>Guess what happens when G runs a banner under each search or Youtube video mentioning that performance is bad because Comcast is blocking things, here's Brian Roberts's phone number?

Nothing because consumers typically have a choice of 1 or maybe 2 ISPs? You said it yourself, Comcast is already the most disliked company in the US - they'd have nothing to lose by blocking YouTube - or worse, making it so slow that Google begins to lose viewership.

Or default service that blocks VPN, tracks everything you're doing and uses it for their benefit; and if you don't like that you can pay extra to opt out.

It's really clear. Democrats: This is the customer's information. Republicans: This is the ISP's equipment, and therefore anything on it is fair game for the equipment owner to use however they want, deny service to whoever they want, for any reason they want.

So distilled down what you end up with is a classist system where privacy in infrastructure isn't a right, it's something you pay for: Rich people are better, they get more rights, because they can afford to buy those rights.

That's a pretty broad brush you are painting with. Do you have some hard data that says things break down so clearly along party lines? I'd particularly like to see data about non-politicians, if it is available, since the way Congress votes on such things is not necessarily driven by the way their constituents view the issue (if they are even aware of it).

I don't know how constituents in either party view things, but it seems pretty clear how members of Congress view things.

There is a bill in Congress now to strip away the rules the FCC passed last year that prevent ISPs from selling your browsing history and other personal information without your permission.

In the House, here is the list of sponsors:

Rep. Flores, Bill [R-TX-17], Rep. Blackburn, Marsha [R-TN-7], Rep. Olson, Pete [R-TX-22], Rep. Lance, Leonard [R-NJ-7], Rep. Scalise, Steve [R-LA-1], Rep. Latta, Robert E. [R-OH-5], Rep. Guthrie, Brett [R-KY-2], Rep. Kinzinger, Adam [R-IL-16], Rep. Johnson, Bill [R-OH-6], Rep. Long, Billy [R-MO-7], Rep. Brooks, Susan W. [R-IN-5], Rep. Walters, Mimi [R-CA-45], Rep. Cramer, Kevin [R-ND-At Large], Rep. Collins, Chris [R-NY-27], Rep. Costello, Ryan A. [R-PA-6], Rep. Bilirakis, Gus M. [R-FL-12], Rep. Shimkus, John [R-IL-15].

In the Senate, here is the list of sponsors:

John Barrasso (R-WY.), Jeff Flake (R-AZ.), Roy Blunt (R-MO.), John Boozman (R-AR.), Shelly Moore Capito (R-WV.), Thad Cochran (R-MS), John Cornyn (R-TX), Tom Cotton (R-AR), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Deb Fischer (R-NE), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Dean Heller (R-NV), James Inhofe (R-OK), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Mike Lee (R-UT), Rand Paul (R-KY), Pat Roberts (R-KS), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Richard Shelby (R-AL), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), John Thune (R-SD), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Jerry Moran (R-KS).

Note that all 17 sponsoring Representatives and all 24 sponsoring Senators are Republican.

Hm, maybe we should use those netprospex records to call the family members of these Congress people and see what they think about data protections...

> That's a pretty broad brush you are painting with. Do you have some hard data that says things break down so clearly along party lines?

They do on the FCC, for the whole time since net neutrality and internet privacy have become an issue. Congress is a little fuzzier but mostly along the same lines.

In the electorate it might be blurrier, but clearly the distribution of views of the relevant politicians shows that the people who cross lines on the above description and who prioritize the issue when it comes to voting aren't that numerous.

"They do on the FCC"

Not sure what you mean by that, you mean the breakdown of Republicans vs Democrats at the FCC?

Yes, the FCC Republicans have been consistently against Open Internet regulation, the Democrats consistently for it. And similar shsrp partisan divisions exist on a number of other internet-related issues.

I am referring to the statements and policies voted on and implemented by FCC regulators. Asking about non-politicians on the face of it seems pointless, my entire comment is about policy. And that is necessarily about the politics. The affiliation of plebians doesn't matter, what matters is the ideology of those with the power to enact the policy.

Ajit Pai opposes any sort of regulation that prescribes or proscribes specific activity under Title II, and Republicans in Congress likewise prefer ISP regulation under the far weaker rules in Title I, rather than Title II. And he opposes subsidies favored by the Connect America Fund in reducing the disparity in broadband performance between urban and rural areas, and also the Lifeline program which makes it more affordable. Last year Lifeline was expanded, and Pai becomes chairman and blocks it as one off his first acts. These are night and day differences. It's fairly binary.

It's forcing free market ponies on what is a deeply monopolistic and anti-competitive market. Anytime there's meaningful competition you see conglomeration or market exit. It's absolutely a philosophy of "if you can't afford access or performance, the free market says go F yourself, and we aren't going to regulate an alternative outcome to that".

"Asking about non-politicians on the face of it seems pointless"

Except that the tone of your post implies:

Republicans="evil rich people" Democrats="good folks looking out for the average Joe"

I don't believe it is anywhere near that simple. It was not at all clear to me that your original post was referring to FCC regulators alone. It would have been better if that would have been explicitly stated at the outset.

I said from the outset exactly what I meant to say, and subsequently offered a qualification for upon request.

Unequivocally today's Republicans are heavily weighted, not exclusive, toward classism. It is a good and proper thing that there are rich, middle, and poor. People are different, egalitarianism is P.C. nonsense, and the classes should be preserved. People aren't equal. Better people have more wealth, wealth gives them goods and services like privacy, and even better justice because they can afford better lawyers. There are very few true rights, in this neo-feudal ideology. That is what explains the policies, including that of the new FCC.

Evil? No. I don't believe in anything supernatural. And far be it from me to imply anything. I see this as objective fact. Tone isn't required.

This isn't the Republican party of the 1920's or even the 1950's where we had massive subsidies for certain kinds of public infrastructure associated with having a civil society: telephone service was subsidized, obviously roads heavily subsidized, and the postal service was subsidized in these rural areas. There was simply no other way to level the playing field. They, and Democrats, built massive amounts of infrastructure.

And like any aristocracy, Republican policies will favor established players. Netflix is now a player, and they are paying for better access. Now, this game only gets enhanced, which will act as a barrier to entry to future competitors. It's bad for free market folks, and it's bad for fair minded civil society folks, because it isn't either of those things. This is finders keepers, losers weepers. It's a party largely about classism.

And Democrats largely provide the veneer of opposition, but really that's specious. But like any crotchety old man with poor hearing, sometimes they get the message and we're not all just left eating cake.

> Unequivocally today's Republicans are heavily weighted, not exclusive, toward classism.

The problem is the Democrats do the same thing just on different issues.

Republicans are in the pocket of oil companies, ISPs, agribusiness and defense contractors. Democrats are in the pocket of Hollywood, lawyers, HMOs, public sector unions and, let's face it, tech companies. They're both in the pocket of Wall St.

The idea that one of them is overall worse rather than worse for a specific industry is belied by the fact that they each get ~50% of the votes.

The problem is sometimes, like with Network Neutrality, there are objectively worse and objectively better overall alternatives, but those alternatives line up across party lines. So when the Republicans get in they try to destroy network neutrality and when the Democrats get in they try to pass SOPA and negotiate the TPP.

The key is to recognize that candidates matter more than parties. Zoe Lofgren and Diane Feinstein are both California Democrats, but what a difference.

Found the Republican who's still in denial that his party is just a bunch of rich white dudes trying to get richer.

It's more nuanced than that. It's a variation on the Nixon southern strategy as described by Lee Atwater in 1981. There simply aren't enough plutocrats to win elections. https://www.thenation.com/article/exclusive-lee-atwaters-inf...

If it weren't, they'd have halled in Steve King from Iowa into the House an expelled him for what he said over the weekend. People are Americans because of shared values, not this illiberal bloodline nonsense espoused by King and the ignorant redneck wing, or the inheritance and primogeniture wing. They smiled and said nothing over birtherism either, they took the wins.

It can be argued that the ISP's equipment is useless unless it runs data lines through state-owned land, therefore no, it doesn't get to do absolutely anything it wants with it.

The equipment that would be modifying the traffic would be in privately-owned exchanges or the ISP's datacenters. None of it would happen on the fiber crossing over (or running under) state owned land.

By that same logic, there should be no laws governing radio broadcasting, since the equipment that emits the photons is located in a private building, not in the public airspace through which the photons travel. Yet the FCC still exists.

The reason the FCC needs to regulate public airspace is because transmissions interfere with each other. If there was a magical way to have no possible way to hijack or interfere with entities' assigned frequencies, the FCC would not need to exist.[1]

By your logic, the FCC should regulate a conversation two people were having in person just by virtue of them being on public land. Yet the FCC does not. The FCC also does not regulate the signs on the sides of buildings, even though light is reflected from them to public airspace.

1. They also have been given the power to provide censorship of public spectrums as well because some idiots deemed swear words to be scary.

> The reason the FCC needs to regulate public airspace is because transmissions interfere with each other.

It's the exact same situation with net neutrality. If an ISP decides to give traffic from some hosts higher priority than my traffic, then that other traffic is interfering with my communications in the exact same way as an antenna that transmits a 50 GW signal on nearly all frequencies.

> By your logic, the FCC should regulate a conversation two people were having in person just by virtue of them being on public land. Yet the FCC does not. The FCC also does not regulate the signs on the sides of buildings, even though light is reflected from them to public airspace.

It's not that the government must regulate everything that happens in the public sphere. The government should regulate things if it's for the good of everyone (or most everyone), and if those things happen in the public sphere, then it has legitimacy to do it.

So, to address your examples, the FCC should regulate that conversation if those people are so loud that no one else in the city can speak, and it should regulate a sign on the side of a building if it emits such intense light that things in its path catch fire.

>It's the exact same situation with net neutrality. If an ISP decides to give traffic from some hosts higher priority than my traffic, then that other traffic is interfering with my communications in the exact same way as an antenna that transmits a 50 GW signal on nearly all frequencies.

You're paying the ISP to carry your traffic under the conditions in your private agreement with them. When someone spews radio frequencies, you don't have a private agreement with them that permits them to do so. If radio frequency interference was opt-in only, the FCC wouldn't need to exist.

  Demand for Youtube and FB are so high and ubiquitous that 
  pretty much any ISP will immediately cave in.

Yep, Comcast better be careful lest I leave them for the 6mbps competitors I have as options in the backwater community I live in called Berkeley, CA.

I utterly fucking loathe Comcast, and yet they get thousands of my dollars because of an unspoken of oligopoly among ISPs that has grown out of the tacit agreement to not enter in to each others fiefs.

Years ago I wrote: How My Hatred Of Comcast Drove Me To Buy Their Stock [1].

TLDR: I hedged the possibility of oligopolistic/monopolistic pricing practices of a company that I cannot avoid by assuming that such predatory pricing practices will benefit their stockholders.

Their standard rates in my area have doubled since I bought the stock. The stock price has tripled. I wish this experiment had ended differently, with me realizing that Comcast wasn't so bad after all, and selling the stock at cost.

1: https://medium.com/@nicklum/how-my-hatred-of-comcast-drove-m...

Does Sonic.net not provide service in Berkeley? Back when I lived in the Bay Area, I switched from Comcast purely because Sonic.net isn't an utterly loathsome company. Turns out with Sonic I didn't have to reboot my modem every other week either.

Sonic is my preferred ISP. No data caps, no snooping, solid customer support. They're just happy being a great ISP. However, outside of their fiber offering, they are hobbled by AT&T copper.

I've used Sonic many different times throughout SF and while their support guys have been great, any and all problems I've had were usually a result of the copper. And AT&T couldn't care less.

Currently I have 50Mbps FTTN service from Sonic and it's rock solid. It's never been down in the few years I've had it. It does, however, still use AT&T infrastructure. But this is the only time I've used Sonic over AT&T and been pretty happy with it.

Sonic is reliant on AT&T boxes; the best I can get is dual copper, and given my distance from the box, my estimated speed is 6mbps.

Oh how I've pleaded with them to bring fiber here. I remember when they announced that Berkeley was on the shortlist about 5 years ago.

sonic speeds in many parts of the bay area (even in SF) is not competitive with comcast. they are rolling out fiber in select neighborhoods and can't wait until they come to my part of town.

I had to switch from Sonic (to Comcast) for just that reason. I had a bonded DSL connection from Sonic that could just barely get 10Mbps. And the bonding really wasn't even worth it because one line was at 8 and the other at 2. And it was all due to the unmaintained copper coming from AT&T. I agree with their new strategy though - the only way to have any control over their service quality was to own their own fiber.

Now, I'm in Cincinnati and have excellent fiber service from Cincinnati Bell, so it's possible to have good quality from the incumbent carrier.

Perhaps if comcast were deliberately strangling youtube, sonic's speeds would be competitive with comcast's.

This is foolish. Google doesn't own the last mile into your house. They are beholden to ATT + Verizon, and, to a lesser extent, Comcast.

Due to the regulatory moat that the Carriers have built up over the years (including spectrum rights) it's at least a 10 year battle to loosen their stranglehold at all, and that becomes a fascinating war if indeed content can be prioritized. Such a battle would be not unlike battles of the past, but at a larger scale.

Do you remember what it was like to load apps onto phones before the iPhone broke the carrier app lock?

"Google and Facebook now run networks larger than most major ISPs -- among the largest on the planet."

The size of those transit and/or internal networks is really not at issue here. In discussions about vertical integration and monopoly power, what matters is the last mile - of which they have almost zero.

> Guess what happens when G runs a banner under each search or Youtube video mentioning that performance is bad because Comcast is blocking things, here's Brian Roberts's phone number?

The ISP filters the banner before it reaches the customer, and replaces it with their own message (or just advertising from someone who has paid the ISP.)

This is not possible on an https connection and HSTS preloading prevents ISPs from downgrading secure connections.

In the near future: "To provide optimum security and privacy for your internet browsing, you must now install our Comcastic™ Special Magic Certificate®. Failure to install our certificate will result in browsing being restricted. If you don't like it, go to a competitor."

That's very possible. It's probably better you dont even say it publicly to avoid given them the idea. Only a few companies have to implement it for it to become a national problem.

That cat is already out of the bag. Companies already sell MitM services to companies that want to monitor and filter the web traffic of their employees.

I suspect there are already niche ISPs out there that cater to the content-blocking impulses of certain customers by doing deep-packet inspection and firewalling at the gateway.

I don't think they can break SSL in order to do that.

yet comcast has a virtual monopoly on last mile. which is the only part that matters. many towns only have comcast (or like dialup or something crazy slow). let's take an extreme example where comcast uses a blackout to get a better deal with youtube. customers don't have the option to switch to a different provider. even if they did have the choice, it's not as simple as just calling up a new provider to switch services, you have to wait to get activated, at the worst case a matter of days before someone can come out to install hardware.

Comcast should instead slowdown ads served by those websites, not the websites themselves. Then their customers don't complain but hits the opponents in the pocket book.

Just like with health care insurance, ISPs are an anti-competitive market. Both ISPs in my area have hard caps, crap service, and are widely disliked. Even within the city, there's a surprising lack of overlap where entire neighborhoods are only serviced by one of those companies.

Yet Google tried being a retail ISP, with Google Fiber, and gave up. They've also tried some WiFi things, and toyed with being a wireless telco. But Google backed away from being a carrier. The margins aren't that good and you actually have to service customers.

> Demand for Youtube and FB are so high and ubiquitous that pretty much any ISP will immediately cave in.

Unfortunately I don't think this is totally true, e.g. in many places in the USA (even large cities and tech hubs), consumers only have one ISP option fast enough to stream YouTube.

If only ISP didn't work that hard to create artificial monopolies in the most part of their net.

I'd add Amazon in there by nature of Netflix as much as anything else.