The case against Net Neutrality?
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- Опубликовано: 13 дек 2017
- Everyone seems to want net neutrality, yet it remains a contentious issue. Is pure evil the only reason anyone would oppose it, or is it a bit more nuanced?
CGP Grey’s intro to Net Neutrality: • Internet Citizens: Def...
Grant’s channel: / 3blue1brown
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"The only way to actually change someone's mind is [to] be very clear that you understand what the alternate point is. Articulate it as intelligently as you can, not as a strawman."
~ Grant Sanderson, 12 December 2017
The world could be forever changed by this. Could be.
I thought the bittorrent "detour" was quite appropriate. The ISPs ability to slow down or block uncommon, high bandwidth uses of systems like bittorrent allows them to offer connections tailored for "normal" use at a lower cost. I don't want that myself, but the alternatives (more expensive or capped connections) are not palatable to the majority of subscribers, who just want the normal stuff to work.
I understand (and agree with) the usual arguments for net neutrality; you don't have to repeat them, and i'm not arguing against them! My point is that the trade off that Ben talks about is real. It would be great if you could use your allocated bandwidth 24/7, but that ignores the reality, which is that it's way too expensive to build infrastructure that could support that. You can buy uncontended symmetric connections and they're expensive! Think 10-100x the cost of what you pay for a shared connection. The alternatives are a loss of neutrality or throttled/limited connections. Personally i would prefer to buy a limited connection (that way the performance is predictable), but that's hard to understand and hard to sell to customers, so I (and hopefully you) can see why people would argue that ISPs should be allowed to selectively throttle traffic to make low cost connections that work for most people. Understanding the problems like this that lead to people wanting to give up net neutrality helps us to promote net neutrality by suggesting alternative solutions to the problem that might actually work.
Joshua Rodgers
I'll be blunt: after reading the quote and its implications, it was somewhat sad to see the very first reply was the exact opposite: it wasn't showing the understanding of the opposing side at all and the articulation seemed emotional rather than intelligent. I'm sure you could do better (and maybe you did in the long comment that I didn't read).
Joshua Rodgers As Ben mentioned, if you want 24/7 guaranteed bandwidth, you need a dedicated line. This is about 20 times more expensive than a residential line. I'm pro Net Neutrality, but unless you're spending $1000 a month for your service you are absolutely not entitled to 24/7 bandwidth. Don't lie (to yourself or to others) about what your money actually buys you.
Well, there you go, that was much better, thank you!
I will state that I, too, support net neutrality but honestly, the general reaction in the media is extremely irritating even though I'm on the same side. I have a much better time chatting with a friend who is against net neutrality than having to see an obtrusive gif all the time when I want to read my favorite subreddits
Man grant doesn't look like he sounds
Aadi .p In a good way. Like I imagined he was some grey haired professor because of how intelligent and learned he is. I'm impressed.
He's super pretty
he sounds like a god, he looks like a god
i imagined a nerdier looking version of john green, definitely proved me wrong
my thoughts exactly !
man, grant looks kinda different than i imagined, although tbf i imagined a cgp grey type stick figure
or maybe veeery slighly π-shaped
I kinda imagined him looking like the endless knot:
ruclips.net/channel/UCG6tBbWzY_ZR4_rd72vp6CA
I know he looks so young
I expected him to look like a grand old sage .. with white beard and a wand TBH .. He is so fucking smart! And now looking at him, he is probably younger than me (I am 28). I completely adore him #nohomo
It also feels strange to hear him ask questions that are not rhetorical. You kinda expect him to immediately give you an answer.
I appreciate Grant having the guts to ask seemingly ignorant questions; it's easy to forget sometimes that everyone has holes in their knowledge bases. And if someone as smart as Grant isn't afraid to learn more, neither should I!
Rui Shu “People say I ask a lot of questions. I’m not afraid of looking ignorant. I’m afraid of BEING ignorant. “ sorry I don’t know who said this.
He learned BitTorrent in 10 minutes which took me 1 year of using torrent
"Intelligence is understanding that you don't know everything.
Ignorance is believing you know everything." - Anonymous
If someone is afraid of asking questions just because they will look ignorant then they aren't smart.
I love how there are tons of books on computers and programming and math, but then there's Calvin and Hobbes in the top right. Just the essentials.
Some political books on the bottom shelf.
Holy shit, I did not realize Grant is so young. Well, I have my entire life to learn what he has in his apparently few years, so I think I can manage it.
well most of his stuff is what you should be able to do after 2-3 semesters of computer sciences
@@milanico2309 I have met dozens of CS graduate in real life. None of them is near 2% of Ben.
That’s why i said „should“ not „will“... still, english isn‘t my main language... i may have used the language wrong here...
@@milanico2309 you are wrong. I dont know if you are trying to flex or something by undermining grant's output, but it's absurd to say 2-3 semesters of CS (why CS of all things) encompasses all of his videos.
How old is he?
You can definitely argue that a company should see the benefit of its investment, up until the point where it turns monopolistic. The fact is that ISPs have seen vastly, vastly more gain from their investments than they could have predicted when they made them, so any argument based on incentives is already pretty flawed. I think the overall presentation in this video made it pretty clear that the actual right call at this point is to force ISPs to break up their services into different companies, as has happened in the past with monopolistic entities.
When it's hard to classify a company as an information service or a utility, it isn't because they're something in between. It's because they're actively trying to be both, and that is exactly what they shouldn't be allowed to do. It's hard to imagine that net neutrality be a big point of contention if the actual service providers were restricted from offering value-added products. Turn Comcast into two different companies: an ISP utility company that works like a telephone company, and an information service that is subject to all the same competition as other information services, and suddenly net neutrality becomes a non-issue.
Eater you are an ageless Adonis
When you describe something as harmful, you have to ask: Harmful to whom?
Exactly. I do not agree with ben in any single way here.
It is assuming that there is a 100% free market with 100% competition, then it would make sensew to let the ISP decide for themselves, but because this is heavily monopolized, I do not believe you should change net neutrality
So this is how 3Blue1Brown looks
Fucking HOT
damn......a whole ass math Daddy....
“What he looks like.”
Or
“How he looks.”
It is grammatically wrong to say “how he looks like”
Thanks for the edit
sad alan turing is gone cause grant is totally the man for him
3Blue1Brown is the hottest man alive.
haha i thought, "This guy fucks!" like from silicon valley
why was I thinking that the whole time while watching this video
I'm glad other people were as distracted by his looks as I was.
wrg
Exactly!
An eye-opening discussion the vast majority of us won't see. Even something as clearly beneficial as net neutrality comes with some downsides. If we could just understand the issues we're voting on, we wouldn't be so easy to manipulate. We would also come further, with better solutions.
Net neutrality does not stop censorship, google happily censors all right-wing speech, this is part of why it was struck down (all corporations that support net neutrality also support political censorhsip of their opponents), and net neutrality forces everyone to subsidize google's data usage since ISP cannot rightfully charge the biggest users.
When people bring up the censorship thing with regards to net neutrality they are being ignorant or disingenuous. They bring up the NN clause that says ISPs are "not allowed to discriminate based on content". That is in fact very very bad and misleading language. It doesn't mean even remotely what people think it means.
Before NN was passed BitTorrent and streaming video were still relatively new and in the early stages of mass adoption. US ISPs did not have anywhere near the bandwidth capacity needed to meet costumer demands due to the rapid adoption of torrenting and streaming. The ISPs hardware was so outdated that a small handful of people torrenting or streaming video was enough to reduce speeds for literally entire neighborhoods to dial-up speeds.
First, why US ISP's were on such outdated equipment.
Anyone familiar with the landscape of the US knows the enormity of it. It's fucking huge. Further, our population density/sprawl is totally unlike Europe. European population density is very high and highly concentrated. The US population density is considerably lower and vastly more spread out. This creates very serious technical hurdles. It takes a shit ton more equipment and time to connect such a large country with such a spread out population.
In the early days of the interwebs the ISPs were faced with a dilemma. Do they focus on maximizing speed with the caveat that only very high density areas get connected and everyone else doesn't get connected? Or do they focus on connecting as much of the country to the internet as possible, with the caveat that equipment will become outdated and outpaced by costumer needs by the time this is 'completed'? The US Gov officially took the latter stance and encouraged the ISPs to adopt this stance through legal and financial incentives. This was the official position for the previous 20 years. Most of the money that the ISPs weren't giving their shitty executives was going towards this.
With woefully outdated equipment incapable of meeting the bandwidth needs of torrents and streaming the ISPs were faced with another hurdle. Do they not throttle torrents and streaming, allowing a few people to completely cripple the internet for an entire neighborhood? Do they throttle torrents and streaming so that the internet is still usable for the rest of the neighborhood? The ISPs tried the former because having a few streamers unhappy with the service was overwhelmingly preferable to having literally entire neighborhoods angry with the service.
This lasted for about a year. By then, the number of people who wanted to torrent or stream was so high that doing this was no longer a realistic option. They had to make the switch to upgrading existing infrastructure instead of connecting new areas. The problem then was funding. The executives were not willing to take a paycut. Torrent is P2P traffic, so there is no one to extract money from. The ISPs actually didn't want to raise costumer prices. So the ISPs turned to the streaming services and demanded that they pay them for the bandwidth needed to carry their content.
This makes perfect sense. An analogy: You buy something from Amazon (IE: the streaming service), Amazon delivers the package (data) to you (the customer) through the US Post Office (IE: the ISP). Now Imagine that Amazon absolutely refused to pay the US Post Office to ship their packages to you, and Amazon accounted for more than 3/4ths of the total packages going through the Post Office's trucks/facilities. Damn that's fucked up isn't it? So how does the Post Office cope? Absolutely every one get's their taxes raised so the Post Office can expand to meet shipping demands.
Whereas in reality what happens when you buy from Amazon is: Either Amazon pays the shipping fee or they make the customer pay the shipping fee. Thus only the people ordering packages have to pay the shipping. People who aren't ordering packages don't have to subsidize it for those who do. This is basically what the ISPs wanted.
The streaming services did not want to pay the cost of shipping. So they banded together with angry stream watchers to sue the ISPs. Blah blah blah boring court battles. The end result was the ISPs lost and the passage of NN legislation with the FCC overseeing it. Internet prices went up for everyone across the board in order to subsidize the infrastructure upgrades to meet bandwidth demands that streaming services refused to pay for.
The bit in the NN about "not allowed to discriminate based on content", doesn't mean what people think it means. It doesn't mean that ISPs can't throttle or block webpages because they don't like your politics or ideas. It means they can't block or throttle data based on whether the content of the data is text, pictures, audio, video, torrents, video games, etc.
It has absolutely nothing to do with the content of a video, but whether or not the content of the requested data-packets are video or not video. It's literally not an anti-censorship measure. It's a "you can't block or throttle the data I requested just because it contains (content) high definition streaming video". It's not talking about the content of the video, it's talking about the content of the data.
So the streaming services double fucked the ISPs. They refused to pay the bandwidth so ISPs could upgrade infrastructure, and they stuck ISPs with a legal obligation not to throttle their streaming, which would only compound the ISPs bandwidth problems.
Repealing NN gives the ISPs the ability to charge streaming services and other data-hogging services for the bandwidth they use, instead of raising the price of their own service indiscriminately for all users.
Obviously a problem, but not one unique to ISPs. Dealing with corruption is a problem that never ends.
sorry, but there are some, shall i say misconceptions.
net hogging services (e.g. netflix) are portrayed as being freeloaders, they are not. they DO pay for server space and server traffic, along with a favorable placing on the backbone. (think of this similar to buying real estate in a favorable position, like downtown in a major city vs far back on the outskirts)
it boils down to "The executives were not willing to take a paycut", NN as most ppl see it now (all packets are equally free) limits the greed of such ppl. and enforces honesty toward their customers. admittedly, unintended.
in this case the market and customer habits historically developed in a direction that was not predicted by forecasts. it is wrong to (try to) punish the customer or the market because of this. it is a lazy and in-creative concept (albeit widely used).
the idea of "all packets are equally free" does not limit or prevent infrastructure providers to charge for the volume of the packets.
internet prices going up is normal supply-and-demand-behavior and a direct reaction to more demand for packets.
title 2 would have allowed for more tools and capabilities for the fcc, a (by-people-according-to-their-interests-elected-)government agency, to enforce the equal-packets mentality.
The real question and cause of all these problems is local governemnts granting monopolies to corporations.
That Ben Eater is an ageless Adona?
One problem with the argument that "consumers would have to pay for upgrades to the infrastructure"... We ALREADY DID. ISP's took subsidies from the govt. to upgrade their infrastructure, and never did it. They stole from taxpayers, and got away with it.
dooder www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6c5e97/eli5_how_were_isps_able_to_pocket_the_200_billion/
The government is who stole from us. That's what happens when the government gets involved. They vote to spend our hard-earned money without understanding of the economy and all of the unintended consequences that subsidies bring. They're just a bunch of beurocrats who try to appeal to the general public which by and large does not understand that there's no free lunch.
i love Grant's honesty. he gives words to my reactions, too. (his uncertain pause, "i'm not sure how i feel about that. *beat* i feel like i'm hearing some truth that i don't want to hear.")
My issue with this is that the consumer was supposed to have fiber internet to their house by 2006 or so. Taxpayers paid something like 400 billion dollars to ISPs to get this. With fiber we wouldn't have this issue of bandwidth nearly as much to one neighborhood like was in this example. The ISPs should have to reap what they sowed, taste their medicine for stealing hundreds of billions and never delivering on what they said.
This is the first I'm hearing of this. If ISPs have violated a contract, why support net neutrality? Why not prosecute them.
THIS! I was about to comment this myself. Taxpayers already paid to upgrade the network, and the ISP's never did it! They just took the taxpayer money and never did their part.
I doubt the US just handed over 400 billion dollars and let the companies sit ass and pocket it
Please prove me wrong though
There's been a few books written on this. One of them is "The Book of Broken Promises: $400 Billion Broadband Scandal & Free the Net"
There was a fee put in so that America could be the first fully fiber optic country in the world, since fiber optic doesn't require nearly as much maintenance and cannot physically get any faster. This was in the 90s. Over the years that fee added up, averaging $4000 to $7000 per household. Where did this money go? It was spent to lobby on definitions of terms, redefining "fast" internet, which everyone was supposed to have in 2006 or so. Instead of it being the original 45mbps symmetric connection, it was redefined to 28, so they didn't have to spend more money. Some more of these wastes were put into action, and they have either lined the pockets of those elected or themselves with your money.
IAmPattycakes yeah dude I remember that one year I paid a 4000 dollar fee for my internet. Oh wait, that never happened?
i work for a small ISP/VoIP provider. You guys do a great job of highlighting all of the issues huge providers whine about, while they do nothing to fix them with their gigantic piles of money from tax subsidies. What's goin on now is regulatory capture by growing monopolies; anybody who says otherwise is trying to sell you something.
You need to have smart regulation, and regulation needs to exist. The real problem is that the legislative branch is totally broken, so we're forced to use old, broad regulatory tools that don't really fit the changing landscape.
You know what would fix competition? Actually enforcing anti-monopoly laws with respect to ISP's.
"You guys"
What guys BrunoMe? The commenters? The pair in the video?
Theo Ne You sound like somebody who has never worked in telecom.
Ben so you want to enforce anti monopoly policoes by supporting regulations that created the monopolies in the first place and prohibited other small ISP s from entering the market? Congrats youre a complete dumbass just like 90% of the internet.
Kyle Agronick "Charge you $50 extra for Netflix and Hulu" = "Really a disaster"
Seriously?
Wow Ben you’re a timeless beauty, I’m astonished!
I work as an ISP tech and there is almost no cost for us to give our customers the speed they are paying for. I don't understand how you can accept that as an argument... It should be illegal for ISPs to sell something they can't deliver.
I've heard toilets work the same way. The return water pipes are only engineered so big. If everyone in a zone flushed all their toilets at the same time, it would overflow/back up the pipe
toilet neutrality when
Your right to use the Internet does not mean you have a right to no slow traffic any more than we have a right to drive at full speed down highways. That we get congested is unrelated to an ISP picking winners by restricting losers access.
So do the banks work the same way. They don’t keep all the money everyone deposits. Uf everyone withdrew all their money at the same time, the bank wouldn’t have enough money. Like ISPs, they assume not all people use their service to the fullest all the time.
Same applies to road traffic and also powerlines.
@Kyle Agronick, except that if there is one single user consuming orders of magnitude more power than all the others, you better believe the power company will charge them a fortune to support the infrastructure upgrades they would require to prevent such blackouts. And in many of those cases, the power company DOES refuse to upgrade to fully support the outlier and instead the individual consumer must build their own infrastructure to supplement the power consumption on the public network to get all their power needs.
If someone is paying for a service, they should be allowed to use it, period. If someone's business is ran through their home computer of course its going to take a lot more bandwidth. But that does not justify throttling the neighbors, the isp should honor the neighbors paid internet speed aswell. The isp is responsible for holding their contracted speed true. Thats why we pay for speed tiers in the first place.
This is an exceptionally good conversation.
I absolutely agree. Loved the semi-awkward dynamic they had :D ruclips.net/video/hKD-lBrZ_Gg/видео.html Ben's exhale here sounded like a release of great tension in his body due to the prolonged silence they were experiencing just before. Quality content nevertheless!
nst as g/b, converse any and any can b perfx
I'm glad they had this conversation, but I do wish Ben had found someone who opposed net neutrality and had a chance to get to understand their arguments. Fixating purely on the telecoms' motivations, and the purely technical/business issues for them, kind of missed the point of why opponents were so passionate on the subject.
A little more transparency could solve many issues of the current arrangements. The reality that internet connections are shared between many people is well known. It would be a great step to make the actual numbers (on the actual situation and the plans of the ISP) public to the subscribers before they sign a contract with a certain ISP, so that they can compare and decide whether they're ok with an overcrowded but cheap connection or they would like to pay more for a more reliable bandwidth would certaintly mitigate the problem with "connection abuse". This paired with a scheduling policy that always gives you your share of minimum bandwidth if you need it, but allocates exceeding bandwidth prioritizing clients which have used less of it in the last week or so would be an incentive toward not wasting bandwidth without the need to put hard quotas in the plan: "you are guaranteed 1 mbit if you use it, and when you don't it will be allocated to other people in your neighborhood which are likely to give it back to you because they don't usually need that much all the time, up to 100 mbit in a single burst". Who wouldn't be happy with a plan like that?
Damn. Ben Eater is a beautiful greek god!
Thank you, this was a very interesting discussion. One thing I noticed was that you were talking about Internet data caps and that ISPs don't currently do that because the users would revolt. However, the main cable ISP around the area of the country that I'm in is, Cox. And they have had data caps for a few years now. People don't like it, but when they are the only option, you just have to live with it and the ISP can get away with it because there is not enough other competition.
Ben I am curious. If the ISPs in the US had utilized the money they earned from fees which were allowed to raise revenue in order to expand and upgrade these networks (The total of which now exceeds $400b) do you think that we would not even be having this discussion and these networks would already have the capability of supporting these modems as servers for p2p file sharing and constant streaming demand like in Netflix's case?
The issue of these networks not being able to support demands sounds like an issue of profiteering and neglecting their own networks and opting to pocket that money rather than use it for network expenses.
An interesting video. Thank you for uploading this discussion.
40:31 This is bit disingenuous argument. Yes the providers are unable to sell capped connections, because consumers vastly prefer uncapped connections. Providers then sell them uncapped connections on pretense that the customers never actually reach that cap. Then if somebody actually uses the service as advertised, comcast claims that they are abusing the service.
The problem is that providers are selling something they don't have and are unable to provide. Not the fact that the customers are using the service as it's marketed to them!
I don't think Net Neutrality would such a hot issue if we had competition. The problem of Net Neutrality arises when there is lack of competition. Most people in the US only have one real ISP that offers a decent amount of bandwidth. When there's a lack of ISP competition, ISP capital flows are not as sensitive to upgrading infrastructure, it's most sensitive to maintaining the network. When competition is introduced, not only is ISP capital flows used to maintain the network but capital flows are more sensitive to upgrading infrastructure to compete against those ISPs who are providing faster internet with better infrastructure .
a lot of this is the ISPs refusing to upgrade their infrastructure to keep up with demand from customers.
Refusing to keep up with the demand from customers that they can all simultaneously expect high bandwidth that they presently expect?
Insofar as *that* is something that is being refused, the refusal makes a great deal of sense.
But their is empirical evidence out there that isp's do in fact improve their infrastructure.
jshowa o: In the long term you are right. The infrastructure will have to grow to meet eventual demand. In the short run an absence of competition will be a factor in deciding the timing of the infrastructure growth. It is possible that if a company like Comcast realized early on infrastructure development capable of providing a new in-house service would have to be opened to competitors offering similar services, then the infrastructure (and the kind of services that require it) would be delayed.
Actually I am ok with that. If NN means that innovation lags on the order of a year or so, Moore's law will march on anyway. But NN means a lot of things. We know that innovation is coming in the short to mid-term future one way or another, and right now we have many unknown unknowns about what the problem/solution landscape will be five to ten years down the road. What I hope for is a policy that will not lock us in to anything prematurely. That to be is far better than the policy being optimal.
I agree with you in general here. What appalled me was Comcast spoofing packets to interfere with the bittorrent protocol. That was a special kind of evil (7th level of hell kind). I've not been well educated on all of this and I'm learning more daily. The latest (if I have it right) is that title 2 status moves the ISPs from the purview of the FTC. I don't know if that's good or bad.
So true. I cant think of one extremely reputable ISP in todays market.
One thing you really didn't touch on is how this affects the monopoly ISP's(Comcast/Cox) versus the small start up ISP's trying to break into the industry.
This is exceptional content! The fact that technology has enabled such phenomenal journalism to be available to all with adequate internet access gives me hope for the future. Great conversation Ben and Grant!
Oh wow, never realised how ageless and beautiful Ben Eater is. Grant's jawline is nothing against this male incarnation of Aphrodite!
Ben Eater is the sexiest man alive
Ben Eater is sexy af.
In the end though the ISPs are still hugely profitable with 200 billion dollar plus marketcaps, while that still remains the case I have a hard time siding with them on not forking out for infrastructure costs.
Grant's look and focus is brilliant
Some data streams (like online games) need reliable low latency.
Downloads do not, so when there is a conflict in bandwidth use, the games should win out for an overal acceptable performance.
This in turn means discrimination on the kind of traffic, which Net Neutrality does not allow.
So the issue is clear, Net Neutrality can harm consumers when new big data services get introduced.
I'm pretty sure both IP4 and IP6 both contain priority fields that indicate desired latency without exposing the actual service type for this exact purpose, though I'm not sure how much they're used. You don't need to know what service the packet is coming from or going to to route it efficiently.
Sir, I'm new to your channel. The content in your channel is really amazing and interesting. I'm a college student and I'll be very happy if you make a playlist for beginners in computer and electronics. Thanks!
Those are some interesting books in the shelf...Grant's or Ben's? (he seems to be a pilot)
Something important you neglected to mention: The US government has provided funds to Internet Providers numerous times for the purpose of enhancing their infrastructure for this very reason. They didn't do this. They pocketed it all.
Just one example of how corporations abuse government subsidies and why we shouldn’t have government subsidies.
Also an example that government funds can operate outside of the limited scope of most corporations
Kody Kurtz it's also horribly expensive to build out hard wire networks.
I agree with no subsidies; I feel like if you can't compete naturally, get out of the market. Don't force the taxpayer to foot it. Big businesses and government have been in cahoots like this for centuries, and it was never in the public's interest. In the U.S. sugar costs twice what it does normally, thanks to subsidies. Or how about FDR paying farmers to plow over their crops? It is a bad idea to give taxpayer money to companies in the first place. Any company. Ever.
I believe the whole topic of NN is one which will self-resolve anyway. As we move away from wired internet toward wireless, we're going to see micro-ISPs pop up and eventually get to the point where we (rural U.S.) have actual diverse choice in the market and worry about content blocking will fizzle out. And thank goodness! :)
> They didn't do this. They pocketed it all.
Didn't do what? Didn't enhance their infrastructure? That seems implausible. What is your evidence for that? Between 2006 and 2016 US internet traffic grew from about 1 exabyte per month to 31 exabytes/month. I don't have figures for 2017 and 2018, but it's probably closing in on 50 EB/month if it isn't already there. Are you saying US ISPs' networks are somehow handling 50 times as much traffic without having upgraded their network infrastructure?
hey Benny can you please list all those interesting books on that shelf in the background
My favorite argument is that we call them internet *service* providers, not internet *content* providers.
bdot02 we also don’t call them public utility providers
Master Roshi but Internet should be considered a public utility like electricity, water, and phone
So you're for gov granted monopolies? You'll never see an innovation again.
we don't now.
@@vlc-cosplayer child labor laws aren't a regulation on the exchange of goods per se. They rule that kids aren't able to fully consent to that exchange. I'm generally not in favor of regular labor laws. And I'm not an ancap.
Hello Ben eater.
I loved your videos so much, and I want to know ..
What is your major ? And what are your grades ?
In other words you do not want to pay for the better service, you want to pay less and still get the service that someone else pays more for. Got it.
Ben (or someone else) can you make a list of every single of those books at your library? I would love to begin reading any of those!
Also I have a question. Why couldn't the ISPs be Title 1 entities but prosecuted under antitrust laws if they do things like AT&T blocking Skype or FaceTime?
Thank you for this video. I had been looking for a video like this with someone articulating the argument against, even if only to play devils advocate. Enjoyed hearing the nuances of the case for and against. Thank you both
Can we get a tour of your bookshelf? Looks amazing!
It's worth noting that some states have ISP anti-competition laws.
Unquestionably, ISPs should be regulated as public utilities. Comcast and Charter constitute a cartel and have been gouging customers for; at minimum, the past decade.
Ben Eater is so beautiful it's difficult to pay attention to his nuanced thoughtful arguments!
Yeah, he's like an ageless Adonis.
Grant is just as adorable.
Look at that beautiful collection of books!
4:48 Nothing is being stolen, I think the phrase you are looking for is "copying"
First, why is it not necessary for cable companies to make their coaxial infrastructure available to competitors as AT&T has been required to do with their copper twisted pairs? Second, ISPs should be required to honor the contract THAT THEY ACTUALLY MAKE with their customers. They have the option to specify a data cap. They have the option to specify that a customer's bit rate will decrease when his usage consistently climbs. They have the option to specify that they will aggressively monitor and impede illegal and illicit traffic. NONE of their customers have the option to specify any details in their contracts. But ISPs should NOT be allowed to make one contract with their customers and then to "honor" a DIFFERENT contract. I can accept the distinction between the idle-time capabilities of the end-point hardware and the sustained busy-time capabilities of the infrastructure, but the ISPs were CERTAINLY more aware of this distinction and limitation than their typical customer when their lawyers were drawing up the contracts for their various offered services. If they were too incompetent to protect themselves in their own contracts, then they should be the parties who pay for the remedies.
ISPs are just butthurt that they advertised a certain bandwidth for consumers to buy, then when the consumers started using that, they didn't know how to cope. They shouldn't be advertising what we don't actually get.
It was a fascinating conversation. I wish that you had talked about how deployment of resources is handled internationally. I lived in Japan for several years. The internet connection was faster and cheaper than what is available in the United States. I was also under the impression that networks and prices were in general faster and cheaper in not-the-US.
If you ever do a follow-up, it would be interesting to hear how other governments and economies handle net-neutrality and what the results are in terms of service and innovation are.
Thanks much! I love the videos from both of you.
If the ISP's have made assumptions about the amount of traffic that I will use, even thou I pay for a specific speed, then it shouldn't be my fault the the network is poorly engineered! If ISP's can't support full bandwidth that they claim that I am paying for then they need to change how they sell bandwidth!
the problem is if we get rid of net neutrality, ISP might abuse it, and probably will... I understand why net neutrality is a pain for them, but maybe we should be able to settle somewhere in between..
I appreciate that you guys support NN; but the longer this video went the more you went off the rails. It started with minor nit-picks, like DSL is provided over @31:10 "wet" lines (ie, active telephone lines), not "dry" (ie, unconnected lines; way back in the day AT&T used wet-cell batteries to power their lines, hence the "dry" and "wet" terminology). But larger, NN is about biasing service based on source or destination, not other factors like usage. Throttling bit-torrent users *after* they start using 99% of the neighborhood's bandwidth is allowed under NN. Throttling because it's bit-torrent isn't. Throttling Netflix (or Level 3) because of their usage might be allowable (I haven't seen their peering contract); but it wasn't a physical limitation as you suggest. Netflix has shown graphs, they weren't hitting some physical cap, they were throttled - Comcast extorted money out of Netflix. NN is nuanced, but you got many of the nuances wrong. @33:00 DSL is super limited compared to Fiber and Cable. The highest speed DSL is ~200Mbps per line; Cable is over 300 Mbps per channel (125 channels in the US; ~40Gbps per line); and Fiber can do 100Gbps per fiber.
Its almost like Netflix had a major incentive to distort that debate
"DSL is super limited compared to Fiber and Cable" but I think the point is if fiber and cable had been under the bundling rules would they make the leap to replace copper with those lines if customers could switch and get service from someone else. I'm curious to know more about throttling under NN but not sure what to search.
It's just not right to regulate businesses if they're not doing something that directly affects those that don't consent to the transaction (so some climate regulations are fine, but not NN).
Hi Ben, Thank you for teaching me what I could not learn any other way. I wish you or someone else pick an RF projects and teaches the essentials of radio frequency in similar way to you did for digital electronics. Thanks again
Excellent books on that *bookshelf:*
Visualizing Information - Edward Tufte (and his others)
Code Complete - Steve McConnell
1776 - David McCullough
anything by Dave Barry
almost everything O'Reilly
flying stuff
Calvin & Hobbes
That was a really good conversation that brought out the nuance. Wish everyone could hear this instead of just seeing the "You'll pay $3.99/mo to access Twitter" stuff going around. Honestly, either way this is going to work out and if it gets out of line, it can always be swapped back to the other way.
I'd have no real problem with the repeal of Net neutrality were it not for the fact that ISP are generally local monopolies: they can extort both their client and the websites... we need to put a leash on them: they are public utilities (the people helped build their systems via gov aid so the people should help control them).
Andy Dufresne exactly and next week it’ll be Trump’s fault along with everything else in all of existence.
😒
Cyan Onion, I couldn't agree more. All this talk of "deregulation" well... we need to abolish the system that enables the corrupt ISPs and other telecommunication structures to exist as monopolies. We need to abolish the absurdity of letting corporations have the same rights as individual people... you are correct that this is the result of a very broken system.
The solution is to update our antitrust laws and break up the big ISPs. They have no place being regional monopolies and have clearly shown they can't be trusted to not fuck over consumers. Combine that with nationalizing the internet infrastructure and leasing out the lines to ISPs and net neutrality won't be necessary anymore.
@1stGruhn I have the right to exist as a monopoly? COOOL.
Did anybody notice the Calvin and Hobbes books in the top right corner? Where can I get that set of books?
There could be a useful case for targeting packets with different priorities, in the case of lag sensitive applications. But for that to work, it would have to be completely open for any service to use. It could work on the user level, setting an option to tag a specific application's packets as priority, to get them piped faster than the rest of the traffic (e.g. online games, voip, remote desktop etc.).
This actually exists, it's called QoS
My question why you and 3B has posted these videos just today ? At the last day ?
The debate about Net Neutrality is far from over. Today the FCC reversed its previous classification of ISPs. The FCC can just as easily reinstate them in the future. Congress can still pass laws. Even if ISPs remained under Title II, there would likely be years of litigation to get the courts to tell us exactly how the Telecommunications act of 1934 applies to the Internet.
For any future regulation to be good regulation, the details matter. We've got plenty of time to get this right.
Don't believe that guy.. All of it is BS.. They are already charging Netflix extra for NOT throttling their bandwidth which is NOT prevented by Net Neutrality...
All NN does is tell them that they cannot throttle anyone's internet connection. It does not stop them from charging more for the connection..
I think they want to force the customers/subscriber to pay more.. They want to go back to the days when mobile services used to charge not only the person making the call, but also the person who is being called. They already charge Netflix, now they want to also charge Netflix customers extra to use Netflix.. That's all it is.. This is what NN stops...
I wouldn't necessarily discredit what Ben explained in the video just because you don't like it and believe ISPs are going to be greedy. He never said he was against NN, in fact it was explained that this was more so as an insight into the opposite view is, and he has experience in networking, so who better to go to for insight on the topic?
This isn't advocating against NN, just giving insight into how much more nuanced it is compared to the echo we've been hearing of "ISPs just want to charge us subscriptions to use the sites we know and love."
A good decision can't really be reached when you only hear one side of an argument.
+shadowatom
"This isn't advocating against NN"
ruclips.net/video/hKD-lBrZ_Gg/видео.htmlm
I actually do remember early RUclips being intermittently slow even when I had plenty of last mile bandwidth. I also suspect more popular videos got higher priority in the CDNs, because some would play just fine and others wouldn't play at all.
Netflix and BitTorrent are not different forms of data packets. They are application level protocols, not fundamentally different forms of traffic. There are basically TCP and UDP packets on an “Internet” Protocol (IP) network. If they can’t provide sustained 100 Mbps service then they should NOT advertise that they do. Perhaps, a class action lawsuit against Comcast for false advertising should be initiated.
When you assume customers won't use the advertised rates as a business risk, and then new services come up that use the advertised rates, the solution is not to block the new service.
The solution is to clarify the advertising, offer new plans, or, use the $400 billion dollars that cable companies simply pocketed from americans to actually improve the network instead of using old copper lines. America was supposed to be converted entirely to fiber years ago.
this is real quality content, something which is rare on youtube sadly.
I don't know if you've been on RUclips much lately, but if you have then you aren't looking in the right places for quality content because I personally know of 30+ quality content creators on RUclips each with dozens to hundreds of videos each.
I agree with you that there are quite a few channels and videos with quality content, however if you view the number in comparison to the total number of channels or videos, it is really not much. And there is no search filter primarily finding quality content, which makes finding those videos quite difficult sometimes.
My biggest issue with reversing Net Neutrality is mentioned here @26:00. Market forces alone cannot protect the interests of consumers in the current internet industry since the internet providers also distribute content on their own network. If this were not the case and the providers of the service were not also sell content, I would be more inclined to believe that they would act according to market forces and a case can be made that these companies would ultimately do what is most beneficial for the network.
It's a bit difficult to accept that a single US-centric ISP has single-handedly determined whether streaming video ever developed on the global internet. If Comcast's incorrect investment assumptions are required for the strongest form of the case against net neutrality, then consider what other arguments could be enabled by virtue of mistaken investment assumptions in other economic domains across history.
Also, the important thing is that regulation has demonstrably reduced investment in network infrastructure (making everyone’s connection equal forces ISPs to give everyone the lowest common denominator connection, making increasing infrastructure quality useless) in the two years of net neutrality. Also, from just before NN (1990s - early 2015), to post NN, there was a 5.6% decline in spending, amounting to 150-200 BILLION dollars worth of loss from 2011 to 2015 (they anticipated NN laws and began changes early; this has been directly confirmed by ISPs) in spending. Since the repeal of NN, spending has once again increased, and we’ve already seen innovation in the form of technology such as 5G.
Unfortunately, states have been passing NN laws ever since, which will create segregated laws for different states, possibly creating worse service on one side of a state border as compared to the other.
Also, Pai’s FCC has taken steps to promote transparency in ISPs and ensure that customers know when and how a company is changing network speeds for different services. Also, their laissez-faire “light touch” policy has included specific action to enforce antitrust laws as needed to prevent monopolies. These two interventions together allow for a customer to be better informed and have the ability to switch from one ISP that is slowing down a service they want to an ISP that doesn’t do this, thus allowing consumer choice in a free market system to encourage companies to still abide by non-discrimination when it comes to their competition.
The free market, with the framework of pro-competition regulation and increased consumer knowledge, is the best and most efficient regulator.
+Ben Eater
In this discussion, people often talk about the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), what they can do, what they can't, and what could happen given different conditions and so on. One thing that is seldom put into the equation is how the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) relates to this whole discussion, and what effect they have on the possible outcomes given different scenarios. Here is one of the videos I have seen that includes the FTC in the discussion: ruclips.net/video/GxrTUI2JPNs/видео.html
The TLDR is that it is the job of the FTC to crack down on slimy business practices such as blocking skype on iphones, throttling competitors services, misrepresenting their own services, etc..
For the most part I am kind of in the center, leaning toward revoking the FCC's power in this case. (I use to be very pro NN in the past, but have since learned that there is more nuance to the topic)
From what you've said here I mostly agree with with you. The words "trust" and "ISP" in the same sentence are indeed scary, but so are the words "trust" and "government" in the same sentence. We walk a tight rope over a pit of lava.
Also concerning BitTorrent technology, some companies are actually using such technologies in order to deliver their products. For example, Blizzard Entertainment uses BitTorrent like technology in the background when the user downloads their games. These games can easily exceed 10GB in size and this tech really reduces the time taken to download. I believe it also takes advantage computers on the local network as well, so if you are at a LAN party with 20 other people, if everyone is updating or downloading the game the data only needs to be downloaded once off of the net, and the clients share the download with each other, reducing the strain on the ISP.
One of the commissioners of the FCC involved i the voting has actually spoken about the FTC's capabilities here, and they are woefully insufficient. Obviously, she was one of the two dissenters to the repeal of the 2015 regulations. And, also obviously, it should come as no surprise that this act by the FCC a few days ago should hand the main authority over to an agency which can't really adequately stop ISPs from fucking over consumers and small businesses, as giving the ISPs the ability to fuck with whomever they want in whatever way they want has been Ajit Pai's main goal from the moment he joined the FCC.
Anyway, here is the complete (save for a few glitches here and there) statement from the dissenting FCC Commissioner in question, Ms. Mignon Clyburn: ruclips.net/video/WRYTqzNGnvU/видео.html The part about the FTC starts at 16:50
Could you send me links to the books behind you to your right, Ben?
The bit-torrent thing reminds me of programs where you can lend your computer’s unneeded processing power to help things like SETI
I think that a good way to sell this would be to have a variable price per bit transferred, like electricity before we had ways to store energy.
Maybe each client could have a default curve of max speed vs price, and that would make the system inherently stable. You set how much max speed you want depending on its price, and you pay mainly for the information transferred.
People that use the system a lot would pay a lot, while the rest would pay little, and if suddenly lots of people want to transfer information, the prices would go up, naturally making the clients consume less.
I think it would be good to be able to have "priority" by paying more, and to be able to pay lower prices when no one cares that we are using the connection. The Torrent guys would pay more, especially when other people need the connection, without the need to block them.
40:00 I think there would inevitably be ISP's that claimed no cap (except in the contract somewhere) just to get a leg up on the competition.
This is strongly analogous to web hosting. Some providers will offer shared hosting services for 5/month with absurdly high claims of caps, or even no caps at all. Use to much of the server's resources though, and they'll take your site offline. It's in the contract.
The discussion, as is almost always the case, seems to be incredibly polarized. To me it always seems we treat problems as black and white. For net neutrality, against net neutrality. Pro-life, pro-choice. Pro or anti gun. Left, right. Pro disease, pro vaccination (sorry, had to make a small pun about anti vaxxers). We should be looking at issues way more in depth. What if we discuss how the data of the customer is handled versus how the data between ISPs in two different, or even multi faceted problems? We should be looking at promoting innovation of networks in ways that do not hinder the usage of the internet by the client. And the support of internet innovations that need substantial infrastructural improvements through other means. When we package the entirety of the problem into NET NEUTRALITY the subject becomes so loaded with opinions and emotions that a proper solution is super difficult to achieve.
Omg I always wondered what you looked like, thank you so much for your videos.
Why is ATT not allowing Skype bad since we could just switch to verizon or sprint or tmobile if we want Skype?
I would watch this podcast between you two every day. Have more conversations about everything and i'll subscribe
Halfway into the video. This conversation is extremely fascinating and productive.
The way I like to think about a better solution is to increase the amount of descriptive values that make up the law. That said, you don't want it too wordy that the commoner couldn't understand.
Finally! Someone with common sense.
Personal input, some isps in my country have map data on what broadband network that are available in service areas. Such as 4G/3G/2G.
From that example, home(fixed) isps could do the same by providing map datas on; the bandwidth capacity in each service areas, the number of subscribers, and the amount of bandwidth that you'll get from capable bandwidth capacity divided by the number of subscribers in the area -- plus the upto estimation when network is not crowded.
This may give competitors too much data, but I know a lot of people who just want to get services or products from honest companies.
Service maps do exist, but they're not very accurate. I'm also convinced that the big 3 companies are already sharing that data, or at the very least sharing via city/county proxy, because the areas serviced look a lot like gerrymandered districts: weird, nonsensical patches of avoidance, big blocks, etc. I'm honestly surprised they're not forced to share that data with the consumer. It's a good idea, and it would give people enough information to complain loudly when they companies in the area have no competition.
As for honest companies, I'd love to get service from one of those. Unfortunatly in the arena they don't exist.
Are you in Romania? It sounds quite similar to what they have there, and in my country of Moldova as well.
first time to see the brown Pi creature Grant.
Cool vid, I just discovered your channel thanks to 3b1b , I dont know where to start watching for and stuff , can someone help me ?
First, good discussion. I wanted to make it clear that I enjoyed the content.
Odd to here all the talk of caps without recognizing that charging by usage and bandwidth is an alternative. No excuses to not upgrade the network if users are paying proportional to their data usage and however much instant bandwidth they want on tap. It's asinine to deliberately charge users using payment model that ignores a fundamental dimension of service. Any packet delivery service is identical to a power delivery company; how much current draw available, how much wattage consumed. If ISPs decided to become power providers their pricing model deliberately ignores wattage consumed. Over subscription is still a problem when using a power delivery company pricing model, but over prolonged periods is inexcusable(when measured against the previous limits; over subscription could be inevitable as users may collectively increase consumption as service improves). Just as a wise person saves for expenses in the future a wise ISP puts aside a reasonable amount for service expenses. Also unmentioned is the problem that ISPs notoriously will not provide an alternative for high consumption users. I would gladly pay for consumption, but providers lack the contractual nuance to provide the option and it just so happens that the provider is also my only option. Also, requiring that service providers allow others to resell their network is akin to requiring that patent holders provide license of use to others for reasonable rates. To me, the ISP service pricing model wreaks of cynical ploys to undercut markets to gain monopoly then abuse the gains once consolidated; something pulled from the playbook of Standard Oil.
This is my opinion. I would prefer not to have net neutrality, in order for more options of service to be possible. Although I don’t trust the major ISPs to do what’s in their users interest, especially in monopoly positions, so I believe that net neutrality is needed, even though it has it’s costs.
Great video, very informative and wise conclusions.
What's wrong with a download cap? We have it in Canada in the majority of Internet packages.
I wonder why power companies charge per kilowatt... Hmm.... I wonder why you can't do something like that for internet service.
I'd love to see a podcast from you guys. Interesting stuff.
ISPs have a lot of problems with their business model and operations that need to be looked at before we feel pity that they need to update their infrastructure.
On caps, by the way, my ISP had an included traffic allowance with additional traffic billed at a very reasonable rate. That worked well.
ah. that's why whenever you do a speed test, the first time it always sucks. if you do again and a couple of more times, you start seeing the maximum speed. I THINK that my isp tailored the network to give me maximum bandwidth when I do speed test. Is that true? : / feel pretty fooled
I have all those flight books and king school videos too!
Calvin and Hobbes volumes in the upper right corner. Nice.
Data caps exist now for most Comcast customers. Great stuff.
Wonderful discussion. It sounds like there exists some spectrum of net neutrality, and we don't necessarily want to sit all the way at one end of the line.
I'm sure the economics of the issue are much different than the technical perspective, but can you opine on the entry barriers to service provision? What would it take to make it easier for start ups to enter the field and provide competition?
That's a lot of O'Reily books!
I love your bookcase Ben :)