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Ask HN: How realistic are the fears coming from the NN 'day of action' crowd?

36 points by Toast_ ↗ HN
Fears like: packaged internet, or throttling specific sites that didn't pay a fee.

I don't know very much about routing, so I thought I's ask HN for it's opinion.

9 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 31.5 ms ] thread
microwavecamera
Very, in my opinion. It goes beyond throttling, ISPs could also choose what sites they carry and what types of traffic they carry. It would create a backdoor in censorship laws and regulations. An ISP could use any excuse, such as cost, bandwidth utilization etc. to suppress anything they see fit. It goes beyond just websites, VPN traffic, TOR traffic, and similar privacy technologies would also be at risk. Think of the implications. Open-source software? Bitcoin and cryptocurrency? Torrents? What if ISPs decide not to carry the traffic or charge prohibitive amounts of money to carry the traffic? With Net Neutrality internet access is regulated as a utility, like electricity. Just like like a power company can't refuse to provide you with electricity, ISPs can't refuse to provide full internet access to you. Net Neutrality isn't just about internet access, it also protects our civil liberties and right to free and fair access to information. It also stifles innovation. If you're a startup, how could you compete with companies like Facebook or Google who can afford to negotiate contracts with ISPs and pay for full access? What if a company like Facebook uses their influence and capital to get ISPs not to carry sites critical of them or competing with them? How could Linux and other open-source projects afford to compete with companies like Microsoft and Apple? Those companies could certainly afford it. A handful of companies would control what you see and can access on the internet. Open access to the internet is vital to freedom and democracy.
Toast_
Thanks for the response.

Would an ISP blocking IP's or services cause any issues to one that isn't? (i.e., peer exchanges/access points)

microwavecamera
Potentially. It would still be up to the carrier but in much of the U.S. there is limited or no choice in the ISP you have access to and major ISPs such as Verizon, AT&T, Comcast etc. control much of the internet backbone. Independent companies could try to route around them or build out their own infrastructure but it comes down to cost. The major players can just outspend the competition and charge whatever they wanted to carry 3rd party traffic through their networks. The implications of full deregulation that's being pushed are concerning to say the least.
e59d134d
It will make it harder for smaller and startups to compete with established players.

You can think of it as if phone companies grouping businesses in different buckets and then charging extra for better service. Small businesses will have to pay phone companies extra if they want their customers to call them.

cheald
So far, every "day of action" banner I've seen has basically been pitched at mock "you've hit your bandwidth cap" or "your throughput has been limited" messages, both of which are in place today and unaffected by neutrality regulations (consumers pay for a line that is capped at a given level of throughput, is not guaranteed to deliver their top-end throughput, and is often capped at a maximum level of bandwidth consumed - wanting more costs more).

The messaging feels deceptive to me because it seems to be pitched with juvenile "you should be able to have as much as you want without having to care about price!" tone, rather than the more nuanced concern that monopolistic ISPs could promote or deny traffic in anticompetitive behaviors. That concern, while real, doesn't seem to have shown much threat of manifestation outside of a few edge cases (two that immediately spring to mind are Comcast throttling torrents back in ~'07 and T-Mobile not counting bandwidth consumption against quotas for near-edge hosted media from their their "Binge On" partners). It honestly seems to me that the number of "consumer-friendly" neutrality violations have outnumbered the anti-consumer ones in recent history - which is a concern in that it makes it harder for a startup to compete with an entrenched player, but that's WAY outside of any of the messaging being pitched to the unknowing masses today (probably because "companies giving you service perks for no extra charge is bad!" is a hard message to sell). Things like the Verizon/Netflix flap was a peering dispute, which isn't a new concern and probably isn't resolved to any real degree under neutrality regulations, but people still reference that as a flagship case for neutrality regulations.

There are some legitimate fears. Most of them haven't manifested, and are most robustly resolved through opening up competition in the ISP space, IMO. The messaging seems to be, in the majority case, unrealistic scare-mongering, and that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Toast_
> The messaging seems to be, in the majority case, unrealistic scare-mongering, and that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Complete reason why I've made the thread. Nearly every reason I've received (via whatever channel) has been a pre-written, appeal to the least common denominator response. The only thing I care about is if what has been suggested is actually possible; and assumably, if so, what we can do to negate it. I really appreciate a real response, thank you.

cheald
Much of it is possible, sure. I don't think most of it is feasible, or likely. Prioritization of classes of traffic is and has been a thing for a long time, and consumers broadly benefit from it (we all want VOIP traffic to have better latency sensitivity than Netflix traffic, and we all want Netflix traffic to have better bandwidth utilization than VOIP traffic, for example). (De/)Prioritization of individual products is a bogeyman that has yet to manifest outside of some products being excepted from mobile data quotas (Binge On, FB Zero, Wikipedia Zero).

Then you have things like the utterly ridiculous "your internet plan doesn't include commenting on this reddit thread!" stunts, which are either blindingly ignorant of the actual aims of net neutrality advocates, or are willfully deceitful (there is no technological way that an ISP could restrict or upsell layer 7 features given that TLS is a thing) - neither of which does very much to produce sympathy in me for the cause.

"Your single ISP could engage in behavior that doesn't benefit you" is an obvious threat - that's the threat of any monopolized market. But the vast majority of nightmare scenarios cooked up to scare the masses into action are, IMO, somewhere between fantasy and outright lies.

Toast_
I'm not sure if my thought process is even valid, but I remember watching a blackhat presentation on hacking docsis 3 (may have been "hacking docsis for fun and profit"?) and the basic consensus was that docsis 3 security was just swiss cheese. I'm curious how such a system that can barely regulate it's users, could somehow become a totalitarian behemoth overnight. It's like satire being taken seriously.
auganov
I don't buy into the consumer-side of the scare. The most misunderstood part is the FCC will still absolutely have the authority to intervene when rights are being violated. And it has, way before there was a big public debate.

Worst case scenario stuff goes bad and we introduce that regulation again.

The entrepreneur side is more reasonable. Obviously hard NN brings some barriers to entry down.