When the Americans successfully ruin NN for themselves they might inspire other countries to follow though.

Netherlands has a net neutrality law since 2012, Chile – since 2010.

From what I understand you will still be put in the slow lane if you're a Dutch startup offering services to Americans. and the US market is not exactly small. It's a loss for the Internet as a whole, not only the USA.

the EU market isn't exactly small, either. it is smaller, but not small.

Which means you're going to be in the slow lane for roughly more than a half of your market.

>As a Dutchie my Internet is largely unaffected by the FCC.

You can't be more wrong. Since Netflix, Amazon, youporn, imgur, reddit will be affected by this and they will have to pay more to keep their bandwidth on the same level as now, or slower by only 10% (hey, they could slow down their network links by 60%, but since they pay 20M per year, its slower by only 10%!) you as the end, you the end consumer will have to pay for this more. It doesn't matter where you live, as long as you use any of US internet services, you will pay for this more, sooner or later.

Traceroute from Germany shows that none of leave continental Europe, at least not this morning. Are you suggesting that they'll cross-subsidise? That they will raise their euro-denominated prices in order to compensate for increased costs in the US?

They might. Of course. Vendors will raise prices where they think the market will bear it. But it seems strange to assume that by default, vendors will respond to raised costs in one market by raising prices in another.

I don't think you're in opposition - the argument being, what's going to happen to the location of those services if they're held to ransom by new data transfer fees?

Move them to another jurisdiction without them.

Investment into the EU (in the form of datacenters, locating jobs to prove the work is done there, and the transit costs in the new location).

That being said, the cynic in me agrees that broadly you're right, and whatever the companies do to mitigate the effects of it by moving hosting/transfer elsewhere, they'll use this as an excuse to jack the prices up regardless.

>> As a Dutchie my Internet is largely unaffected by the FCC.

> You can't be more wrong. Since Netflix, Amazon, youporn, imgur, reddit will be affected by this

The same Netflix that reportedly has very poor show selection outside US? The same Amazon that has its data centers all over the world? And the three sites that are a pastime of little use and importance?

You need to do much better job at selecting examples to make your point compelling.

His Internet will still not be affected.

The Internet is not just Facebook, reddit, google, youporn and Netflix or the dozen or so popular companies.

Not to mention that most of those have servers in the EU which will not be affected by this. Sure they could raise prices there, but since this would just subsidize US costs a local competitor would have a competitive advantage.

What this non-Net Neutrality does is largely saying "if you want to build an internet-based startup the US may not be the place for you".

Are you saying it will create positive competitive edge for companies from Holland?

Well, the servers even of USian internet services need not be located in data centers in the US. So we'll just add the emigration of data centers to the list of negative consequences for the US.

> Since Netflix, Amazon,

The thing is, that if that would happen, a lot of people who got onto Netflix/Amazon for streaming content because it's a good convenience/price ratio, will simply revert to illegal downloads from local servers if the prices go up much. I recommended Netflix to people here in my poor farmer village and they got off it again and went back to illegal download simply because they did not want to pay the same price Americans pay while getting much less (quality) content.

So those companies move their servers out of the USA, which would be good anyway, or their competitirs get an edge.

Not really, these charges were be born by the consumer. This is about the ability to offer consumer tiers. Sure there might be companies that pay the consumer fee to be included, like QVC did to be on everyone's cable.

Your internet will not be affected for exactly as long as it takes local providers to see the proof of concept and financial benefits and lobby your government to pass similar regulation, their efforts now bolstered by the ability to point to the US as a “successful” forerunner.

Most countries like to copy the most successful country on Earth. You probably think of things like software patents, that were rejected in the EU. But that was a very long fight!

I hope we don't even have to _start_ the net neutrality fight in the EU, by winning it outside.

>Most countries like to copy the most successful country on Earth.

Countries with free and universal healthcare: 117. Countries with free (but not universal) healthcare: 39. Countries with universal (but not free) healthcare: 2. Countries who copied the USA in having neither free nor universal healthcare: 42. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_univers...

Countries who voted in favour of the United Nations resolution “Combating glorification of Nazism, Neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance”: 131. Countries who abstained from voting: 48. Countries who copied the USA and voted against the resolution: 2. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-un-nazi-...

Number of countries who copy the USA and spend more than more than 4.1% if their budgets on military expenditures: China, who spends 13.0%. USA spends 36.0% https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/04/24/the-to...

Number of countries who copy the US policy of not guaranteeing paid maternal leave: 2. https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/us0211webwco...

My choice of words may not be good, but other countries (esp. allies) copied MANY more things than things they didn't copy, esp. with topics related to NN... Copyright law, patents, free speech, and internet itself... and the fight against software patents was long and difficult.

yeah, I was being a bit flippant... You are definitely right that those in other countries with anti-NN agenda's will use this to advance their cause.

What your comment misses is the commitment to the principle of liberty as set forth by Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations and its influence on the U.S. Constitution. I would suggest reading all 71 Anti-Federalist Papers. Here is a good collection that was put together:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complete_Anti-Federalist

I live in the US, and agree with most of your point, but regarding military spending, a significant portion of that is due to occupation of foreign countries and external military bases. The US is basically the last country paying to maintain an empire.

The historical norm is that a successful empire is very profitable. If you have to spend money maintaining it, you're doing it wrong.

In other words: the US is not an empire. It's something that needs a different term.

What makes you say that it isn't profitable? The US has the largest GDP of any country by a large margin. Even the entire (pre-Brexit) EU combined is about 10% smaller.

But how much of the US GDP is attributable to its 'empire', especially considering the opportunity costs of the human and other capital invested in the DoD? I'd love to see the result of a detailed analysis.

Yes, and many countries would have to pay more for their own defense were the U.S. not building those bases and helping defend them.

Copy the most successful country in the world? Who would want a great firewall?

Sorry to sound like a nationalist here (i'm not), but the US has 1/3rd the population of China yet still has the largest economy, and the goto reserve currency. China actually has an ownership stake in all of their IT companies.

Contrary to a sibling comment, NN paves the way for the government to regulate what a private company can do with their IT assets, and therefore a great firewall situation.

>but the US has 1/3rd the population of China yet still has the largest economy

USA is first by Nominal GDP, but second by PPP GDP (or third if you count the EU). I wouldn't declare a definitive winner based on that. And it's better to leave population out of that, because per capita the US is far behind countries like Norway or Switzerland, and at only half the GDP of Luxembourg (both nominal and PPP).

You people are unbelievable. Please tell me about the last tech startup from Switzerland or Luxembourg... I'm not trying to declare some definitive "winner" here, but if you don't recognize which country is clearly dominant in the world, I can't help you.

Maybe that's the plan in the USA... Without NN it's easier than with NN.

Are you sure your logic is sound here(?):

The great firewall and net neutrality are both examples of the government regulating the internet.

Edit: Just to be clear, I'm sure we all agree that our ISPs should offer neutral transmission of packets without deference to source/destination or protocol/port.

Both regulate the internet, but in complete opposite ways:

Net neutrality is the default state of computer networks (a packet is a packet), and protecting it forbids discrimination by source, destination or contents.

The great firewall discriminates by source, destination or contents.

One of the main arguments against net neutrality is disallowing offering different speed or latency depending on the type of service (VoIP, gaming, downloads), but that's false, because you can do that without looking at the source, destination or contents; you just have to compare them with other packets (as opposed to comparing them to a pre-made list).

>Most countries like to copy the most successful country on Earth.

By what criteria is the USA "most successful country on earth"?

Also, by "most countries" you mean "countries with legal codes even vaguely compatible with Westminster-derived legal concepts" which is in no way "most countries" in a global sense, right?

> By what criteria is the USA "most successful country on earth"?

Power, influence, GDP. Things that matter to politicians, which are the ones that get to choose these matters.

US soft power and influence are waning (e.g. gutting if the state department) and the US consumer is about to take a hit with a massive transfer of wealth to the super rich. Even with the hard military power, I don’t see how the US is the “most successful country on earth”.

Net neutrality has nothing to do with the consumer. Very specifically, it has to do with peering and PNIs. There's a reason why NN is not a grassroots movement - it's literally corrupt corporations fighting each other over regulatory capture.

You make this claim as if it is a fact, and various Americans cannot have different points of view. I believe heavily in the ideas of individual liberty and private property. Even though I'm a nobody, in fly-over country does not mean I have not researched the underlying principles, and have not independently come to the same conclusion as these corporate conglomerate broadband providers.

These ISPs are insanely jealous of FANG.

The FCC are appointees, not elected.

> By what criteria is the USA "most successful country on earth"?

Given we're talking about the Internet. How about ARPANET?

> As a Dutchie my Internet is largely unaffected by the FCC.

Which in turn doesn't affect my outlook or my agreement with GP. I don't want to convince you either, I just want to route around you.