[rayiner]

It annoys me that people invoke Chinese dissidents, MIT OpenCourseware, and Wikipedia in the context of an issue that, to date, only involves for-profit companies. I don't get how people can work up a moralistic fervor over a dispute between two giant highly profitable industries. Its not that I don't believe that the internet is a tool to deliver education to the underserved, or give voice to the politically marginalized, its that there is no indication that these aspects of the internet are at all threatened. Maybe I'm cynical, but I'm skeptical when these for-profit enterprises cloak themselves in internet utopianism to lobby for policies that have the primary or even sole effect of giving themselves a bigger slice of consumer entertainment dollars.

And if core values are threatened, why not have laws narrowly tailored to that danger? Why not just make it illegal for ISP's to discriminate against websites based on politics, race, etc? Surely that'd be easier to get passed, and people would be happy, if that's what this all was really about.

[pessimizer]

>an issue that, to date, only involves for-profit companies.

Because that isn't what this is. The arguments between these massive companies are deciding the future of peer-to-peer communications on the internet.

If the ones who own the wires win, the internet will be officially divided into two classes: servers and clients. Netflix will still be as fast as it ever was (if not faster) if it pays, and if it doesn't, the wire-owners' new replacements will be just as fast as Netflix was. All of the current players will be making massive content and distribution deals with each other, and the internet will become cable TV.

There's no technical reason that the internet has to be structured that way. This is all just massive incumbents locking out all small fry, and consequently all newcomers. The scale this is being played out in is so large that Netflix is really the newcomer in the situation; this is not just a matter of protecting an oligarchy of entertainment providers, but even a war between content producers and content distributors that has implications that affect how fast the traffic between you and your mother will be, and what programs you will be allowed to use to produce and receive that traffic.

Ultimately it's a defense of a primitive accumulation. Some people own the wires because they were first. We can either let them manipulate the market so all of their vendors have razor-thin margins and all of their consumers have the most constrained agreements and highest prices, or restrict the right of the owners to shape and filter traffic for business purposes.

[rayiner]

Just because software views IP nodes symmetrically doesn't mean that there aren't central and leaf nodes in the physical structure of the network. That asymmetry is endemic to where consumer nodes sit on the physical network.

I quite agree that letting the people who own the wires do what they want will have an effect on the margins of companies who depend on those wires to reach customers. But doesn't that reinforce my point: there is something disingenuous about certain companies taking up the mantle of free speech and internet Utopianism to lobby for policy that is primarily targeted at fattening their own profit margins?

I don't see any reason to pick sides, certainly. I am equally skeptical of lobbying by ISP's that invoke the public interest or consumer protection to justify regulation excluding competitors from their markets.

[bandushrew]

Because, as much as possible, we dont want ISPs to discriminate against any website, whether it is discrimination based on politics, or commercial interests.

I have no care about whether Apple can get its websites shown - Apple can take care of itself.

I do care whether I or other entrepreneurs can continue to publish our ideas without suddenly needing to bribe ISPs to not ruin the experience of customers using the site by throttling bandwidth as soon as it gets popular.

[rayiner]

But why? I understand the rationale for websites that are political or educational non-profits. They need the public to protect them. But why should the public protect, in the name of Internet Utopianism, for-profit enterprises? Why shouldn't for-profit enterprises fend for themselves?

[bandushrew]

Because The Internet is not primarily a commercial platform, it is primarily a communications platform.

One absolutely magical aspect of the internet as it is today, is that I can stand up a server - on my desktop, on a VM in the cloud, on a physical server, wherever - and my friends can access it from all over the world. Poor indian farmers with smartphones can use my server to get data about the local market for rubber, rich financiers can use my server to educate themselves about the likely effect of new financial laws, Strip Club workers can access my server and learn about new health risks.

All of that goes away once I need to pay Comcast a bribe to persuade them to provide access to my server for their customers.

This has nothing to do with whatever commercial opportunities the Internet may or may not provide for Big Business, and I really dont care much about those.

In time my little server may start to make a profit, maybe that is my motivation when I begin or maybe not, but regardless of my original motivations The Internet is magical technology that lets people from all over the world communicate.

that is the functionality I care about, and that is the functionality that anti-Net Neutrality laws massively threaten.

[rayiner]

Why would cable companies have any incentive to demand payment from small entities like that? There is no profit motive in that, just bad publicity. I think its a really contrived argument, and shows exactly what I'm talking about: big money companies are trying to justify laws that favor them by raising totally hypothetical concerns about what companies may do to small entities that have some public interest benefit.

If Comcast et al really try to keep sex workers from getting needed information about health risks, let's address it when it happens with a targeted law. I'm sure it'll be much easier to get public support for such a policy then.

[bandushrew]

The health risks for sex workers was purely a hypothetical situation that showed the general class of the problem.

The point of it being a communications platform is that there is an infinite variety of cases of exactly that kind of problem, potentially leading to an infinite variety of 'targeted' laws. Aside from the incredible inefficiency of attempting to deal with them one at a time, practically speaking it is just not going to happen.

Cable companies will not have any incentive to specifically demand payment from small entities like that. They will just degrade the service they provide for everyone, and make special cases for those who pay the appropriate amount of money.

This will massively damage the internet as a communications platform, it will cause huge problems for small content creators who are trying to get a start, and the need to make deals with a wide range of ISPs will crush small businesses, and startup entrepreneurs.

Netflix is a fantastic example of this.

It is, right now, big enough to be able to move largish amounts of money around to solve its delivery problem. A few years ago, it was not, and - this is important - it would never have gotten to the size it is if the anti-NN measures that are being proposed now were taken back then.

Snapchat, WhatsApp, the list goes on for companies that started small, and were able to grow because they did not need to pay ISPs individually to have their content delivered to the ISPs customers.

MineCraft has been responsible for millions of downloads of its product, probably causing Comcast customers to consume thousands of GB of bandwidth from Comcast. At what point would the distributors of MineCraft have needed to pay Comcast a bribe to ensure its bits were delivered without interruption?

You are either being very disingenuous regarding the effect of these measures, or you genuinely do not understand them.

Assuming it is the latter, i suggest you do a little more reading.

[rayiner]

You're using very biased language ("bribe"). Its not bribery for a for-profit company to demand payment for other company's who want to reach its users. That the basic premise of Facebook's or LinkedIn's business model after all.

You've clearly picked a side, but why should we? I understand that people on here have an interest in startups succeeding against big companies, but why does that rise to the level of public interest? These are just all for-profit companies hoping to make a bunch of money off consumers.

It should also be noted that content creators naturally have a lot of leverage, because their products are non-fungible. Its content aggregators and distributors that would see the biggest hits to their profit margins.

[selmnoo]

> But why? I understand the rationale for websites that are political or educational non-profits. They need the public to protect them.

By the way, to what extent? Here's a hypothetical to imagine: there's a next-generation Wikipedia which is all video-based, and is, say, responsible for 100x the bandwidth usage of Netflix. Does it still need to be protected?

Secondly, why does it need to be protected? Non-profits still have to pay for the buildings they buy, the equipment they buy, etc., why should they be treated as being special in the internet space? Why shouldn't they pay more just like Netflix, if they're eating just as much resources as Netflix (or more)?

[bandushrew]

Please, let us get the framing of the problem right.

Netflix already pays for the bandwidth they consume.

I, as a netflix customer and a customer of Comcast, already pay for the bandwidth that I consume.

Comcast, for some reason I cannot fathom, wants the right to force Netflix to pay additional money for the bandwidth that I, as a paying customer of Comcast, consume on Comcast's network.

[rayiner]

Non-profits have less resources with which to protect themselves, and have value to the public that goes beyond their money-making function. Theres not necessarily much money but a lot of value in protecting say dissident speech.

[selmnoo]

On the whole, sure, probably non-profits have less resources -- but there are many glaring exceptions. MIT and Harvard are sitting on a shitload of cash, for example. NFL as well. You know that NFL charges customers something like $150 for streaming access for one year? (http://www.nfl.com/watch-nfl-live ) And a lot of people pay for it. Should NFL pay up to Comcast for clogging the tubes football-season, just like Netflix does, even though it's a non-profit?