<story><title>House Passes Bill to Sabotage Net Neutrality</title><url>https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/house-passes-bill-sabotage-net-neutrality</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jimrandomh</author><text>Some clarity is badly needed here. If you don&amp;#x27;t know some fairly arcane details of what&amp;#x27;s going on in Internet regulation, this looks as though it just prevents the FCC from setting price floors and price ceilings, which would be fine.&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s actually going on is fairly complicated, because there are five different parties involved: the consumer, a consumer ISP such as Verizon or Comcast, a backbone provider such as Cogent or Level 3, a business ISP such as Linode or AWS, and a business with a web site. The wires look like this:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    Consumer --- Consumer-ISP --- Backbone-provider --- Business-ISP --- Website
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
And the flow of money looks like this:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    Consumer --&amp;gt; Consumer-ISP --&amp;gt; Backbone-provider &amp;lt;-- Business-ISP &amp;lt;-- Website
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
For each connection, there is someone paying money who can take their money elsewhere if that connection is too slow. What&amp;#x27;s happening is that some consumer ISPs aren&amp;#x27;t happy with only being paid by consumers, and want websites to also pay them. That would make the flow of money look like this:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    Consumer --&amp;gt; Consumer-ISP --&amp;gt; Backbone-provider &amp;lt;-- Business-ISP &amp;lt;-- Website
                      ^_____________________________________________________|
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
The problem is that this arrangement would have businesses paying money to ISPs that they didn&amp;#x27;t choose, and can&amp;#x27;t walk away from. From a consumer&amp;#x27;s perspective, if a web site is slow, it looks like the website&amp;#x27;s fault rather than their ISP&amp;#x27;s fault, which distorts the incentives. This sort of arrangement isn&amp;#x27;t really compatible with free-market incentives, since the flow of money doesn&amp;#x27;t match who&amp;#x27;s providing services to who; it&amp;#x27;s less like normal business, and more like extortion.&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I don&amp;#x27;t expect Congress to have access to clear explanations of all of this. But if you happen to have a congressperson&amp;#x27;s ear: rather than convince them of a position, please make sure they understand the full shape of what&amp;#x27;s happening. They&amp;#x27;re smart enough to draw the correct conclusion, but are constantly bombarded by misinformation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chongli</author><text>Consumer ISPs are not a free market, they&amp;#x27;re a collection of regional monopolies. The solution is not regulation, it&amp;#x27;s increasing competition. If every consumer had a choice of 5 or more competitive ISPs, then the market would sort this out. ISPs could literally advertise &amp;quot;We won&amp;#x27;t slow down your favourite websites! All websites equally fast!&amp;quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>House Passes Bill to Sabotage Net Neutrality</title><url>https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/house-passes-bill-sabotage-net-neutrality</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jimrandomh</author><text>Some clarity is badly needed here. If you don&amp;#x27;t know some fairly arcane details of what&amp;#x27;s going on in Internet regulation, this looks as though it just prevents the FCC from setting price floors and price ceilings, which would be fine.&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s actually going on is fairly complicated, because there are five different parties involved: the consumer, a consumer ISP such as Verizon or Comcast, a backbone provider such as Cogent or Level 3, a business ISP such as Linode or AWS, and a business with a web site. The wires look like this:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    Consumer --- Consumer-ISP --- Backbone-provider --- Business-ISP --- Website
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
And the flow of money looks like this:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    Consumer --&amp;gt; Consumer-ISP --&amp;gt; Backbone-provider &amp;lt;-- Business-ISP &amp;lt;-- Website
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
For each connection, there is someone paying money who can take their money elsewhere if that connection is too slow. What&amp;#x27;s happening is that some consumer ISPs aren&amp;#x27;t happy with only being paid by consumers, and want websites to also pay them. That would make the flow of money look like this:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    Consumer --&amp;gt; Consumer-ISP --&amp;gt; Backbone-provider &amp;lt;-- Business-ISP &amp;lt;-- Website
                      ^_____________________________________________________|
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
The problem is that this arrangement would have businesses paying money to ISPs that they didn&amp;#x27;t choose, and can&amp;#x27;t walk away from. From a consumer&amp;#x27;s perspective, if a web site is slow, it looks like the website&amp;#x27;s fault rather than their ISP&amp;#x27;s fault, which distorts the incentives. This sort of arrangement isn&amp;#x27;t really compatible with free-market incentives, since the flow of money doesn&amp;#x27;t match who&amp;#x27;s providing services to who; it&amp;#x27;s less like normal business, and more like extortion.&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I don&amp;#x27;t expect Congress to have access to clear explanations of all of this. But if you happen to have a congressperson&amp;#x27;s ear: rather than convince them of a position, please make sure they understand the full shape of what&amp;#x27;s happening. They&amp;#x27;re smart enough to draw the correct conclusion, but are constantly bombarded by misinformation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>CobrastanJorji</author><text>This sort of thing helps explain projects like the Google Video Quality Report ( &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.google.com&amp;#x2F;get&amp;#x2F;videoqualityreport&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.google.com&amp;#x2F;get&amp;#x2F;videoqualityreport&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; ) or the Netflix ISP Speed Index ( &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;ispspeedindex.netflix.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;ispspeedindex.netflix.com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; ). They could be viewed as attempts to shift the public perspective from saying &amp;quot;Netflix is slow&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;my ISP is bad at Netflix.&amp;quot;</text></comment>