this all happened and maybe we can reverse the damage in the long run. I'm also hoping things like Google Fiber get more aggressive or Musk keeps his promise of launching his internet satellite.

</comment><comment><USER101> How often do we see a person from a 3rd world country being installed at the top of an organization with the intent to subvert it? I have seen it happening in at least 3 corporations that tanked a year-two after that. It seems like natives don't want to do dirty work (nobody wants to be Elop), so external ones with a different philosophy and conscience are brought in.

</comment><comment><USER102> How will this actually impact me? I saw one graphic which suggested this may make it cheaper for me to pay for just the services I need.

<comment><USER89> We don't know yet. You might have almost no change, you might find half the internet censored by default.

If ISPs wanted to make it cheaper for you to access a simpler level of services, they could have already done so by offering you lower internet speeds and small data caps. They kept prices high because you were willing to pay them and there wasn't (much) competition. They're not going to give up those profits willingly unless the new pricing plan can make them more money overall. So I wouldn't get too optimistic.

<comment><USER102> Can the ISPs actually censor content? On the other hand, I'm not opposed to censoring some things, like porn.

<comment><USER89> They absolutely have the technical ability, and now they have the legal ability as well. If a page is http, not https, then they can arbitrarily modify the page in transit. Otherwise, they can simply decide not to serve pages from any site they want.

> _On the other hand, I 'm not opposed to censoring some things, like porn._

This is how censorship tends to start. Porn, copyright, and/or terrorism. You are opening yourself and your country up to a world of abuses by those in power once you start letting them censor. (Also, why is it any of your business or mine if other people watch porn? And if it is, the path to change practices we disagree with is through dialogue and education, not authoritarianism.)

<comment><USER102> Porn has horribly messed up our society. Have you been watching the news and all the sex abuse scandals? Plus all the stats regarding broken families, abuse of minors, etc. It's just all bad, and all due to porn. Cutting off porn would fix a whole lot in our society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> Someone help me find better information on this. Regardless of how "good" the NN regulation is, I think it's a very fair point that this is a regulation for a preemptive and hypothetical scenario that had so far not occurred.

Are there enough proof that the scenario isn't hypothetical, and companies have already been doing something unfair?

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands Honestly, I don't care either way.

Even after the NN rules were in place, I saw absolutely no difference in my area (I live in a major metro area in the midwest) and saw no advantage either way. The gloom and doom stuff people talked about prior to NN I never experienced, and post NN being enacted, I didn't experience any of the benefits either.

</comment><comment><USER103> Perhaps this will only spur the global do gooders of the world to come up with better (more permanent) solutions for promoting privacy, free speech and innovation.

As a reader of HN I feel like there is already great work being done here (eg/ lets encrypt).

 _ahem_ pineapple fund, if you are a real thing, maybe you can put something under EFF's tree for xmas?

</comment><comment><USER104> In that article, a quote...

"We are helping consumers and promoting competition," Mr. Pai said in a speech before the vote. "Broadband providers will have more incentive to build networks, especially to underserved areas."

Please, Mr. Pai. Help consumers? That's a lie.

</comment><comment><USER105> Are the big companies really in favor of neutrality? At least in the short mid-term I believe it's more helpful for them to get their silos even more consolidated...

Also... they haven't been super loud for neutrality and this happened. It almost felt as if they did not care.

It's a sad day.

</comment><comment><USER106> Demand for Cisco SCE and similar will explode. These boxes are specifically tailored for per-user traffic management on carrier scale, and can throttle and account traffic per URL per user. Network vendors producing carrier grade equipment should profit.

</comment><comment><USER107> > Ajit Pai, the F.C.C. chairman, said the rollback of the net neutrality rules > would eventually help consumers because broadband providers like AT&T and > Comcast could offer people a wider variety of service options.

Sure, they can. At different paid tiers.

</comment><comment><USER108> Soon more and more people will have access to Facebook & such stuff only, but not the real Internet? It'll get simpler, in the next presidential election in the US, for Trump and Putin to win again, via Facebook propaganda & ads?

</comment><comment><USER109> Will the "new walled internet" have a better user interface than America Online?

</comment><comment><USER110> Heres a thing, I see a lot of comments about starting an indie-ISP of sorts.

Simple question: if the monopolies were finally able to break net neutrality laws, don't you think they can likely introduce some bullshit legislation to kill indie-ISPs?

</comment><comment><USER111> Can't we just interconnect our routers using wifi and deliver the content ourselves? Using our own network. Using a blockchain to deliver p2p data like Ethereum does. I wish we could do that and screw the telecoms.

</comment><comment><USER112> All I have to say is this is no longer a free market society. You can buy whatever you want not excluding popular vote... I can't believe we have come to this, but revolution may be the only way out.

<comment><USER113> Free market means you _can_ buy anything.

<comment><USER112> that may be true, but what do you have to offer as a better alternative?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER114> Comcast is committed to free and open Internet, nothing to worry for now [https://imgur.com/gallery/RPgJf](https://imgur.com/gallery/RPgJf)

<comment><USER115> Archive.org link? I don't trust some random imgur screenshots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER116> Can someone explain if this will affect anyone outside of the US, and how..?

</comment><comment><USER117> If we had Fiber everywhere, would bandwidth arguments still be applicable?

</comment><comment><USER118> It's a lot of hang wringing over nothing. Google, amazon, even Apple and Msft rely on a healthy internet. They represent over 2 trillion market cap. They can easily compete with the telecoms.

<comment><USER89> First, it's not an issue of "competing with" unless they start their own ISPs or, in the case of Google, restart development on their ISP. Water doesn't compete with the pipe. It just hopes the pipe decides not to squeeze.

Second, I doubt many people are crying over Google, Amazon, or someone like Facebook. They already are working on walled gardens and are happy to pay to eliminate competition. They actually don't rely on a healthy (in the sense of open, competitive, or free) internet at all. Small startups and free speech on the other hand does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER119> Most of the time you really only have one ISP to choose from, so it is kind of monopoly already in practice, now with this brain-dead repeal, what will happen then? Don't like this at all.

</comment><comment><USER120> Write to your governor and ask them to propose net neutrality protections at the state level. Text RESIST TO 50409 and you can have your letter written and faxed to them in <2 mins for free.

</comment><comment><USER121> What can I do now to help?

</comment><comment><USER122> Democracy is fundamentally broken, the examples go far and wide accross the globe.

Lobbies are winning from the population and governments don't give a damn about the people who put them in office.

How can we fix it?

</comment><comment><USER123> It may be for the best over time - the innovation that comes from the decision is likely an increment over where we are now - and possibly have wider benefits that just enabling NN.

</comment><comment><USER124> [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DRCPuPPXkAADRML.png:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DRCPuPPXkAADRML.png:large)

</comment><comment><USER125> I don't care too much for politics, but this one hurts. :(

</comment><comment><USER126> Thank god! Thank Heavens! Thank TRAI (Telecom regulatory authority of India)

We specifically opposed tampering net neutrality just this year.

But is it just a matter of time for India to follow suit?

</comment><comment><USER127> So let me get this straight: This (potentially) means that whomever pays the most money to the ISP gets special privilege?

Sounds right in line with how the rest of America works.

</comment><comment><USER127> So let me get this straight: It (potentially) means that whomever pays the most money to the ISP gets special privilege?

Sounds right in line with how the rest of America works.

</comment><comment><USER128> Democracy at its finest!

One minor positive is the requirement for disclosure, but time will tell if this is actually enforced.

As an Australian, I feel a mounting sense of fear that we're next...

</comment><comment><USER129> This is the darkest day of the Internet. We the customers are now accused for not buying better services, instead of being treated equally and anonymously.

</comment><comment><USER130> Can someone explain the rebuttal to/flaws in this article? I'm sure the EFF and many other large organizations wouldn't back NN if it weren't truly a good idea, but then again this article also seems to make some good points.

[http://hustlebear.com/2011/01/05/why-net-neutrality- regulati...](http://hustlebear.com/2011/01/05/why-net-neutrality-regulation- is-the-path-to-ending-net-neutrality/)

<comment><USER131> Interesting read with some interesting points, some make some sense, and I'm all for a fresh look. The article lost me on this quote:

"What we need to understand is that while ISPs aren't currently regulated by the government, they are already severely regulated. Not by government. They are regulated by YOU. You are their customer. You are the boss. You hold the checkbook. ISP companies are regulated by profits. That's right, profit is the regulator. Like every company that is in business for profit, they have to answer to their customers. All successful businesses are constantly sniffing; trying to figure out what customers want. Profit makes them care about you. Customers will only voluntarily hand over money if it's worth it. Right now we have de-facto Net Neutrality, because that's what you want. That's what we all want."

This is the same worn-out saying around "the invisible hand" and "competition will force ISPs to keep net neutrality"

Well, it's not like they never tried... there rules are there for a reason.

I mean, maybe it will work, but if all ISPs start offering "internet fast lanes" and "social package" (and it's not like companies didn't collude before) then the invisible hand will be infeasible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER132> I hope this will make innovators build a new powerful internet that is not dependent on telecos. Trump is not going to like it.

</comment><comment><USER133> >I worked at ISPs, have backbone engineer friends, and candidly: I think this issue is silly. But if it's yours... sigh...

Reqlly? Why?

</comment><comment><USER134> Wow, so the US just gave away the internet to the telco's and providers. Wanna see Netflix, pay, wanna see facebook pay.

</comment><comment><USER135> It's just like they are treating the Internet bandwidth as a tragedy of commons, while it's not.

</comment><comment><USER114> Why are meshnets not popular and why is no one talking about them?

Can we start some discussion about software like cjdns?

</comment><comment><USER136> {Error: please contact your ISP to upgrade to their HN+ service in order to see this premium comment}

</comment><comment><USER95> This is the biggest story of the year. Whoever got to posting this first is now a hacker news god.

</comment><comment><USER137> Now, the US telco market has to prove that it works without these rules. We will see...

</comment><comment><USER138> This is really good because now we can see if all the outrage was justified.

</comment><comment><USER139> Is there any recourse? clever technical workaround? switch to tor network?

<comment><USER139> I'm picturing some kind of euware/(non-mal)ware for personal routers that will route unthrottled traffic on the side in some sort of peer-to-peer manner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER140> Good for The People - bad for Google. Actually those are the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER141> I don't get it. Aren't Republicans for less regulation?

<comment><USER142> They're for less regulation when it benefits them.

They're for more regulation when it benefits them.

It's pretty obvious when you contrast their stance on drug legalization and abortions vs. environmental protection or consumer protection laws.

The Republicans have absolutely no consistent principles or values. Other than "whatever keeps us in power".

</comment></comment><comment><USER143> Can you bypass ISPs with a P2P network such as a mesh network?

</comment><comment><USER144> still don't regret not moving to US as a programmer.

</comment><comment><USER145> A relevant and interesting discussion on net neutrality: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKD- lBrZ_Gg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKD-lBrZ_Gg)

</comment><comment><USER146> Sorry, I'm calling bullshit on this vote.

</comment><comment><USER147> does this mean anything yet? i mean with all the lawsuits that will be incoming. can cable companies start their bullshit?

</comment><comment><USER148> Corrupt as hell.

</comment><comment><USER149> Is anyone working on market based routing over mesh networks with crypto currencies? Would that have been disallowed under the network neutrality rules?

<comment><USER150> No, net neutrality just makes it so ISPs can't throttle/block/charge-extra-for particular websites, like they do in Portugal: [https://twitter.com/RoKhanna/status/923701871092441088](https://twitter.com/RoKhanna/status/923701871092441088)

<comment><USER149> I don't think the regulation was limited to http traffic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER151> In 24 hours no one will be thinking about this and literally nothing will happen, despite the absolute mouth-foaming hysteria we're seeing today.

<comment><USER47> I think the long term price structures will get worse, and ISP will do even more stupid shit like blocking torrents, opening up https connections.

But of course you are right that for the majority of people nothing will change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER152> As European bystander this is amazing and scary. Does anyone have any insights if/what this means for trans-atlantic traffic?

</comment><comment><USER153> Inb4 rip that tmobile startup thing

</comment><comment><USER154> That's a great country

</comment><comment><USER155> Where was Google and Facebook.. they did nothing vs. them previously taking action against SOPA.

</comment><comment><USER156> R.I.P. innovative America, everything there is dying for people to innovate :-(

<comment><USER157> Unless of course you mean innovative new ways of rent-seeking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER158> Congrats I guess.

</comment><comment><USER159> So This Is How Liberty Dies... With Thunderous Applause

</comment><comment><USER160> wow, that's a lot of comments. (:

</comment><comment><USER161> Good riddance.

</comment><comment><USER162> What a joke

</comment><comment><USER163> SAD.....

</comment><comment><USER164> GG

</comment><comment><USER165> there should be black bar for this.

</comment><comment><USER166> This is proof positive that the current FCC commission has ignored the will of the voters on this issue.

Support for Net Neutrality was overwhelming and bi-partisan, yet Ajit Pai just plowed forward without consideration for what the citizens demanded.

This is government at its worst.

<comment><USER18> It's funny, the FCC's mandate isn't to poll the public and do whatever most of them want. Strange how people seem to think it's a numbers game, at least when they feel the numbers are on their side

<comment><USER167> Logician and Philosopher Raymond Smullyan had a story about this in one of his books. He had gone on a trip with a woman with a little girl. The adults wanted to eat at colorful local cafes, while the girl wanted to eat at McDonalds. He suggested that they vote, and the little girl replied, "That's no fair. I'd lose!"

Our republic isn't designed just to do what the people want. It's intentionally designed so that good people can sometimes do something unpopular in the public interest. For this to work, it's incumbent on the voting public to elect good people.

<comment><USER168> Ajit Pai is an appointee, not an elected official.

<comment><USER169> Appointed by a candidate who lost by 3 million votes

<comment><USER170> > Appointed by a candidate who lost by 3 million votes

Obama won by ~5 million and ~10 million votes in 2012 and 2008, respectively.

<comment><USER169> Designated as Chairman by Donald Trump - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajit_Pai](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajit_Pai)

Obama Designated Tom Wheeler chairman, and he put in place the regulations that Pai dismantled today - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Wheeler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Wheeler)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER171> This has made me feel pretty damn powerless, as pretty much every site/person of significance has stated their opposition to such a repeal, and yet they went through it anyway. Just a gut feeling that our democracy isn't working properly when such a loud and clear, great majority of the population messaging is completely ignored.

<comment> rkuykendall-com > our democracy isn't working properly

Democracy doesn't work through public declarations, it works through elections. One year ago, the states chose Donald Trump as president, knowing they he would end Net Neutrality [1]. If a population wants to send a different message, they must do it in the next election [2].

[1] [https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/53260835850816716...](https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/532608358508167168) [2] [https://swingleft.org/](https://swingleft.org/)

<comment><USER172> > One year ago, the states chose Donald Trump as president, knowing they he > would end Net Neutrality

More charitably, they chose Donald Trump on the suspicion that he would do "better" than Hillary Clinton on: abortion, immigration, the economy, leading in "the culture wars", and maybe a few other issues. Net neutrality was a litmus test for basically nobody.

<comment><USER173> > Net neutrality was a litmus test for basically nobody

At that time, sure. Time will tell whether electing an extremist candidate was a good idea or not.

Losing in deep red Alabama isn't a good sign.

<comment><USER174> I think you're looking for the term populist, not extremist.

<comment><USER172> Agreed. "extremist" implies some sort of ideology. If Trump has one of those, he hasn't articulated it yet.

<comment><USER173> > Agreed. "extremist" implies some sort of ideology. If Trump has one of > those, he hasn't articulated it yet.

Are you serious? Every politician is an ideologue. It's why we elect one over another. We agree with one's idea about policies over another's.

The only people who we expect to divorce themselves from ideologies are judges, who are there to _interpret_ the law, not make it.

<comment><USER172> I'm not sure the electorate sees elections the same way.

I think most of them are true Republicans in the sense that they want to elect people they think are trustworthy and then let them make decisions as their proxy. In that case, a candidate _can_ have policies and platforms to convince people to let her be their proxy, but she doesn't _need_ them. She could just have a "trust me, I'll make the right decision" pitch.

Besides, if Trump is an ideologue, what is that ideology? At best it's a new (or at least renewed) nativist spin on identity politics. That's not an ideology; that's a team.

<comment><USER173> > Besides, if Trump is an ideologue, what is that ideology?

 _Republicanism_ is an ideology. Trump's is clearly farther right than previously elected R presidents.

<comment><USER172> I'll respectfully disagree. Trump doesn't really care about limited government, balanced budgets, traditional values, federalism, reducing abortion, market-based solutions to societal problems, etc.

He _does_ have a laundry list of issues he tweets about, a subset of which he picks at with executive orders (which, itself, is unconservative) but that seems more like raw appeasement of his political base than anything coherent (or even consistent!).

There are a few exceptions, I guess. He's, at least in rhetoric, for a strong military. Though we're nowhere near a "Trump doctrine" that proposes a coherent framework for that desire. It's, again, more of an id-driven move than anything rational.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER175> It's not democratic. It's republican. Remember that America is a republic, not a democracy. Each state has 2 senators/electoral votes because this country was founded as the United States. It was supposed to be more of a coalition of states united under a federal government, than a single nation.

Also, California has a huge population with tons of representatives, and basically every elected official is democratic. I don't think you should complain.

<comment><USER176> > Remember that America is a republic, not a democracy

Republic. Aka, Res Publica. "Thing of the people". A form of government where all political power originates with the people, directly or indirectly.

Democracy. Demos Kratia. "Rule by the people". A form of government where all political power originates with the people, directly or indirectly.

These two terms are not about how decisions are made. They do not discuss who elects whom, and how, or if everything is directly chosen. They exist to differentiate the systems from previous feudalistic rule, where the power came from the fact that the leader had the power to protect you from other leaders (the power was justified through the strength), and from monarchies (including both earlier ones, e.g. the ancient egyptian dynasties, and later ones, e.g. french absolutism – both justifying their power as being chosen by a god, or descended from one).

Now, the US itself has a governmental form called "Representative democracy", meaning that all choices are made by representatives, chosen by the population, and whose power comes from the people, who have to respond to the people, and who have to represent the will of the people.

Also, what you're thinking of is the question between direct nation-wide rule, or a federal rule.

Germany is a federal republic, and also representative democracy. Yet it manages to solve this exact issue – by electing the first chamber of parliament, the Bundestag, entirely with MMP, meaning it is chosen independent of states, and the second chamber of parliament, the Bundesrat, represents each state.

This guarantees that all decisions have to be backed by > 50% of states, and > 50% of population. This guarantees both the democratic principle, that power has to come from all the people, and also the federal principle, ensuring that states also have power.

TL;DR: You've misrepresented everything you've said, and your argument isn't even conclusive. You can have a more representative system without losing the power granted to the states, e.g. the German system.

<comment><USER177> Perhaps you should spend a little of time reading about the US form of government because what you described is very similar to the purpose of the House and the Senate. Barring gerrymandering issues, the house members are populous elected representatives with each state given weight based on its population. Then each state gets 2 senate seats which are elected within the states by popularity as well.

Tldr; you've essentially described how the law making arm of the US is already elected and have pretended it's something new.

<comment><USER24> > _Perhaps you should spend a little of time reading_

Please don't take swipes like that in HN comments.

<comment><USER177> I replied to a comment that said this:

>You've misrepresented everything you've said, and your argument isn't even conclusive

Why the double standard?

<comment><USER24> There's no double standard, just randomness. We don't come close to seeing everything. When a bad post hasn't been moderated, the likeliest explanation is simply that we haven't seen it yet.

We've scolded kuschku plenty of times for breaking the guidelines in the past, and you're quite right that he did so there with that uncharitable swipe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER178> Washington state is fighting it:

[https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/washington-gov- jay...](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/washington-gov-jay-inslee- promises-state-action-on-net-neutrality-protections/)

 _Washington state will act under our own authority and under our own laws and under our own jurisdiction to protect the very important measure of net neutrality for all Washington citizens," he said. "We are not powerless._

<comment><USER40> It'll be interesting to see how that goes, whether other progressive states adopt similar rules, and whether we end up for some time in a country where some states are much more attractive to internet users and startups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER179> I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

<comment><USER180> Oh man, this analogy could be carried much further.

</comment></comment><comment><USER181> My mother lives in a rural part of Kentucky. While staying with her over the summer, I visited the office of the local DSL broadband provider, 'Brandenburg Telephone' and it was like a step back in time. This is one of the areas Comcast deemed unworthy of serving and the result is very affordable max 5mbps internet with top notch customer service.

I wonder how this region will be affected. Anyone have predictions?

</comment><comment><USER182> [https://infostormer.com/fcc-ends-net-neutrality-despite- secu...](https://infostormer.com/fcc-ends-net-neutrality-despite-security- threat/)

</comment><comment><USER181> When I first moved to Portland, Oregon about 10 years ago, the inner sections of the city has free city-wide wireless. I was broke and in school, but still basking in what I believed the future would be like. 2 years later, they pulled the plug so I had to get a Comcast account and forgo having internet at my art studio. And now this.

</comment><comment> brian-armstrong If you voted for Trump, this one's on you.

<comment><USER31> Please don't bring divisive politics into HN. Fwiw Ajit Pai was appointed to the FCC by Obama not Trump.

<comment><USER55> Pai was appointed by Obama and confirmed by the Senate as a Republican under law limiting the number of members of one party to a bare majority and a long- standing, strong tradition that the President defer to the leadership of the other party in the Senate in appointing members filling the seats which must be filled by members not of the President's party. (Which Trump slow followed when renominating Democratic former commissioner Rosenworcel.) [0]

Blaming Obama for Pai being on the committee, rather than the Republican Party, is like blaming Elizabeth II for acts of the British Government rather than the parliamentary majority party.

OTOH, where no such legal or traditional constraint limited his choices, Trump selected Pai as FCC Chair, so blaming Trump for Pai's current position and his reasonably direct endorsement of Pai's long-overt goals for the FCC is appropriate.

[0] [https://www.google.com/amp/s/arstechnica.com/tech- policy/201...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/arstechnica.com/tech- policy/2017/06/trump-to-nominate-democrat-jessica-rosenworcel-for-empty-slot- at-fcc/%3famp=1)

<comment><USER31> Look I understand what you're saying, but it's complicated. Obama chose to respect a tradition and he did so at the cost of allowing anti-NN people into the FCC. He could've found a republican that was pro-NN, but he didn't. You can argue about what tradition dictated, but as the president I think you have to take some responsibility for the choices being made, even if they are hard ones. Obama broke a lot of traditions and he suffered for it, especially in his first term, so I'm not saying this is a simple decision, or one that would've cost a reasonable amount of political capital, but he did have the actual, legal choice, and he did make it. This enabled Trump to select Pai as chair. So without Obama's decision Pai would not be chair either. It's ComplicatedTM.

<comment><USER183> > He could've found a republican that was pro-NN, but he didn't.

Any such appointee would not have been confirmed and thus would have been a waste of time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER184> Ben Shapiro Breaks down net neutrality.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBrZ_CPgm7o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBrZ_CPgm7o)

<comment><USER185> And he is wrong with his break down, but what else is new.

</comment></comment><comment><USER186> Awesome. I really appreciate how professional Ajit Pai has been through all the internet hate. Finally a step in the right direction for government policy.

</comment><comment><USER187> American will no longer be a place of innovation. Another country will have to lead the world now

<comment><USER188> Right, it'll go back to being what it was before 2015 when net neutrality was instituted. The dread is unrelatable.

<comment><USER189> Correct, a place where innovative companies like Netflix were blocked and throttled by ISPs due to conflicts with their legacy business models.

I don't know how anyone could honestly say that taking away an important consumer protection is going to help innovation, outside of innovative new billing practices by ISPs.

<comment><USER190> This is OT but I don't see the innovation of Netflix. It's TV on the Internet. They were actually a more innovative, or at least weirder, business when they were mailing DVDs around.

It's like Russ Hanneman (Mark Cuban, right?) on Silicon Valley. _We can take this thing called the "radio" and put it on this new thing called the "Internet"_. Not as mind blowing as he believes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER191> Comcast board meeting (RIGHT NOW): "First things first, how do we charge more for netflix streaming."

<comment><USER192> They're free to do so; companies exist to make money. Cable internet carriers probably will attempt something like this.

The next thing that will happen is, when Comcast goes too far, another provider (cable? wireless carrier? satellite broadband? something new from a startup?) disrupts the market by offering an alternative to Comcasts' egregious policies. Comcast loses subscribers and is monetarily forced to be more consumer-friendly.

<comment><USER193> Hand waving and saying the market will correct itself (somehow? someway? someday?) is unhelpful.

<comment><USER192> Not someway, somehow. I gave a concrete example of how it will correct itself.

If we wish to talk about hand waving, consider all the "the internet is going to blow up!" hysteria[0] going on right now from the pro-NN side.

[0]: [https://twitter.com/thereaIbanksy/status/940989790677291010](https://twitter.com/thereaIbanksy/status/940989790677291010)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER194> Europe has it's problems, but I don't regret moving to London. Not one bit. The innovation here is real and tangible, by and large unencumbered by this kind of crap.

<comment><USER15> I really should get the paperwork going for my wife's Italian citizenship, the US national archive sent me an un-certified copy of her grandfathers naturalization papers even though I requested a certified copy and I've been too lazy to try again.

Anyone have advice on tech hotspots in the EU that are willing to put up with English-speaking engineers? I've thought about Finland a couple times, good schools for my daughter, ample hunting and fishing opportunities and from what I can tell pretty good broadband infrastructure.

<comment><USER195> In no particular order: Berlin, Lisbon, London, Paris (might need a little bit of French), Amsterdam, Dublin.

Each one has different pros/cons depending on whats important to you: type of work, money, work/life balance. All of them are good (and, aside from London soon, easy to move between once you're resident in Europe or here on a long visa).

<comment><USER15> > In no particular order: Berlin, Lisbon, London, Paris (might need a little > bit of French), Amsterdam, Dublin.

Thanks, I'll have to take a look. Still debating whether I'd want to move across the pond from my family, especially with a 5 year old in tow - but I've thought about moving to the EU for roughly 10 years at this point.

> (and, aside from London soon, easy to move between once you're resident in > Europe or here on a long visa).

That part's pretty easy for me, my wife inherited Italian citizenship through her bloodline - we just need to get all the paperwork taken care of to get it recognized.

<comment><USER195> I'm not totally up on this (since I'm English and my wife is French, so Europe is easy for us) but a friend of mine (also English) married an American and I remember it took quite a bit of effort for her to become a dual British citizen and gain full residency. Basically, I'm not 100% sure the fact your wife could gain Italian citizenship will automatically give you full residency/rights too.

I might be talking crap but worth checking out. In any case, it's definitely do-able and you should give it a go! Europe's awesome (and v. kid friendly)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER196> Edit: You know what, fuck it. I don't think I can say anything here that hasn't been said a thousand times already.

<comment><USER24> Please don't turn HN threads into partisan fights. That leads to information heat death, something we're all here to avoid.

This topic is already highly partisan, of course, so it's all the more important not to make it more so. This is very much a collective responsibility.

<comment><USER196> Yes I tried to mitigate that in my child comment. It is, as you mentioned, a highly partisan matter though and has been beaten to death on this forum and others. I don't know how else to approach the subject when there is such clear malfeasance coming from one side of the debate. Perhaps "not at all" would be the correct choice.

<comment><USER24> Maybe, or maybe there's a different way to do it if you're patient enough to wait for a new idea. I know how hard that is; I deal with it every day myself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER197> Can we have a black bar on top?

</comment><comment><USER198> If we stage a nation-wide boycot of Amazon, Walmart.com, and a few other big retailers (and stop using Google, Bing et al) I can almost guarantee it that they will move mountains to bring back net neutrality. You have to get the big corporations a profit motive to get anything done in this country.

<comment><USER150> Except everyone you listed is for net neutrality, and yet the decision still passed

<comment><USER198> If they start losing money they will have a much stronger motivation to act. I feel like they say they are for it but they are not spending considerable resources (they should be) to stand up to the FCC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> averagejoe-2018 I'm surprised I haven't seen more mention of the Neighborhood Network Construction Kit: [http://communitytechnology.github.io/docs/cck/](http://communitytechnology.github.io/docs/cck/)

I believe it has been partly created by the folks who are building their own internet service in Detroit (more about that at [https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kz3xyz/detroit- me...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kz3xyz/detroit-mesh- network))

While the fight rages on for the major providers to commit to being open and fair, I believe it is probably very prudent to simultaneously begin sorting out how we could go about 1) fostering competition and 2) creating community- backed local networks and making them appealing enough (even if just to us tech folks at first) that they start to catch on. If we start at the foundational level (i.e. getting peoples' homes connected or connectable on a locally-controlled network, wireless or otherwise, regardless of whether that network still links up to a major provider's backbone in turn, which it would), then we are in a better position to then start looking at linking up those local networks directly to one another (forming regional networks, etc) and also to backbones provided by companies/organizations that commit (in writing) to an open and fair internet. To that last point, I think it might be worthwhile to also explore the possibility of a non-profit organization with values similar to Mozilla finding a way to purchase, build, or otherwise control some of the internet backbone/internet access in America (forgive me, I know very little of what's all involved at that level, I'm sure it's a herculean task).

In any case, this all seems daunting. But I propose that the initial approach is to start small, start local, but use a multi-pronged strategy (e.g. crowdfunding for projects, raising up wireless community networks, advocacy and marketing help for fair and privacy-conscious ISPs, exploration of non- profit backbone formation, etc), and pick up momentum.

If there is no real market competition, and we're subject to monopolies, and those monopolies directly go against the loudly voiced will of their customers and what appears to be the majority of American citizens, then let's give 'em hell. It's not a short-term project. But everything starts somewhere…

On my soapbox \</comment><comment></comment><comment>- We are talking about who controls access to free speech here. As benign as it may seem to some people that an internet provider might be allowed to throttle some bandwidth and block some sites, their monopoly nature means that, under these new rules, they pose a threat of direct censorship of speech that reaches the masses, which in turn directly threatens the liberty of the American citizen. It's important, both for us and for future generations, to fight this tooth and nail and to even go so far as to rebuild internet access ourselves over the course of years under a new charter if that's actually what it takes. The internet is the greatest free speech tool we have as citizens. And regardless of whether we believe in regulation or de-regulation, the reality is that a group of monopoly controllers of internet access pushed hard for rules allowing them to throttle, censor, and use our data in ways that make many of us feel uneasy. They wouldn't push that hard if they didn't intend to use these allowances in some way. It's a legitimate threat.

Overcoming this threat is a cause that's worth thinking about, and acting on behalf of, in big and bold ways. And perhaps we could also solve for some of our ongoing privacy concerns along the way. Because, my god, what person does not wonder if we are slowly sliding away from being citizens who are truly free to speak our minds and not be spied on arbitrarily with a privacy situation such as we are facing, a situation which is already unreasonable and is getting worse.

Aren't you tired of being leveraged against?

Hope is not lost. We just have to take it into our own hands and fight the fight. Because that's what happens when you're tired of it.

In the interim…

...while this gets started, we need to compile a list of internet service providers who will commit in writing on their customer agreements that they will not block or throttle access to content which is lawful. Perhaps we could also find providers willing to commit in writing that they will treat their users' data as private, not sell our data to third parties, etc. We then need to become loud advocates for these companies. We need to effectively help them with their marketing by raising their visibility up and by encouraging people to switch to them. Imagine how many people would be interested in starting an ISP if they knew that they would get free marketing!

In other words, I propose that we mourn the state of things quickly and then transition into action. If nothing else, that might just be the most effective form of protest we could engage in. In fact, I think this might be the form of protest that works best today in a variety of realms...don't just hold signs and march, don't just voice frustration in venues, instead simply begin creating what you want to see...and don't give up.

</comment><comment><USER199> VOTE.

As I've grown older I've realized more and more that this is the only way for citizens voices to be truly heard. You aren't going to outspend the big donors and you aren't going to out influence the lobbyists. If you want a particular rule set or laws to be enacted you'd better vote for the politicians who agree with your worldview.

Mad that the FCC has repealed net neutrality? Vote for congress members who are pro-NN.

Mad that national parks have had their land area significantly reduced? Vote for pro national park congress members.

Mad that we're giving a huge tax cat to billionaires and corporations and yet the middle class gets a temporary reprieve? Vote for congress members who want to deliver true tax reform.

I could go on and on but I think you get the point.

<comment><USER200> But what about the iterated version of this game?

Ideally you pick all your issues and find at least one candidate on your side. Unless it's the same candidate (lucky you), you'll need to prioritize your issues.

We quickly arrive at the status quo: wedge issues drown out everything.

The answer isn't to just VOTE, the answer is electoral reform. More speficially, prioritize electoral reform as the top wedge issue.

It's like this country has been in a 200 year sprint and refuses to have a retro.

</comment></comment><comment><USER201> Your current plan does not allow you to read this comment. Please contact us to expand your plan to allow Discussion Forum access for a monthly fee of $4.99.

<comment><USER202> Your comment is a Harbinger of days soon to come. Ah my nation, how I weep for thee.

</comment></comment><comment><USER130> Violence isn't the answer but boy would I love to smash that smug asshole's kneecaps.

<comment><USER24> Please stop posting uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments to HN.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER203> Even Hacker News doesn't know what the fuck they are talking about? You people too huh? Can't be bothered to read the regulations that you supposedly give a shit about, you too?? Fuck man, the amount global social media companies can brainwash people is STUNNING!! READ THE FUCKING DOCUMENTS!

The Net Neutrality regulation passed on Feb 26 2015: [http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2015...](http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2015/db0312/FCC-15-24A1.pdf) The 2015 regulation that allows global tech companies to monopolize all information on the internet, strips the FCC of its power to prevent censorship and monopolization, and hands control of the internet to the EU.

The Net Neutrality repeal set to be decided on Dec 14 2017: [https://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/201...](https://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2017/db1122/DOC-347927A1.pdf) The 2017 repeal of the 2015 NN regulation reverts all the bullshit from the 2015 regulation, eliminates global tech companies control of internet, prevents censorship, and returns the FCC its previous powers(the powers they had for the 20 years before 2015 and never once abused or censored or blocked or throttled with, just like theyve done with radio & phone for 83 years and tv for 50 years).

TLDR: READ PAGES 82-87 IN 2017 NN REPEAL.</comment>