This whole thing just has me stumped as to how we even got into this position. How in the hell does a single bureaucrat have this kind of power in the US to make a unilateral decision affecting millions of people and billions of dollars in commerce?

Next, the FCC's legal mandate to deal with net neutrality is vague. This is why the 2010 rules were overturned in court, and barring a new law being enacted, the legality of the 2015 rules are ultimately in the hands of the courts. Until the courts decide, the FCC can create rules based on their interpretation.

The 2010 rules were overturned in court because the FCC has very little power if it classifies ISPs under Title I, but lots of authority under Title II.

Now some of the questions before a federal court are about the 2017 repeal, including 1) was the FCC's reversal of the Title II classification justified and 2) was the proceeding handled fairly under the Administrative Procedures Act.

The challenges to the 2017 reclassification are about whether the FCC justified the change and followed the required procedures, not whether it has the authority.

In the US, the battle has been going on for more than a decade. Look at how google search, youtube, reddit and even HN has changed. The last major holdout was facebook, but we've seen what happened to them. It wasn't by accident or because ordinary people wanted it. It's what the elites wanted. What the people want has never really mattered. Not in the US, not in europe, china, russia, etc.

And with the constant merging of content providers and ISPs, the internet will become more like TV for most people.

What's funny is how we had so much facebook spam here ( when it was really a non-story ) and so little coverage of such a monumentally important tech topic like net neutrality. I'm guessing between facebook and net neutrality stories only, facebook accounted for 99% and net neutrality accounted for 1% on HN.

One would think that "hacker" news would care about the important story and not political fluff. But hacker news hasn't been "hackerish" for a while now.

The FCC is not a single bureaucrat, it's a five seat commission limited to three members of any one political party; in practice, approximately (not exactly because of term timing), that means three members of the party holding the Presidency and two of the other major party.

This response is kind of ironic in context of net neutrality being repealed considering it is a decision which empowered those who are neither elected nor appointed by elected people against the will of the overwhelming majority of the citizens.

I'm a firm believer that both parties have their hands dirty in one way or the other, but in this instance, it doesn't seem to be so in this case.

Net neutrality was part of Obama's presidential platform, and the first attempt at codifying NN rules happened under his first FCC commissioner in 2010.

Both parties are not the same with respect to net neutrality.

The Democrats have publicly embraced net neutrality, but have done nothing to ensure it. Even in 2016, the Democrats official stated position was to do nothing, leaving it in the hands of the courts. Both parties actual actions have the same results.

I don't know where the "Democrat's official stated position" comes from, but I have a pretty good idea as to why Democrats weren't talking often about NN in 2016: Wheeler's FCC solved the problem. The ninth circuit upheld the 2015 rules. That's not nothing.

WA passed a law to ensure it. That's not nothing. Waiting for a decision and hoping the status quo sits (I mean it's a great story to ride on the coattails of and tell your constituents you did something), is nothing.

2) No one would praise a party for making laws to a problem that is otherwise fixed. Talk about feeding into the republican talking point of democrat bureaucrats.

In short: Don't spend effort fixing something that ain't broken.

This is on the GOP because they made something worse. It's not on the dems for "not making something even better". Make the GOP pay for it if you don't like it. Blaming dems for shit they didn't cause is in part why they lost the election.

Democrats were either incompetent at predicting the GOP would unwind this when they said they were gonna. Or they liked the idea if it being unwound and being able to blame the GOP for it.

And like I said, not their first day at the rodeo, so the former is impossible. They are definitely not incompetent, they definitely knew the regulations would be unwound. And they definitely did nothing about it as if their either didn't care, or they liked the idea of using it to rile up their base for campaign donations and votes.

This is crap. The bill was introduced and ignored, though they found time to pass a bill amending the same 1934 Communications act that covers net neutrality in the session to improve caller ID.

The issue wasn't remotely fixed at the time, and they chose to fix it in an easily reversible way. Unless they expected an eternal reelection, the Democrats caused this too. They lost the election because they can't rely on being slightly less terrible than the Republicans.

I'll admit I had missed the 2016 ruling on the issue. I may be overly cynical on it, but as I skimmed the briefing it seemed the ISPs still had some court options available. Even if I'm wrong there, they still had the chance to prevent the current situation and ignored it.

I thought it might be my local trunk hitting capacity, with some new neighbors connected and added load.

Then I learned about Comcast's ongoing refusal to increase interconnect capacity, even at Netflix's full expense.

The news about this broke, and the PR grew to be so bad that Comcast relented and started installing interconnections.

This was also the time when Comcast was trying to get one of its own video streaming products/initiatives off the ground (they made a few distinct pushes, in those years). Quelle coïncidence.

Their product then was hardly comparable to Netflix's. But they tried to ram it down their customers' throats, by making Netflix's performance on their network suck.

So, any time one of the politicians, current FCC flaks, PR people, or the like tell me we haven't actually seen problems/abuses. Or, in the face of any number of journalists incorrectly reporting this supposed lack of instances of abuse. Well, I try to point them back to this instance -- apparently so soon forgotten -- that fits the abuse scenario pretty darned well.

"What's that?" I asked.

"It's like Netflix, but better" was the rep's response. Her tone indicated she was pretty unconvinced herself. I repeated it and laughed, then she laughed. Neither of us said anything else, but it was clear that was her given line to parrot and that we both realized how ridiculous it was.

But it is awful that they can literally make this so now...not with content, but by degrading reliability of competitors.

And, at the end of the day, what are you going to do? If they're willing to weather a little bad PR, in many markets you would have no other choice.

It wasn't the bad PR that forced the issue.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/netfl...

Speeds increased 65% after the payment. It was kind of a big deal at the time, since most of the time nobody paid for this. "Netflix has struck payment-free deals with Frontier, British Telecom, TDC, Clearwire, GVT, Telus, Bell Canada, Virgin, Cablevision, Google Fiber, Telmex, and RCN"

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/after...

Your comment is simply inaccurate and misinformed. Rely on data, not anecdotes.

I also read a lot of reporting and analysis, at the time.

I recall a step or two, on the path to a resolution. Perhaps one of those steps was Netflix offering to pay.

It's been 5 years -- I thought was even a bit longer -- so my memory doesn't retain all the details. But I do seem to recall reporting that included, for example, Comcast employees cited as saying everything at their particular facility was in place to interconnect; they just weren't allowed to make the connections. I also recall reported analysis into the possible "why's" of all this. And there was pretty strong opinion that Comcast's desire to gain marketshare in the streaming video market, then undergoing another push on their part, played a significant role.

It's been 5 years, and my memories far from perfect, these days. Thanks for the link; I hope people will take the time to read it.

At the same time, and considering both that experience and my much lengthier and overall experience with Comcast -- and also ATT (formerly SBC) and other big players in this space -- I'm not very willing to believe in their "neutrality" of perspective and cost analysis in this matter and the supposed limited scope of their consideration, tactics, and strategy in what developed at that time.

"Netflix claims that they were paying for transit to Comcast customers through their transit ISPs, and that they should not be responsible for upgrading the (congested) peering links between Comcast and the transit providers. The FCC declaration went so far as to claim that Comcast was intentionally letting peering links congest (see paragraph 29 of the declaration) to force Netflix to pay for direct connectivity. (Here is precisely where the confusion with net neutrality and paid prioritization comes into play, but this is not about paid prioritization, but rather about who should pay who for connectivity. More on that later.)

"Comcast claims that Netflix was sending traffic at such high volumes as to intentionally congest the links between different transit ISPs and Comcast, essentially taking a page from Norton’s “peering playbook” and forcing Comcast and its peers (i.e., the transit providers, Cogent, Level 3, Tata, and others) to upgrade capacity one-by-one, before sending traffic down a different path, congesting that, and forcing an upgrade. Their position was that Netflix was sending more traffic through these transit providers than the transit providers could handle, and thus that Netflix or their transit providers should pay to connect to Comcast directly. Comcast also implies that certain transit providers such as Cogent are likely the source of congested paths, a claim that has been explored but not yet conclusively proved one way or the other, owing to the difficulty of locating these points of congestion (more on that in a future post).

"The best technical solution (and what ultimately happened) is that Netflix and Comcast should interconnect directly. But, who should pay for that interconnection? Should Netflix pay Comcast, since Netflix depends on reaching its subscribers, many of whom are Comcast customers? Or, should Comcast pay Netflix, since Comcast subscribers would be unhappy with poor Netflix performance? This is where market leverage comes into play: Because most consumers do not have choice in broadband Internet providers, Comcast arguably (and, empirically speaking, as well) has more market leverage: They can afford to ask Netflix to pay for that direct link—a common Internet business relationship called paid peering—because they have more market power. This is exactly what happened, and once Netflix paid Comcast for the direct peering link, congestion was relieved and performance returned to normal."

I have to suggest that the anecdote is spot on. Cui bono, and all that.

>The news about this broke, and the PR grew to be so bad that Comcast relented and started installing interconnections.

This is not what happened, both statements are entirely false.

I don't think people should take Netflix (or Comcast's, for that matter) talking points as fact.

So it's a lie to claim that this is all "recent changes".