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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday September 20 2017, @02:06PM   Printer-friendly
from the brace-for-impact dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1937

Net neutrality advocates are planning two days of protest in Washington DC this month as they fight off plans to defang regulations meant to protect an open internet.

A coalition of activists, consumer groups and writers are calling on supporters to attend the next meeting of the Federal Communications Commission on 26 September in DC. The next day, the protest will move to Capitol Hill, where people will meet legislators to express their concerns about an FCC proposal to rewrite the rules governing the internet.

The FCC has received 22 million comments on "Restoring Internet Freedom", the regulator's proposal to dismantle net neutrality rules put in place in 2015. Opponents argue the rule changes, proposed by the FCC's Republican chairman Ajit Pai, will pave the way for a tiered internet where internet service providers (ISPs) will be free to pick and choose winners online by giving higher speeds to those they favor, or those willing or able to pay more.

The regulator has yet to process the comments, and is reviewing its proposals before a vote expected later this year.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/15/washington-dc-net-neutrality-protests-restoring-internet-freedom


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  • (Score: 2) by Scrutinizer on Thursday September 21 2017, @03:10PM (4 children)

    by Scrutinizer (6534) on Thursday September 21 2017, @03:10PM (#571178)

    Or am I missing something here?

    I believe you are. Your point #2 (Netflix paying Cogent) hinged on a no-settlement PEERING AGREEMENT. These agreements are for like-or-similar traffic loads in that ingoing and outgoing traffic must be comparable. (I later found another article with this stated explicitly: Applicant must maintain a traffic scale between its network and Comcast that enables a general balance of inbound versus outbound traffic. [arstechnica.com])

    Netflix was paying a comparatively tiny price to gain access to a route of no-settlement peering agreements, knowing that using said routes would instantly cause a massive traffic imbalance that violates the nature (and according to that linked article, also the letter) of such peering agreements. Ergo, outside of lawyerese, Netflix was not paying for the data it was generating and pushing out to others' networks.

    On point #3 (ISP's customers paying for Netflix data), you might be glossing over how paying for access works. BOTH server-owners AND end-user clients pay for Internet access, and it's not "double dipping" because in practice both the server owner and the end user are just clients on the Internet: both want to talk to each other from a distance, across networks they don't own, and both pay for access. In light of this, your points #3 and #2 seem to contradict each other. (If your point #3 is related to ISPs' habit of falsely offering "unlimited" Internet access, then that crime is already covered by simple laws against fraud and false advertising. If those existing laws aren't being enforced to your liking, why would you think that NEW laws would be better enforced?)

    Net neutrality is about making sure that ISPs do not choose what content its customers may view or publish.

    I (perhaps mistakenly) thought ISPs were already being treated as common carriers, which among other things, provides them with immunity from prosecution from, say, kiddy porn laws, as long as they don't filter the delivery of data its customers request. Again, new "net neutrality" laws not needed. Additionally, back in the ISP heyday (before government interference by supporting the established defacto ISP monopolies choked almost all of them out), the market supported many specialty ISPs which WOULD censor your Internet for you. Whether you or I think such a thing is silly is beside the point. We got to where we are now using government interference - what makes you think more and continued government interference is the answer?

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  • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday September 21 2017, @03:43PM (3 children)

    by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Thursday September 21 2017, @03:43PM (#571192) Homepage Journal

    I believe you are. Your point #2 (Netflix paying Cogent) hinged on a no-settlement PEERING AGREEMENT. These agreements are for like-or-similar traffic loads in that ingoing and outgoing traffic must be comparable. (I later found another article with this stated explicitly: Applicant must maintain a traffic scale between its network and Comcast that enables a general balance of inbound versus outbound traffic. [arstechnica.com])

    That peering agreement was between Cogent and Comcast, not Netflix and Comcast. And yes, I am quite familiar with peering agreements.

    Comcast has played games with their peering connections for years, maintaining congested peering links in an (mostly successful) effort to force their competitors to pay them directly (via direct interconnects) or indirectly (via CDN access fees). See this article for more details:
    https://qz.com/256586/the-inside-story-of-how-netflix-came-to-pay-comcast-for-internet-traffic/ [qz.com]

    Interestingly (okay, not interesting or surprising), Comcast has done this almost exclusively with their competitors in the content distribution business. Comcast has also been caught degrading their customers' connections when it suits them [arstechnica.com] as well.

    The whole Netflix brouhaha was about Comcast trying to erect barriers to entry for competitors of their content delivery systems (cable TV).

    The double dipping comes with Comcast forcing its competitors to pay for bandwidth that it's already charging its own customers.

    These are just straight-up anti-competitive business practices, with Comcast using its market share to extort its competitors. The specifics have little to do with Net neutrality per se, except that it sets a precedent for ISPs to treat arbitrary network traffic with bias. If they can do that with their competitors, they can do so with their (and yours) political allies and enemies.

    The FCC is looking to reclassify ISPs as "Information Services" (Title I) rather than "Common Carriers" (Title II) [fcc.gov]. This would remove the requirement that ISPs may not, as you said, "alter the delivery" of customer data. Which opens up the possibility that ISPs could, in control, block and throttle its customers' data, making ISPs the censors (or curators, if you want to soft-pedal it) of the Internet.

    That's what this is about, not shady business practices or someone trying to save a buck.

    --
    No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
    • (Score: 2) by Scrutinizer on Thursday September 21 2017, @04:06PM (2 children)

      by Scrutinizer (6534) on Thursday September 21 2017, @04:06PM (#571203)

      That peering agreement was between Cogent and Comcast, not Netflix and Comcast.

      Agreed, Cogent was the entity actually violating its peering agreement with Comcast by imbalancing its traffic with Netflix's data. I figured that point didn't need to be made since it was Netflix shopping around for these no-charge peering agreements it could violate (L3 was another Netflix peering agreement provider along with Cogent).

      According to your link, the FCC did its "common carrier" classification a mere two years ago. That seems odd, considering I haven't heard of AOL execs being hauled off to prison over kiddy porn crossing their networks. Regardless, this smacks of "government made a change and now everything is horrible! Rather than just roll back, we now need even more government changes! Panic! Panic!".

      When two nodes on a network are charged fees to communicate, that is NOT "double dipping". "Netflix and you" are no different than "Soylent News and you",
      in that each entity pays for data both sent and received to it. It has been this way since ancient Internet times and remains true today.

      In conjunction with this smokescreen over "Netflix paid!" and "double-dipping ISPs" nonsense, I'm absolutely ready to throw out the entire "net neutrality" bathwater. Lies (or misunderstandings) do not make good endorsements for government policies.

      Note: none of the above excuses Comcast for being at best a scumbag company, if not outright fraudsters in need of criminal prosecution.

      • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday September 21 2017, @07:00PM (1 child)

        by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Thursday September 21 2017, @07:00PM (#571325) Homepage Journal

        According to your link, the FCC did its "common carrier" classification a mere two years ago. That seems odd, considering I haven't heard of AOL execs being hauled off to prison over kiddy porn crossing their networks. Regardless, this smacks of "government made a change and now everything is horrible! Rather than just roll back, we now need even more government changes! Panic! Panic!".

        ISPs were classified under Title II until the early 2000s, when first the cable companies, then the internet divisions of telcos were reclassified as Title I. That rougly coincided, by the way, with ISPs taking tens of billions from the government to wire everything and then did fuck all, implementing abusive TOS and all manner of other evil shit. Assholes.

        The FCC did the right thing in 2013, by requiring net neutrality and ISPs fought it tooth and nail. The courts said that Title I classification doesn't give the FCC authority to take such steps. So they pushed on and reclassified ISPs under Title II, which gives the FCC authority to require net neutrality.

        I posted several FCC links detailing the reclassification history of ISPs a few months back in a comment on another article about net neutrality.

        My apologies, I'm too lazy to go and look it up for you, ATM.

        When two nodes on a network are charged fees to communicate, that is NOT "double dipping". "Netflix and you" are no different than "Soylent News and you",
        in that each entity pays for data both sent and received to it. It has been this way since ancient Internet times and remains true today.

        I never claimed that each side paying for its own bandwidth was double-dipping. If you look at Comcast's behavior over this, they refused to increase bandwidth on *already congested* peering links, so they could use the impact of degraded service on their customers as a cudgel to beat Netflix and other streaming providers into entering into direct interconnect agreements (with hefty fees) or force them onto CDNs where they could extract access fees.

        Netflix offered its OpenConnect [netflix.com] solution, which could have resolved this issue, but Comcast flat refused.

        But that's just a sideshow as far as net neutrality (and Title II classification) is concerned.

        In conjunction with this smokescreen over "Netflix paid!" and "double-dipping ISPs" nonsense, I'm absolutely ready to throw out the entire "net neutrality" bathwater. Lies (or misunderstandings) do not make good endorsements for government policies.

        Then you don't understand what net neutrality is and what it means for liberty and freedom of expression on the Internet. Joe Desertrat details this succinctly here [soylentnews.org].

        Net neutrality isn't really about who is peering with whom or who pays for interconnections. It's about requiring ISPs to carry traffic without bias, refraining from traffic shaping, blocking or throttling, except when required by congestion or network management issues. Full Stop. And that is not only net neutrality. It's good policy.

        If ISPs can arbitrarily shape, throttle and block traffic, who is going to lose?

        I, for one, don't want my internet connection to be "curated" (read: censored) by heavy-handed ISPs.

        Reclassifying ISPs as Title I (information services) rather than Title II (common carriers) as was done in the early 2000s was a poor idea back then (Fuck you very much, Dubya!) and is an even worse idea now.

        If you look at the history of ISP build outs, competition, quality of product offerings and end-user satisfaction during various ISP classification regimes, I imagine you'll be quite surprised.

        --
        No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
        • (Score: 2) by Scrutinizer on Thursday September 21 2017, @07:44PM

          by Scrutinizer (6534) on Thursday September 21 2017, @07:44PM (#571360)

          I acknowledge your general history and leave alone the points you denote as minor.

          Net neutrality isn't really about who is peering with whom or who pays for interconnections. It's about requiring ISPs to carry traffic without bias, refraining from traffic shaping, blocking or throttling, except when required by congestion or network management issues. Full Stop. And that is not only net neutrality. It's good policy.

          Access to the Internet is in danger of Bad Things (censorship, unnecessary throttling, blocking, etc.) because governments crushed competition among ISPs and favored big corporations. There's the problem. "More government" to fix a government-made problem is the age old lie that has been used to burden everyone with income taxes (post WW2), insane health care prices (EMTALA), tying benefits to corporate jobs and thereby crushing entrepreneurs (WW2-era wage controls). If you WANT a horrible, censored, slow Internet, the quickest way to get that is to tie the fast-moving Internet to the insane, schizophrenic, and unaccountable monster that is government.

          Rather than duct tape more government onto the increasingly nasty situation of monopolistic ISPs, Internet networking, and such, the proper solution is to rip all that government support away and stop keeping the small competitors out. If the current ISPs bleed to death, fine - more will show up to replace them, and you can take your pick.