Y Combinator has filed an official comment with the FCC
blog.ycombinator.comI appreciate what Alexis is trying to do here but I hope he isn't assuming that the FCC just doesn't understand the problem. That's how this reads to me. Maybe the idea is to be diplomatic. I don't think the FCC cares. The FCC understands what is going on and it wants to do whatever is best for the FCC.
The best thing for tech companies to do is to start destroying some political careers. That's the only thing the machine understands and the only thing it's really going to respond to.
That's the essence of contemporary lobbying. Most legislators can be persuaded with campaign contributions (the carrot) but those that can't get threatened with the stick, which comes in the form of a previously unheard of but suddenly flush primary opponent.
Add gerrymandering to the mix, and this tactic becomes even harder to resist, since the effective sidelining of an opposing party means that no matter what else happens, the seat in question stays with the side that already holds it. This is what people mean by "safe" seats, by the way. They're safe for the party. Particular incumbents, not so much.
So yes. If you have a realistic hope of getting what you want it's because you're known to have the power to end careers. If legislators refuse to cooperate, their prospects dim. If an agency gets uncooperative, the legislators who oversee it turn the budget screws, causing pain and wrecking livelihoods until the backer with the biggest stick wins. These are the mechanics of regulatory capture, and they're in operation every day.
Obviously, all of this deeply depressing, and provides an excellent argument for getting private finance out of elections altogether, since that really is the mechanism upon which American-style corruption depends. And while we're at it, de-rigging the vote with non-partisan redistricting and establishing a nation-wide version of the (pre-gutted) Voting Rights Act would go a long way in fostering a government of, by, and for the people.
But in the meantime, when our systems is less like a democracy and more like an oligarchy, getting what you want means playing by the rules that exist. And that means lobbying with both carrot and stick. They hit you, you hit back. And not only do you hit back harder, you hit back so hard that they will never get up again. That's what the SOPA/PIPA backlash did: threatened a sweeping act of maximum violence to an unprecedented number of careers.
It was brutal and it was ugly, but it worked. And it did so when there's not much else that does.
Lawrence Lessig is working on a people-power initiative to fix the problem of getting private finance out of elections: https://mayday.us/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayday_PAC
Please tell me I'm not the only one who recognizes the utter irony of his approach.
The campaign itself explicitly recognizes the irony. You aren't being that observant if you fail to recognize that.
I recognize the irony. The reason it's ironic is because it's doomed to fail. You cannot raise money in order to lessen the influence of money. If this campaign does anything, it will simply invite opposing groups to raise more money in order to elect anti-campaign finance reform candidates.
What's important isn't a success or failure (in Lessig's "trial" election cycle or in 2016). I think his point is: people care enough about campaign finance reform to help raise $5m in a month.
If candidates knew this was something their constituents cared about, they might actually run on it.
Who cares if Lessig fails. We're finally talking about campaign finance.
I'm not sure which martial art is about turning the force of your opponent's moves against them, but this seems like a prime example. Rest assured, Lessig is acutely aware that what he's doing comes down to a hack. That shouldn't be a tough sell here.
Eric Cantor proved that you can't buy an election with money. Ideas ultimately are what count in an election, and to the extent that any good ideas are removed from the public realm with this scheme, we all lose. The last thing we want is the government regulating money spent on political speech - the corruption potential is absolutely enormous - hence the First Amendment.
>Eric Cantor proved that you can't buy an election with money.
Muffy is a dog. Muffy cannot bark. Therefore, no dogs can bark.
Textbook logical fallacy.
Of course, politicians can and do buy elections. Today's process practically guarantees this will occur.
>to the extent that any good ideas are removed from the public realm with this scheme, we all lose.
There are other ways to ensure that good ideas come to the fore. And, as the ability to raise funds is not solely based on the quality of one's ideas, there is no feasible way that the democratic process can benefit from unrestrained campaign financing and rulings like Citizens United.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/10/ten_thin...
"10 things we think we know, but really don't
1. Money buys the votes of the general public. (Maybe savvy donors just donate to candidates who will win in the hopes of influencing them.)" [edit: quote moved]
Money is necessary but not sufficient in order to become elected.
Politics is not about good ideas. Jim Crow laws existed for decades.
No one gets voted on by the public unless they've bought themselves into the vote in the first place. The public just gets to vote between the few dozen people that can raise enough money to get there.
If you genuinely couldn't by elections with money, there wouldn't be so much money flowing into politics.
Money alone isn't sufficient to guarantee an election outcome, you still have to execute.
That people think it works enough to pay money for it isn't proof that it does. I dub this the 'Ion Bracelet Effect' (though there's probably a better name for it already).
"'American Crossroads, the super PAC founded by Karl Rove, spent $104 million in the general election, but none of its candidates won. The United States Chamber of Commerce spent $24 million backing Republicans in 15 Senate races; only two of them won. Sheldon Adelson, the casino mogul, spent $53 million on nine Republican candidates, eight of whom lost.' It was, as the paper noted, 'A Landslide Loss for Big Money.'"[1]
"When a candidate doubled their spending, holding everything else constant, they only got an extra one percent of the popular vote. It’s the same if you cut your spending in half, you only lose one percent of the popular vote. So we’re talking about really large swings in campaign spending with almost trivial changes in the vote."[2]
[1] - http://reason.com/archives/2014/07/14/dear-liberals-stop-fre...
[2] - http://freakonomics.com/2012/01/12/does-money-really-buy-ele...
No, but it's not hard to provide actual mechanisms to explain how money influences politics.
That's not saying every dollar is the same, and the money -> influence function is a straight line. But money buys reach and coverage at the very least.
OpenSecrets.org hosts a long-running effort to correlate the rate at which legislators favor or oppose particular industries with the size of the contributions they receive. Turns out, they track very closely. Like, to the point where reasonable people stop thinking "correlation" and start thinking "causation."
That's a very important point in public corruption debates, since there mere perception of corruption can diminish trust in public institutions. And trust, as it turns out, is their greatest asset. That's why effective anti-corruption laws are written to prohibit actions that simply appear corrupt, along with those that can be proven corrupt beyond all reasonable doubt.
When it comes to public trust, appearance really does matter.
That's actually correct - it requires a gargantuan amount to "buy" an election (double the spending for 1% more of the vote, or something along those lines).
But politicians are a simple and superstitious folk, and they do care a lot about fund raising. And in a 50:50 fight, they'll do almost anything for an edge.
Also, while a politician might be in a safe seat, they'll gain a lot of brownie points (e.g. a promotion) if they can funnel some funds to someone in a marginal seat.
"they'll gain a lot of brownie points (e.g. a promotion)"
That's the sugar coated version. When it comes to people who already have a lot of seniority and don't need the money for their own elections, the ability to transfer funds between their reelection accounts and those of others isn't about "brownie points". It's the raw exercise of political power, and is handled not to praise, but to bury.
>"our systems is less like a democracy and more like an oligarchy"
What if the problem is simply that very few voters care about the issue, and that even less would be willing to change their vote over this issue?
Which is possibly (probably?) correct in this case, and many other issues we as tech people care about. But that doesn't dispute the facts in his post; it's merely a tangential thing.
For example, most regular voters care about copyright extensions, but the lobbyists do, and so it gets extended time after time.
> Which is possibly (probably?) correct in this case, and many other issues we as tech people care about.
There are plenty of issues that average 'tech people' dont care about that other professions might. I have not seen any evidence that as a whole technical people care more about whats going on in the world.
When voter turn out is low, it is not because people dont care about the issues. It is because they dont believe their vote is being counted, cant distinguish between candidates, or simply dont think any candidate can lead to the kind of governance they would prefer.
There is a disconnect between voting and policy that will need to be addressed before you are able to call it a democracy again.
I'm always curious as to why people think politicians are more motivated by reelection prospects that, say, their legacy or actually representing their personal views or convictions. I mean, I can understand why the ones that make it into office are the ones that fight hard to get elected in the first place, but once they are there, why wouldn't you expect a lot of them to take pride in actually representing their districts and really doing a good job in a representative democracy? I've always wondered why reelection is more important to these people supposedly then every other incentive! Can someone elaborate as to why this assumption is always made?
Some do. But consider some simple mechanics of it:
It you care about your legacy, and your opponent only cares about getting (re-)elected to benefit from the position, your opponent is at an advantage: Your opponent does not need to "waste" time, money and effort on things that does not improve their chances at (re-)election.
If doing the job IS wasting time, that means the incentives are all wrong. But still, who says that re-election is the goal? What about the places where they are limited to only 2 terms? How could re election explain ther second term actions? Or are people going to claim that at that point they're all captured by te industry using the revolving door?
I think it's simply self-preservation. If they don't get reelected, they lose their job. Few people want that. Would you lose your job over your views on issues like gun control? May you would, but a lot (maybe majority) of people wouldn't. Look at the stories of people in former communist countries. Majority of them didn't want to even risk their jobs over much, much more serious issues than gun control, NSA, or abortion.
Bureaucrats don't want to lose ther jobs. But for elected politicians the job is to do what they said for a specified term. If doing their job properly means losing it, then maybe the incentives are all wrong. We already have term limits for presidents, what about senators and congresspeople?
Think of it this way: Suppose there exists a politician that cares deeply about N issues. She knows she can only do what's right on M out of those N due to various constraints. She is going to pick those M issues that are most important to her. She will fight tooth and nail to get reelected so that she can complete her work on those M issues. This is exactly what politicians should be doing, no?
Interesting point. I haven't thought about it that way. But do you think that's the explanation for all the activities where they flipflop on the other N-M issues?
Yes, partially, it is. If, as a politician, you deeply care about a specific issue that you think is most important, then you should be willing to do whatever it takes on all the other ones to get it done.
In that case, wouldn't it be nice to have a website that identifies every politician's main focus? Based on their votes and maybe with interviews on that page supporting it?
Such a website would be very useful to society, and can be done on city and state levels all around the world.
Also, being a congressman is VERY prestigious. Just having the job and all the perks that come with it(money, status, security, influence, etc) is very desirable.
I guess to me prestige is secondary to actually doing the job. After all with the congressman's connections he or she can continue to have an impact afterwards. Look at retired US presidents and vice presidents who want to continue to make a difference! Sometimes it's even easier and more pleasant for them once they're out of office.
People also say that regulators are captured by the industry via opportunities they get in a revolving door. They are offered cushy positions at the industry after they stop being politicians, in exchange for favorable votes. I could see this as possibly being a bigger motivator than re election.
Maybe there should be some consequences to not voting according to the policies you ran on. Buy in any case, if most politicians are awayed by lobbying, then being one politician who isn't won't make a huge difference.
I see that you also heard that episode of This American Life.
Actually I didn't. The mechanics of congressional corruption have been a long running interest of mine. But I think Ira Glass is great and if what I'm saying here is the essence of what he's saying too, that's a welcome development.
For the longest time, this stuff was of interests only to wonk's wonks. Now it's slowly seeping into common awareness. That's a vital step on the way to (eventual) change. If you've got a link to Ira's show, please don't hesitate to post it.
Pretty sure this is the episode: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/461/t...
Starting conversations with the assumption that the person on the other end of the conversation is acting in bad faith will gain you nothing. If they are going to act in bad faith anyway, what you say doesn't matter.
Beyond that, the art of politics is to make sure you look reasonable at all times, and can make your case both to the decision maker in question, but also to everybody else now watching said decision maker in light of the statements you have made.
This is a rallying cry, and a notification to the FCC chairman that the YC community cares, is paying attention, and has pointed feelings on the matter, both in terms of policy and outcome.
I just had a read over the letter and the first 2-3 paragraphs talked about nothing other than what's in it for YC (and similar companies) that are worth "billions of dollars". I'll be honest - I cringed when the focal statement of the letter started "We need the FCC" - as opposed to perhaps what could have been expressed as "In order for the FCC to meet its objectives of XYZ, we are asking that they consider ABC".
One thing I've learned about trying to motivate someone else to do something - a la Carnegie's "How to win friends and influence people" and Pink's "To Sell is Human" - is to shut up about yourself and focus on the other person/party. Remember, we're all human.
> One thing I've learned about trying to motivate someone else to do something - a la Carnegie's "How to win friends and influence people" and Pink's "To Sell is Human" - is to shut up about yourself and focus on the other person/party.
The FCC -- as is common in regulatory agencies releasing proposals with a call for comments -- specifically wants impacted parties to detail how they are impacted (including financial impacts), because the FCC is tasked to take those impacts into account.
It makes sense. If I say this proposal hurts companies like ACME Tech. Then they should just be looking for ACME Tech's comments.
But I wonder how it balances individual impacts versus business impacts. Is a thousand people complaining "This ruins my ability to watch netflix" as significant as netflix same comments in terms of its business losses.
> I don't think the FCC cares.
I think the FCC cares, otherwise, it wouldn't keep adopting regulation aimed to restrict the degree to which broadband providers can deviate from neutrality.
They've also specifically asked for comments on how their current proposal on how to do that can be improved, and the YC comment letter addresses that question and the more specific subordinate questions asked within it.
see 'House of Cards' for textbook examples of this in action
How would one go about destroying someone’s political career?
See Grover Norquist. He approached congressional members of both parties with a pledge to never raise taxes. If a member refused to sign or signed and violated the pledge, his group would go into the local elections in that person's constituency and heavily fund their opponents.
If you aren't familiar with this, you might be surprised to see who signed it.
1) Support their opponent in the primary with enough to unseat them.
2) Send private dectectives to follow them.
3) Dig up dirt from their past.
By financing their opponent in the primaries.
The FCC has specifically asked people to comment on their proposal. Either they do care, or they're staging some very bizarre and pointless PR stunt because it really doesn't matter if anyone likes them or not.
The vibe I've been getting from Tom Wheeler is that he would probably personally prefer reclassifying ISPs as common carriers, but there's a ton of powerful forces leaning on him not to, and his half-assed proposal is the best he could get. But if he could point to an "anti-SOPA-like" grassroots movement and go "There's a ton of bad PR if you mess with these people, we better give them what they want", he might be allowed to reclassify after all. Though I'll be the first to admit, the sudden disappearance of half a million comments from the FCC site doesn't really corroborate this theory...
It's standard to have a commenting session on a proposal. It neither signals support or withdraw from the issue.
> The best thing for tech companies to do is to start destroying some political careers.
This could be pretty interesting. For example, maybe Google could mine the web (or Twitter their tweet data) for public information on politicians and start airing their dirty laundry. For example, if someone Googles a certain politician, it could show that information at the top of the search if the politician doesn't do what they want.
Wow, that's an absolutely terrible idea. I don't think Google would ever do that, if simply because the risk of it getting out is too great, it would absolutely destroy the trust of the brand.
But, interestingly, there is nothing stopping us doing it ... I think it is still possible to game google results such that the top results for any politicians name includes "sex scandal of senator X" simply by a lot of people linking to it.
It's democratic (if you are happy for Russian links to count in your senators feeds)
That's called google-bombing and is a well-established phenomenon.
Thank you - could not remember the term
We don't want Google to be the next Stasi!
Too late.
> "...so let’s reclassify broadband as the public utility we know it to be."
Thank you very much for writing that! (and the letter in general!)
are we talking only hard wired (cable/fiber) or wireless as well? I would not be surprised if costs rise as the provider, similar to who provides natural gas to my area, gets paid a wonderful fee regardless of how much gas i actually use. Then there are all these permitted charges for billing, special taxes, and the like, which raised my gas bill independent of my usage and gas prices.
We might not get what we want or expect. However do not think that I agree with services like Netflix paying more for priority when I am already paying for the bandwidth
> Y Combinator is Silicon Valley’s premiere early stage investor.
Shouldn't it be 'premier'? I know, not a big deal, but a mistake on the first line doesn't scream 'Best in the Business' if you ask me.
Fixed. Thanks. I can't tell you how many times I and others read over that and somehow missed it. So it goes with typos.
Typos tend to materialize when you hit 'submit', 'publish' or other similarly labeled buttons. Very annoying. At least we've left the days of lead type behind so fixing is a bit quicker.
Sometimes I wonder if those buttons have some kind of 'scramble grammar' logic built into them...
needs another "create". much more minor than the other typo though!lead the world, create jobs, and tremendous value"I can't tell you how many times I and others read over that"
From years of being in the graphics business I noted that people tended to miss words that weren't particularly difficult but at the same time (and same people) usually caught difficult words.
My reasoning was that people "chunk" the easy frequent words but slow down and think about every letter in the difficult words.
Some of the most common errors were actually with the city names and street addresses (and numbers) for example.
I've read that when not perusing the text we are only looking at the first and last letters of a word and in some cases the general shape of the word to determine which word it is, leading to frequent typos by otherwise very intelligent thoughtful people. Cheers to YC.
In a letter like this is it typical to state credentials before stating the intention of the letter? I'm not an expert in persuasive writing, but the form I learned was something like this:
There are probably a multitude of theories on how to persuade or influence people, so I'm genuinely curious what the thought process was for writing something like this.1. question, concern or objection 2. bona fides and background information 3. vision for change or outcome 4. call to actionP.S.
Thanks for fighting the good fight!
American political writing, especially to courts and legal bodies but in some cases also public appeals (like campaign ads and ballot statements on propositions in CA) tend to swap 1 and 2; I believe this is with the intent of making the statements on the issue a more coherent and concise message.
I believe that in legal writing, there's the additional intent of making it easier for a professional to skip over the boilerplate introductions of the bona fides and jump straight to the relevant content - and make no mistake, this is absolutely a legal filing, intended to persuade a small group of professionals, with their careers and maybe also some actual principles at stake. The effect on the broader public is kind of incidental.
The parent post is about the typo of 'premier' as 'premiere', not about whether it's appropriate to state credentials before the intent of the letter.
Most of the other comments are political in nature, so I thought my comment fit better with the one comment about editing.
I would put that mistake on the same level as "typo" and hope that it would be missed or ignored, if it can't be corrected. It's a deeply unimportant error that in no way hinders the understanding of the message.
True, but that's not a forum post, that's a document that aims to change policy and as such it pays off to put your best foot forward so the GP has absolutely done the right thing in calling that one out so it could be fixed.
I agree with you (and fnordfnordfnord), but I was under the impression that this is a duplicate of a document already sent, in which case what was sent can't be retracted and edited. I certainly didn't mean to come across as critical of pointing out the typo.
Pointing it out here can only help.
I said this in a comment a couple of months back on the subject, companies for net neutrality need to start lobbying. I understand Reddit, Y! Combinator and pretty much every company with a conscious who cares about the Internet all have good intentions and have more reasons than most to see fair laws/legislation based around the Internet. But the sad reality is the FCC is a mere Government agency and words are not enough.
Look at those who are against net neutrality, those who stand to gain the most from opposing it: ISP's. I can't recall where I saw it, but it was an infographic/table showing which companies/organisations have been spending lobbyist cash on getting their archaic and unfair legislation through via the FCC. It seems as though spending has increased over the years in the form of donations and propaganda.
If the likes of Google, Reddit and Y! Combinator want to see a fair Internet, they need to combine some cash into a pool and use it to lobby the right parts of the system. Sadly we live in a world where money talks and words are ignored. I have seen a lot of companies speaking out, but maybe it is time to consider changing tactics when a public statement from Google on the subject is basically ignored. Pull out those wallets and start spending guys, it's the only way.
> Y! Combinator
This is the first time I've seen this misconception, and I have to admit it make me chuckle a bit.
"Y!" is a trademark of Yahoo, which has no connection to Y Combinator (which is spelled without any exclamation mark).
I had just finished drafting up an article on Yahoo when I wrote that, so in my head I had the letter Y followed by an exclamation mark. Surprised, it's not a mistake a lot of people frequently make.
Do such comments have any effect? It's hard to overlook that money seems to drive American politics moreso than public opinion (with the exception of the presidential elections).
I think that YC will become increasingly prominent in politics, because the tech sector has to in order to maintain control of its own fate. It'll be interesting to see what other moves YC will make.
Public comments are routine in setting administrative law. (The concept is called notice-and-comment.) Congress gives the administering agency authority to make an administrative rule, and that rule can only happen after a public notice period about the proposed rule, during which any member of the public can comment on the proposed rule. Rules are often modified during the public comment period, which will be reflected when the rule is finally published.
Your point is well taken that well organized (not always well moneyed) narrow interest groups can often get their way in the legislative or administrative rule-making process simply by being organized and cohesive. That is why public-choice theory[1] suggests that representative democracy cannot always achieve disinterested action in favor of the abstract public good. But what we deal with is a system that is imperfect, but better than other systems of government that have been tried, in the comparison that Churchill popularized.[2]
> Do such comments have any effect?
Yes.
> It's hard to overlook that money seems to drive American politics moreso than public opinion
One of the ways that money drives regulatory politics is that having money means you can hire people who (1) understand the regulatory process, and (2) participate in open comment opportunities by submitting comments that are effective (particularly, by addressing the desired policy changes in terms of that address directly the points for which the regulatory agency has called for input.)
>Do such comments have any effect?
If I understand correctly, the process dictates that the FCC formulate responses to the concerns raised during the public comment stage.
And maybe later, after everything has been ruined, if we're lucky, at the future congressional special committee on FCC commissioner misconduct hearings, Kucinich or someone will rake Wheeler and his buddies over the coals for failing to address those concerns.
A lot of folks on the legal/policy side of this debate believe that a regulator can distinguish between network administration that is monopolistic rent seeking and that which is value added services.
I'm very suspicious of this as an engineer. I suspect it is very hard to tell the difference. In a competitive environment, we can more easily discover the difference. I strongly prefer imposing competition at the last mile rather than the EFF's suggestion of Title 2 + forebearance...
Right. We've had 'competition' in the last mile for the last twenty years, and it's led to terrible service and slower broadband than anywhere else in the developed world. Because that 'competition' leads to lots of local monopolies of the worst sort. We've already discovered the difference on this issue.
Isn't the issue really those square quotes? Maybe the U.S. nominally has such competition, but based on what I've read, it sounds like most people don't feel they have much actual choice.
Compare this to a place like Tokyo, where there's a vast number of real competitors for both last-mile infrastructure (wires / low-level communication) and ISP services, and perhaps even more critically, those two components seem to be largely decoupled. That decoupling seems like it would go a long way in helping to avoid the sort of net-neutrality shenigans than seem to be occurring with U.S. ISPs these days, by dramatically decreasing barriers to entry for new ISPs.
Wait, who has been pretending that what we have now is competition? Most places I've lived have had a choice of the local phone monopoly or the local cable monopoly.
One thing that seems to get me is most of this sort of action is defensive, they propose a new bill and the population has to respond on mass to have it rejected and put us back to square one.
They then go away, rephrase, and we're on the defensive again. Eventually, people who only defend will capitulate. You can't win if all you do is defend.
"Let me be clear: we need a bright-line, per se rule against discrimination, access fees, and paid prioritization on both mobile and fixed."
It would be hard to be less clear than this. When you have a comma-separated list of things you want a rule against, you need to either repeat the word "against" or risk having people at the FCC, who may just be dumb enough to make the mistake, think that you mean you want a rule against only the first thing you mention.
A naive reading of this (again, this is the FCC) would be that you mean we DO need access fees and paid prioritization, which I guess is the opposite of what you mean.
I think it's pretty unlikely that the FCC is going to try to follow this letter exactly only to make a semantic slipup like the one you describe. I don't know why you think the people at the FCC are dumb. They do seem to be an organization with several conflicts of interest, but I think they're capable of figuring this sentence out.
The same way capitalist concentration made building a small business very hard by the start of the 20th Century, the same process is taking place right now with the Internet. We usually don't notice or even like it (why, isn't it great to have every service in the same place?), but it is a tendency. Many arguments in favor of the small business and the virtues of free competition that were used back then are being used now by this post. The post even acknowledges that "the world isn't flat", but presumes the Internet needs to be, as if it was isolated from the rest of the system.
Even if net neutrality were approved, I don't think that unless there are other technological revolutions that open new sectors up like the PC or the Internet were, that subdivisions of large companies will be responsible for most new stuff, taking the most of the market for itself anyway and making competition harder, as we can see today in many ways. It'd just be a (very positive) way to preserve the current state of things a while longer, but not something capable of keeping the Internet "flat" in the long term.
startups would struggle to compete against those who were
able to afford paying for a fast lane--or an exclusive
fast lane. Even the slightest discrimination or paid
prioritization significantly affects startups, as
microseconds matter with both webpage-loading and
real-time content.
If a "fast lane" cost as much as using a CDN, then presumably most startups wouldn't have a problem with it.
That was well written, and provided a deep understanding of the topic. I really hope the FCC will listen to such reasoned responses, and not to big monied interests.
YC is a big monied interest, it's just one which happens to dovetail with the views of most HN readers.
It's great to see more and more organizations taking a public stand - however it would be even better to see even a hint that a policy-based solution is coming.
Apologies for the cynicism, as I do support this letter, however I do think that some people will read it as reasons to block net-neutrality as y-combinator is a shopping-list of companies that annoy entrenched interests.
"It's the economy, stupid" has seemingly been replaced with "It's my economy, stupid", as the mating call of the political class.
Todays FCC commissioners have a unique opportunity; they can choose to shirk their responsibility to the public and kill the promise of the internet or they can go down in history as its saviors... the commission that preserved the internet as an economic engine of growth for generations to come.
Preserved it until next year anyway, when the next version of the "we like money and power" bill is introduced. The problem with fighting big corporations is that we only need to lose once, and they have a non-trivial amount of highly motivated people on payroll just to do the fighting.
A title II classification would be a huge deal. Not that people could rest on their laurels, but my sense is that it would be more difficult to undo than you are letting on.
What exactly is meant by this? Is there a source behind it?
> The fate of reddit may have been very different if Comcast had discriminated against our little two-person-startup in favor of the NBC.com news portal and the sites of other news giants.
Comcast owns NBC. They want to have a large news audience to fit their business model. Reddit directly competes against that, as a news aggregator collects information from all sorts of places (including those hostile to Comcast).
Comcast could say, "Well, you're directly competing with our website, and you're putting hostile articles about us on the front page. We'll just throttle your access until your users get frustrated and leave." They're not the government; they can refuse service to whomever they please.
If the FCC doesn't create rules that enforce net neutrality, this is a reality. And what's more is that no one can stop them otherwise because many people have no alternative to Comcast. As the South Park episode goes, "Oh, you must be really bummed. I guess you could switch services... oh... wait, you can't. We're the only one."
(nipple rubbing intensifies)
Basically, if you have the resources, you can enforce dominance in the market with money. One of the cool things about Internet startups right now is that the barrier to entry is pretty low - anyone with a laptop, an Internet connection, and some pretty cheap web hosting service can create the next Facebook. The lack of net neutrality changes that.
The may have indicates speculation. What's to source?
Why don't we just shut down the FCC? (Serious question)
http://transition.fcc.gov/Plan-for-Orderly-Shutdown-Septembe...
To answer your question:
Proponents of net neutrality are asking the FCC for new regulation on the internet in order to prevent ISPs from prioritizing certain traffic over others. If we were to shut down the FCC, ISPs would be unrestrained.
In other words - the problem with the FCC is not that it is actively doing bad things, the problem is that it is not doing the job we would like it to.
I didn't know Alexis was a partner at YC. When did that happen?
He's officially been on the payroll since 2010;
http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/01/reddit-cofounder-alexis-oha...
But yeah, I don't see his name on the partner list;
The EFF set up a nice site that allows you to easily contact the FCC yourself: https://www.dearfcc.org/
I've heard Alexis say it many times before but I still don't understand what a flat World Wide Web means.
Could someone explain?
As in "level playing field". Might be a reference to this book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Is_Flat
Er, did you misspell one of their surnames?!?
yeah i have read about it on google
I know I am in the minority here, but while I prefer net neutrality, I don't support it.
I'd like to have it, but I'd rather not see it enforced, because I believe private property rights are more important than anything else.
Should we really be able to force someone to use their property an a way that serves the public interest?
If so, where do we draw the line?
If ISPs start taking money to throttle bandwidth, alternatives will be established. Perhaps, widespread public wifi will become more prevalent--I don't know.
But, what I do know is that forcing companies--even if they are big corporations to use their property in a way we deem in our best interest is a slippery slope.
Want to call broadband an public utility? Good, then make it one. But, do it officially...
>I'd like to have it, but I'd rather not see it enforced, because I believe private property rights are more important than anything else.
And what private property is at stake here? We gave ISPs hundreds of billions of dollars to build our infrastructure and on top of that they failed to hit the access and speed goals. This comment shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the problem. This needs to be admitted before anything else.
>Should we really be able to force someone to use their property an a way that serves the public interest?
Of course. This is the slippery slope fallacy at it's finest. I can't stand when arguments are discussed in talking points. The world is complicated, we need to find the right balance of personal liberty and society's needs. Retreating to talking points is easy, but it doesn't solve any actual problems.
> Should we really be able to force someone to use their property an a way that serves the public interest?
Yes, that's the price of a government-granted monopoly.
> If so, where do we draw the line?
If you don't have a government-granted monopoly, you don't have to be neutral. For example, that's how the Internet backbone works.
Instead of trying to get politicians and bureaucrats to thoroughly understand the technology and hoping that they'll steer these monopolies in a favorable direction, why don't we demand that said monopolies be dissolved? I.e., if the terms of the deal are going to be altered, why not declare that there may be two or even several players? Also, why can't this be resolved at the regional level? Why does Netflix have to be as uniformly slow as obscure-and-poorly-optimized-cat-pics.com across the entire country?
One of the problems is they're natural monopolies. You only need the one data link and so it's (arguably) more cost effective to have a single regulated monopoly on the last mile side. You can create hybrid systems (like the UK) where other businesses buy capacity wholesale from the monopoly provider and compete over the same infrastructure.
The same could be said of the grocery stores or car dealerships in my town. The problem is that as soon as you say it'd be more efficient to have all our eggs in one basket, the human nature of the carrier kicks in and says, "Hey I've got it made now. I can take it easy because no one's allowed to compete with me". Unfortunately, hiring some delegate who's multiple-times removed from the consumer/voter and is likewise unmotivated to improve the situation doesn't change that.
Yes doing the trenching and tunneling through various neighborhoods is disruptive and requires heavy machinery, etc. but that's just to create a hole in the ground. Once some conduit is laid (as a public good by the municipality?) it should be relatively easy for new carriers to come in and pull fiber or what-have-you. You just have to make the channel big enough for e.g., several cables and then you lease the space to the x highest bidders for five years at a time where x > 1.
There are probably better ways to finance things and minimize the disruption, etc. but overall it doesn't seem infeasible to me.
> Should we really be able to force someone to use their property an a way that serves the public interest?
Yes. And this happens all the time in a million different contexts. Taxes. Easements. Speed limits on cars and trucks. You are constantly being told what you can and can't do with things you own.
"Freedom" isn't letting you do whatever the fuck you want to do with whatever happens to have your name attached to it. It's balancing individual rights with our collective rights so we all (ideally) maintain the freedom to live our lives as we wish.
Speed limits only apply on public roads. They are a condition of using the road, not a condition imposed on your vehicle. You could build a private race track and drive as fast as you want.
What about other forms of "neutrality"?
The BBC is required to maintain "balance" over political issues.
Should Google return the same results to all queries (ie no search bubble allowed?)
Should Facebook (indeed any advertiser) be required to serve the same advert no matter what the profile of the incoming request? I mean Billboards are public broadcasts not private to me, why should online advertising be different? I know it is but that's not the point.
I support net neutrality as it is commonly defined, but I think there are many other "neutrality" issues that we gloss over happily. I doubt very much Google will be happy removing the search bubble, and I would be interested in how much it affects the quality of results.
I think the problem is with choice. I can get either CenturyLink or Cox where I live, and if they both decide to throttle certain services, I just have to live with it.
If I don't like Google, I can use Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, etc. Same with Facebook.
Or I can start my own. Starting a search engine or social network is easy. Getting any market share is hard, since Google and FB are doing a good job, but they know how easily they could be overtaken if they screw up.
I can't start an ISP because I can't use the existing infrastructure and I can't afford to build my own. But Google Fiber shows that if I could start one that doesn't suck, I'd probably have a relatively easy time getting customers, because the competition is so bad.
I agree though, Google and FB make some choices we probably don't like, but it's impossible to regulate everything (and most people wouldn't want to), so we leave it for cases where the free market has proven not to work.
The word "neutrality" is confusing you.
"Net neutrality" isn't about content neutrality, exactly. It's about common carrier neutrality. Common carriers are essentially required to grant equal access to anyone who wants to use their service. They're neutral in that they can't say "no" to anyone. The idea being that it gives someone too much power to be able to block access to a critical service at their whim. (Say, for example, the phone company wanted to stop connecting phone calls between anyone they thought might be politically against their interests.)
"Balance" has nothing to do with it. If 90% of an ISPs users want to download pictures of cats, the ISP is not required to also force users to download an equal number of dog pics. Or to force content providers to offer an equal number of cat and dog photos.
Parametric advertising doesn't create a class-based system of access to information or business opportunities.