7 ms·

Y Combinator has filed an official comment with the FCC

841 points by nRike 12y ago

wierdaaron 12y ago
I didn't know Alexis was a partner at YC. When did that happen?
- mikeyouse 12y ago
  He's officially been on the payroll since 2010; http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/01/reddit-cofounder-alexis-ohanian-to-join-y-combinator/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/01/reddit-cofounder-alexis-oha... But yeah, I don't see his name on the partner list; http://www.ycombinator.com/partners/ http://www.ycombinator.com/partners/
kennethfriedman 12y ago
It's great to see more and more organizations taking a public stand - however it would be even better to see even a hint that a policy-based solution is coming.
sillysaurus3 12y ago
Do such comments have any effect? It's hard to overlook that money seems to drive American politics moreso than public opinion (with the exception of the presidential elections). I think that YC will become increasingly prominent in politics, because the tech sector has to in order to maintain control of its own fate. It'll be interesting to see what other moves YC will make.
- tokenadult 12y ago
  Public comments are routine in setting administrative law. (The concept is called notice-and-comment.) Congress gives the administering agency authority to make an administrative rule, and that rule can only happen after a public notice period about the proposed rule, during which any member of the public can comment on the proposed rule. Rules are often modified during the public comment period, which will be reflected when the rule is finally published. Your point is well taken that well organized (not always well moneyed) narrow interest groups can often get their way in the legislative or administrative rule-making process simply by being organized and cohesive. That is why public-choice theory[1] suggests that representative democracy cannot always achieve disinterested action in favor of the abstract public good. But what we deal with is a system that is imperfect, but better than other systems of government that have been tried, in the comparison that Churchill popularized.[2] [1] http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/PublicChoice.html http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/PublicChoice.html [2] http://richardlangworth.com/worst-form-of-government http://richardlangworth.com/worst-form-of-government
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > Do such comments have any effect? Yes. > It's hard to overlook that money seems to drive American politics moreso than public opinion One of the ways that money drives regulatory politics is that having money means you can hire people who (1) understand the regulatory process, and (2) participate in open comment opportunities by submitting comments that are effective (particularly, by addressing the desired policy changes in terms of that address directly the points for which the regulatory agency has called for input.)
- fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
  >Do such comments have any effect? If I understand correctly, the process dictates that the FCC formulate responses to the concerns raised during the public comment stage. And maybe later, after everything has been ruined, if we're lucky, at the future congressional special committee on FCC commissioner misconduct hearings, Kucinich or someone will rake Wheeler and his buddies over the coals for failing to address those concerns.
pdkl95 12y ago
> "...so let’s reclassify broadband as the public utility we know it to be." Thank you very much for writing that! (and the letter in general!)
- Shivetya 12y ago
  are we talking only hard wired (cable/fiber) or wireless as well? I would not be surprised if costs rise as the provider, similar to who provides natural gas to my area, gets paid a wonderful fee regardless of how much gas i actually use. Then there are all these permitted charges for billing, special taxes, and the like, which raised my gas bill independent of my usage and gas prices. We might not get what we want or expect. However do not think that I agree with services like Netflix paying more for priority when I am already paying for the bandwidth
sundance0 12y ago
> Y Combinator is Silicon Valley’s premiere early stage investor. Shouldn't it be 'premier'? I know, not a big deal, but a mistake on the first line doesn't scream 'Best in the Business' if you ask me.
- carbocation 12y ago
  I would put that mistake on the same level as "typo" and hope that it would be missed or ignored, if it can't be corrected. It's a deeply unimportant error that in no way hinders the understanding of the message.
  - fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
    Pointing it out here can only help.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    True, but that's not a forum post, that's a document that aims to change policy and as such it pays off to put your best foot forward so the GP has absolutely done the right thing in calling that one out so it could be fixed.
    - carbocation 12y ago
      I agree with you (and fnordfnordfnord), but I was under the impression that this is a duplicate of a document already sent, in which case what was sent can't be retracted and edited. I certainly didn't mean to come across as critical of pointing out the typo.
- alexis 12y ago
  Fixed. Thanks. I can't tell you how many times I and others read over that and somehow missed it. So it goes with typos.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    Typos tend to materialize when you hit 'submit', 'publish' or other similarly labeled buttons. Very annoying. At least we've left the days of lead type behind so fixing is a bit quicker.
harrystone 12y ago
I appreciate what Alexis is trying to do here but I hope he isn't assuming that the FCC just doesn't understand the problem. That's how this reads to me. Maybe the idea is to be diplomatic. I don't think the FCC cares. The FCC understands what is going on and it wants to do whatever is best for the FCC. The best thing for tech companies to do is to start destroying some political careers. That's the only thing the machine understands and the only thing it's really going to respond to.
- alexqgb 12y ago
  That's the essence of contemporary lobbying. Most legislators can be persuaded with campaign contributions (the carrot) but those that can't get threatened with the stick, which comes in the form of a previously unheard of but suddenly flush primary opponent. Add gerrymandering to the mix, and this tactic becomes even harder to resist, since the effective sidelining of an opposing party means that no matter what else happens, the seat in question stays with the side that already holds it. This is what people mean by "safe" seats, by the way. They're safe for the party. Particular incumbents, not so much. So yes. If you have a realistic hope of getting what you want it's because you're known to have the power to end careers. If legislators refuse to cooperate, their prospects dim. If an agency gets uncooperative, the legislators who oversee it turn the budget screws, causing pain and wrecking livelihoods until the backer with the biggest stick wins. These are the mechanics of regulatory capture, and they're in operation every day. Obviously, all of this deeply depressing, and provides an excellent argument for getting private finance out of elections altogether, since that really is the mechanism upon which American-style corruption depends. And while we're at it, de-rigging the vote with non-partisan redistricting and establishing a nation-wide version of the (pre-gutted) Voting Rights Act would go a long way in fostering a government of, by, and for the people. But in the meantime, when our systems is less like a democracy and more like an oligarchy, getting what you want means playing by the rules that exist. And that means lobbying with both carrot and stick. They hit you, you hit back. And not only do you hit back harder, you hit back so hard that they will never get up again. That's what the SOPA/PIPA backlash did: threatened a sweeping act of maximum violence to an unprecedented number of careers. It was brutal and it was ugly, but it worked. And it did so when there's not much else that does.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
jjmocko 12y ago
That was well written, and provided a deep understanding of the topic. I really hope the FCC will listen to such reasoned responses, and not to big monied interests.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  YC is a big monied interest, it's just one which happens to dovetail with the views of most HN readers.
joelhaus 12y ago
Todays FCC commissioners have a unique opportunity; they can choose to shirk their responsibility to the public and kill the promise of the internet or they can go down in history as its saviors... the commission that preserved the internet as an economic engine of growth for generations to come.
- nikanj 12y ago
  Preserved it until next year anyway, when the next version of the "we like money and power" bill is introduced. The problem with fighting big corporations is that we only need to lose once, and they have a non-trivial amount of highly motivated people on payroll just to do the fighting.
  - joelhaus 12y ago
    A title II classification would be a huge deal. Not that people could rest on their laurels, but my sense is that it would be more difficult to undo than you are letting on.
dbpokorny 12y ago
Why don't we just shut down the FCC? (Serious question) http://transition.fcc.gov/Plan-for-Orderly-Shutdown-September-2013.pdf http://transition.fcc.gov/Plan-for-Orderly-Shutdown-Septembe...
- schwabacher 12y ago
  To answer your question: Proponents of net neutrality are asking the FCC for new regulation on the internet in order to prevent ISPs from prioritizing certain traffic over others. If we were to shut down the FCC, ISPs would be unrestrained. In other words - the problem with the FCC is not that it is actively doing bad things, the problem is that it is not doing the job we would like it to.
zmanian 12y ago
A lot of folks on the legal/policy side of this debate believe that a regulator can distinguish between network administration that is monopolistic rent seeking and that which is value added services. I'm very suspicious of this as an engineer. I suspect it is very hard to tell the difference. In a competitive environment, we can more easily discover the difference. I strongly prefer imposing competition at the last mile rather than the EFF's suggestion of Title 2 + forebearance...
- sdenton4 12y ago
  Right. We've had 'competition' in the last mile for the last twenty years, and it's led to terrible service and slower broadband than anywhere else in the developed world. Because that 'competition' leads to lots of local monopolies of the worst sort. We've already discovered the difference on this issue.
  - daxelrod 12y ago
    Wait, who has been pretending that what we have now is competition? Most places I've lived have had a choice of the local phone monopoly or the local cable monopoly.
  - snogglethorpe 12y ago
    Isn't the issue really those square quotes? Maybe the U.S. nominally has such competition, but based on what I've read, it sounds like most people don't feel they have much actual choice. Compare this to a place like Tokyo, where there's a vast number of real competitors for both last-mile infrastructure (wires / low-level communication) and ISP services, and perhaps even more critically, those two components seem to be largely decoupled. That decoupling seems like it would go a long way in helping to avoid the sort of net-neutrality shenigans than seem to be occurring with U.S. ISPs these days, by dramatically decreasing barriers to entry for new ISPs.
DigitalSea 12y ago
I said this in a comment a couple of months back on the subject, companies for net neutrality need to start lobbying. I understand Reddit, Y! Combinator and pretty much every company with a conscious who cares about the Internet all have good intentions and have more reasons than most to see fair laws/legislation based around the Internet. But the sad reality is the FCC is a mere Government agency and words are not enough. Look at those who are against net neutrality, those who stand to gain the most from opposing it: ISP's. I can't recall where I saw it, but it was an infographic/table showing which companies/organisations have been spending lobbyist cash on getting their archaic and unfair legislation through via the FCC. It seems as though spending has increased over the years in the form of donations and propaganda. If the likes of Google, Reddit and Y! Combinator want to see a fair Internet, they need to combine some cash into a pool and use it to lobby the right parts of the system. Sadly we live in a world where money talks and words are ignored. I have seen a lot of companies speaking out, but maybe it is time to consider changing tactics when a public statement from Google on the subject is basically ignored. Pull out those wallets and start spending guys, it's the only way.
- chimeracoder 12y ago
  > Y! Combinator This is the first time I've seen this misconception, and I have to admit it make me chuckle a bit. "Y!" is a trademark of Yahoo, which has no connection to Y Combinator (which is spelled without any exclamation mark).
  - DigitalSea 12y ago
    I had just finished drafting up an article on Yahoo when I wrote that, so in my head I had the letter Y followed by an exclamation mark. Surprised, it's not a mistake a lot of people frequently make.
lifeisstillgood 12y ago
What about other forms of "neutrality"? The BBC is required to maintain "balance" over political issues. Should Google return the same results to all queries (ie no search bubble allowed?) Should Facebook (indeed any advertiser) be required to serve the same advert no matter what the profile of the incoming request? I mean Billboards are public broadcasts not private to me, why should online advertising be different? I know it is but that's not the point. I support net neutrality as it is commonly defined, but I think there are many other "neutrality" issues that we gloss over happily. I doubt very much Google will be happy removing the search bubble, and I would be interested in how much it affects the quality of results.
- DINKDINK 12y ago
  Parametric advertising doesn't create a class-based system of access to information or business opportunities.
- parkovski 12y ago
  I think the problem is with choice. I can get either CenturyLink or Cox where I live, and if they both decide to throttle certain services, I just have to live with it. If I don't like Google, I can use Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, etc. Same with Facebook. Or I can start my own. Starting a search engine or social network is easy. Getting any market share is hard, since Google and FB are doing a good job, but they know how easily they could be overtaken if they screw up. I can't start an ISP because I can't use the existing infrastructure and I can't afford to build my own. But Google Fiber shows that if I could start one that doesn't suck, I'd probably have a relatively easy time getting customers, because the competition is so bad. I agree though, Google and FB make some choices we probably don't like, but it's impossible to regulate everything (and most people wouldn't want to), so we leave it for cases where the free market has proven not to work.
- chasing 12y ago
  The word "neutrality" is confusing you. "Net neutrality" isn't about content neutrality, exactly. It's about common carrier neutrality. Common carriers are essentially required to grant equal access to anyone who wants to use their service. They're neutral in that they can't say "no" to anyone. The idea being that it gives someone too much power to be able to block access to a critical service at their whim. (Say, for example, the phone company wanted to stop connecting phone calls between anyone they thought might be politically against their interests.) "Balance" has nothing to do with it. If 90% of an ISPs users want to download pictures of cats, the ISP is not required to also force users to download an equal number of dog pics. Or to force content providers to offer an equal number of cat and dog photos.
TomGullen 12y ago
One thing that seems to get me is most of this sort of action is defensive, they propose a new bill and the population has to respond on mass to have it rejected and put us back to square one. They then go away, rephrase, and we're on the defensive again. Eventually, people who only defend will capitulate. You can't win if all you do is defend.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
andrewescott 12y ago
startups would struggle to compete against those who were able to afford paying for a fast lane--or an exclusive fast lane. Even the slightest discrimination or paid prioritization significantly affects startups, as microseconds matter with both webpage-loading and real-time content. This suggests that startups struggle to compete against those who are able to pay to use CDNs to improve their webpage-loading times. However, this is clearly not the case, and undermines the argument. If a "fast lane" cost as much as using a CDN, then presumably most startups wouldn't have a problem with it.
jsonmez 12y ago
I know I am in the minority here, but while I prefer net neutrality, I don't support it. I'd like to have it, but I'd rather not see it enforced, because I believe private property rights are more important than anything else. Should we really be able to force someone to use their property an a way that serves the public interest? If so, where do we draw the line? If ISPs start taking money to throttle bandwidth, alternatives will be established. Perhaps, widespread public wifi will become more prevalent--I don't know. But, what I do know is that forcing companies--even if they are big corporations to use their property in a way we deem in our best interest is a slippery slope. Want to call broadband an public utility? Good, then make it one. But, do it officially...
- raldi 12y ago
  > Should we really be able to force someone to use their property an a way that serves the public interest? Yes, that's the price of a government-granted monopoly. > If so, where do we draw the line? If you don't have a government-granted monopoly, you don't have to be neutral. For example, that's how the Internet backbone works.
  - steamer25 12y ago
    Instead of trying to get politicians and bureaucrats to thoroughly understand the technology and hoping that they'll steer these monopolies in a favorable direction, why don't we demand that said monopolies be dissolved? I.e., if the terms of the deal are going to be altered, why not declare that there may be two or even several players? Also, why can't this be resolved at the regional level? Why does Netflix have to be as uniformly slow as obscure-and-poorly-optimized-cat-pics.com across the entire country?
    - arg01 12y ago
      One of the problems is they're natural monopolies. You only need the one data link and so it's (arguably) more cost effective to have a single regulated monopoly on the last mile side. You can create hybrid systems (like the UK) where other businesses buy capacity wholesale from the monopoly provider and compete over the same infrastructure.
robinhoode 12y ago
What exactly is meant by this? Is there a source behind it? > The fate of reddit may have been very different if Comcast had discriminated against our little two-person-startup in favor of the NBC.com news portal and the sites of other news giants.
- stan_rogers 12y ago
  The may have indicates speculation. What's to source?
- omegaham 12y ago
  Comcast owns NBC. They want to have a large news audience to fit their business model. Reddit directly competes against that, as a news aggregator collects information from all sorts of places (including those hostile to Comcast). Comcast could say, "Well, you're directly competing with our website, and you're putting hostile articles about us on the front page. We'll just throttle your access until your users get frustrated and leave." They're not the government; they can refuse service to whomever they please. If the FCC doesn't create rules that enforce net neutrality, this is a reality. And what's more is that no one can stop them otherwise because many people have no alternative to Comcast. As the South Park episode goes, "Oh, you must be really bummed. I guess you could switch services... oh... wait, you can't. We're the only one." (nipple rubbing intensifies) Basically, if you have the resources, you can enforce dominance in the market with money. One of the cool things about Internet startups right now is that the barrier to entry is pretty low - anyone with a laptop, an Internet connection, and some pretty cheap web hosting service can create the next Facebook. The lack of net neutrality changes that.
sethbannon 12y ago
The EFF set up a nice site that allows you to easily contact the FCC yourself: https://www.dearfcc.org/ https://www.dearfcc.org/
natch 12y ago
"Let me be clear: we need a bright-line, per se rule against discrimination, access fees, and paid prioritization on both mobile and fixed." It would be hard to be less clear than this. When you have a comma-separated list of things you want a rule against, you need to either repeat the word "against" or risk having people at the FCC, who may just be dumb enough to make the mistake, think that you mean you want a rule against only the first thing you mention. A naive reading of this (again, this is the FCC) would be that you mean we DO need access fees and paid prioritization, which I guess is the opposite of what you mean.
- jdoliner 12y ago
  I think it's pretty unlikely that the FCC is going to try to follow this letter exactly only to make a semantic slipup like the one you describe. I don't know why you think the people at the FCC are dumb. They do seem to be an organization with several conflicts of interest, but I think they're capable of figuring this sentence out.
mauz 12y ago
I've heard Alexis say it many times before but I still don't understand what a flat World Wide Web means. Could someone explain?
- marvy 12y ago
  As in "level playing field". Might be a reference to this book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Is_Flat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Is_Flat
samrt85 12y ago
yeah i have read about it on google
lotsofmangos 12y ago
Apologies for the cynicism, as I do support this letter, however I do think that some people will read it as reasons to block net-neutrality as y-combinator is a shopping-list of companies that annoy entrenched interests. "It's the economy, stupid" has seemingly been replaced with "It's my economy, stupid", as the mating call of the political class.
chris_wot 12y ago
Er, did you misspell one of their surnames?!?
theiostream 12y ago
The same way capitalist concentration made building a small business very hard by the start of the 20th Century, the same process is taking place right now with the Internet. We usually don't notice or even like it (why, isn't it great to have every service in the same place?), but it is a tendency. Many arguments in favor of the small business and the virtues of free competition that were used back then are being used now by this post. The post even acknowledges that "the world isn't flat", but presumes the Internet needs to be, as if it was isolated from the rest of the system. Even if net neutrality were approved, I don't think that unless there are other technological revolutions that open new sectors up like the PC or the Internet were, that subdivisions of large companies will be responsible for most new stuff, taking the most of the market for itself anyway and making competition harder, as we can see today in many ways. It'd just be a (very positive) way to preserve the current state of things a while longer, but not something capable of keeping the Internet "flat" in the long term.

841 points by nRike 12y ago

wierdaaron 12y ago

I didn't know Alexis was a partner at YC. When did that happen?

mikeyouse 12y ago
He's officially been on the payroll since 2010; http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/01/reddit-cofounder-alexis-ohanian-to-join-y-combinator/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/01/reddit-cofounder-alexis-oha... But yeah, I don't see his name on the partner list; http://www.ycombinator.com/partners/ http://www.ycombinator.com/partners/

kennethfriedman 12y ago

It's great to see more and more organizations taking a public stand - however it would be even better to see even a hint that a policy-based solution is coming.

sillysaurus3 12y ago

Do such comments have any effect? It's hard to overlook that money seems to drive American politics moreso than public opinion (with the exception of the presidential elections). I think that YC will become increasingly prominent in politics, because the tech sector has to in order to maintain control of its own fate. It'll be interesting to see what other moves YC will make.

tokenadult 12y ago
Public comments are routine in setting administrative law. (The concept is called notice-and-comment.) Congress gives the administering agency authority to make an administrative rule, and that rule can only happen after a public notice period about the proposed rule, during which any member of the public can comment on the proposed rule. Rules are often modified during the public comment period, which will be reflected when the rule is finally published. Your point is well taken that well organized (not always well moneyed) narrow interest groups can often get their way in the legislative or administrative rule-making process simply by being organized and cohesive. That is why public-choice theory[1] suggests that representative democracy cannot always achieve disinterested action in favor of the abstract public good. But what we deal with is a system that is imperfect, but better than other systems of government that have been tried, in the comparison that Churchill popularized.[2] [1] http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/PublicChoice.html http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/PublicChoice.html [2] http://richardlangworth.com/worst-form-of-government http://richardlangworth.com/worst-form-of-government
dragonwriter 12y ago
> Do such comments have any effect? Yes. > It's hard to overlook that money seems to drive American politics moreso than public opinion One of the ways that money drives regulatory politics is that having money means you can hire people who (1) understand the regulatory process, and (2) participate in open comment opportunities by submitting comments that are effective (particularly, by addressing the desired policy changes in terms of that address directly the points for which the regulatory agency has called for input.)
fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
>Do such comments have any effect? If I understand correctly, the process dictates that the FCC formulate responses to the concerns raised during the public comment stage. And maybe later, after everything has been ruined, if we're lucky, at the future congressional special committee on FCC commissioner misconduct hearings, Kucinich or someone will rake Wheeler and his buddies over the coals for failing to address those concerns.

pdkl95 12y ago

> "...so let’s reclassify broadband as the public utility we know it to be." Thank you very much for writing that! (and the letter in general!)

Shivetya 12y ago
are we talking only hard wired (cable/fiber) or wireless as well? I would not be surprised if costs rise as the provider, similar to who provides natural gas to my area, gets paid a wonderful fee regardless of how much gas i actually use. Then there are all these permitted charges for billing, special taxes, and the like, which raised my gas bill independent of my usage and gas prices. We might not get what we want or expect. However do not think that I agree with services like Netflix paying more for priority when I am already paying for the bandwidth

sundance0 12y ago

> Y Combinator is Silicon Valley’s premiere early stage investor. Shouldn't it be 'premier'? I know, not a big deal, but a mistake on the first line doesn't scream 'Best in the Business' if you ask me.

carbocation 12y ago
I would put that mistake on the same level as "typo" and hope that it would be missed or ignored, if it can't be corrected. It's a deeply unimportant error that in no way hinders the understanding of the message.
- fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
  Pointing it out here can only help.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  True, but that's not a forum post, that's a document that aims to change policy and as such it pays off to put your best foot forward so the GP has absolutely done the right thing in calling that one out so it could be fixed.
  - carbocation 12y ago
    I agree with you (and fnordfnordfnord), but I was under the impression that this is a duplicate of a document already sent, in which case what was sent can't be retracted and edited. I certainly didn't mean to come across as critical of pointing out the typo.
alexis 12y ago
Fixed. Thanks. I can't tell you how many times I and others read over that and somehow missed it. So it goes with typos.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  Typos tend to materialize when you hit 'submit', 'publish' or other similarly labeled buttons. Very annoying. At least we've left the days of lead type behind so fixing is a bit quicker.

harrystone 12y ago

I appreciate what Alexis is trying to do here but I hope he isn't assuming that the FCC just doesn't understand the problem. That's how this reads to me. Maybe the idea is to be diplomatic. I don't think the FCC cares. The FCC understands what is going on and it wants to do whatever is best for the FCC. The best thing for tech companies to do is to start destroying some political careers. That's the only thing the machine understands and the only thing it's really going to respond to.

alexqgb 12y ago
That's the essence of contemporary lobbying. Most legislators can be persuaded with campaign contributions (the carrot) but those that can't get threatened with the stick, which comes in the form of a previously unheard of but suddenly flush primary opponent. Add gerrymandering to the mix, and this tactic becomes even harder to resist, since the effective sidelining of an opposing party means that no matter what else happens, the seat in question stays with the side that already holds it. This is what people mean by "safe" seats, by the way. They're safe for the party. Particular incumbents, not so much. So yes. If you have a realistic hope of getting what you want it's because you're known to have the power to end careers. If legislators refuse to cooperate, their prospects dim. If an agency gets uncooperative, the legislators who oversee it turn the budget screws, causing pain and wrecking livelihoods until the backer with the biggest stick wins. These are the mechanics of regulatory capture, and they're in operation every day. Obviously, all of this deeply depressing, and provides an excellent argument for getting private finance out of elections altogether, since that really is the mechanism upon which American-style corruption depends. And while we're at it, de-rigging the vote with non-partisan redistricting and establishing a nation-wide version of the (pre-gutted) Voting Rights Act would go a long way in fostering a government of, by, and for the people. But in the meantime, when our systems is less like a democracy and more like an oligarchy, getting what you want means playing by the rules that exist. And that means lobbying with both carrot and stick. They hit you, you hit back. And not only do you hit back harder, you hit back so hard that they will never get up again. That's what the SOPA/PIPA backlash did: threatened a sweeping act of maximum violence to an unprecedented number of careers. It was brutal and it was ugly, but it worked. And it did so when there's not much else that does.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

jjmocko 12y ago

That was well written, and provided a deep understanding of the topic. I really hope the FCC will listen to such reasoned responses, and not to big monied interests.

anigbrowl 12y ago
YC is a big monied interest, it's just one which happens to dovetail with the views of most HN readers.

joelhaus 12y ago

Todays FCC commissioners have a unique opportunity; they can choose to shirk their responsibility to the public and kill the promise of the internet or they can go down in history as its saviors... the commission that preserved the internet as an economic engine of growth for generations to come.

nikanj 12y ago
Preserved it until next year anyway, when the next version of the "we like money and power" bill is introduced. The problem with fighting big corporations is that we only need to lose once, and they have a non-trivial amount of highly motivated people on payroll just to do the fighting.
- joelhaus 12y ago
  A title II classification would be a huge deal. Not that people could rest on their laurels, but my sense is that it would be more difficult to undo than you are letting on.

dbpokorny 12y ago

Why don't we just shut down the FCC? (Serious question) http://transition.fcc.gov/Plan-for-Orderly-Shutdown-September-2013.pdf http://transition.fcc.gov/Plan-for-Orderly-Shutdown-Septembe...

schwabacher 12y ago
To answer your question: Proponents of net neutrality are asking the FCC for new regulation on the internet in order to prevent ISPs from prioritizing certain traffic over others. If we were to shut down the FCC, ISPs would be unrestrained. In other words - the problem with the FCC is not that it is actively doing bad things, the problem is that it is not doing the job we would like it to.

zmanian 12y ago

A lot of folks on the legal/policy side of this debate believe that a regulator can distinguish between network administration that is monopolistic rent seeking and that which is value added services. I'm very suspicious of this as an engineer. I suspect it is very hard to tell the difference. In a competitive environment, we can more easily discover the difference. I strongly prefer imposing competition at the last mile rather than the EFF's suggestion of Title 2 + forebearance...

sdenton4 12y ago
Right. We've had 'competition' in the last mile for the last twenty years, and it's led to terrible service and slower broadband than anywhere else in the developed world. Because that 'competition' leads to lots of local monopolies of the worst sort. We've already discovered the difference on this issue.
- daxelrod 12y ago
  Wait, who has been pretending that what we have now is competition? Most places I've lived have had a choice of the local phone monopoly or the local cable monopoly.
- snogglethorpe 12y ago
  Isn't the issue really those square quotes? Maybe the U.S. nominally has such competition, but based on what I've read, it sounds like most people don't feel they have much actual choice. Compare this to a place like Tokyo, where there's a vast number of real competitors for both last-mile infrastructure (wires / low-level communication) and ISP services, and perhaps even more critically, those two components seem to be largely decoupled. That decoupling seems like it would go a long way in helping to avoid the sort of net-neutrality shenigans than seem to be occurring with U.S. ISPs these days, by dramatically decreasing barriers to entry for new ISPs.

DigitalSea 12y ago

I said this in a comment a couple of months back on the subject, companies for net neutrality need to start lobbying. I understand Reddit, Y! Combinator and pretty much every company with a conscious who cares about the Internet all have good intentions and have more reasons than most to see fair laws/legislation based around the Internet. But the sad reality is the FCC is a mere Government agency and words are not enough. Look at those who are against net neutrality, those who stand to gain the most from opposing it: ISP's. I can't recall where I saw it, but it was an infographic/table showing which companies/organisations have been spending lobbyist cash on getting their archaic and unfair legislation through via the FCC. It seems as though spending has increased over the years in the form of donations and propaganda. If the likes of Google, Reddit and Y! Combinator want to see a fair Internet, they need to combine some cash into a pool and use it to lobby the right parts of the system. Sadly we live in a world where money talks and words are ignored. I have seen a lot of companies speaking out, but maybe it is time to consider changing tactics when a public statement from Google on the subject is basically ignored. Pull out those wallets and start spending guys, it's the only way.

chimeracoder 12y ago
> Y! Combinator This is the first time I've seen this misconception, and I have to admit it make me chuckle a bit. "Y!" is a trademark of Yahoo, which has no connection to Y Combinator (which is spelled without any exclamation mark).
- DigitalSea 12y ago
  I had just finished drafting up an article on Yahoo when I wrote that, so in my head I had the letter Y followed by an exclamation mark. Surprised, it's not a mistake a lot of people frequently make.

lifeisstillgood 12y ago

What about other forms of "neutrality"? The BBC is required to maintain "balance" over political issues. Should Google return the same results to all queries (ie no search bubble allowed?) Should Facebook (indeed any advertiser) be required to serve the same advert no matter what the profile of the incoming request? I mean Billboards are public broadcasts not private to me, why should online advertising be different? I know it is but that's not the point. I support net neutrality as it is commonly defined, but I think there are many other "neutrality" issues that we gloss over happily. I doubt very much Google will be happy removing the search bubble, and I would be interested in how much it affects the quality of results.

DINKDINK 12y ago
Parametric advertising doesn't create a class-based system of access to information or business opportunities.
parkovski 12y ago
I think the problem is with choice. I can get either CenturyLink or Cox where I live, and if they both decide to throttle certain services, I just have to live with it. If I don't like Google, I can use Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, etc. Same with Facebook. Or I can start my own. Starting a search engine or social network is easy. Getting any market share is hard, since Google and FB are doing a good job, but they know how easily they could be overtaken if they screw up. I can't start an ISP because I can't use the existing infrastructure and I can't afford to build my own. But Google Fiber shows that if I could start one that doesn't suck, I'd probably have a relatively easy time getting customers, because the competition is so bad. I agree though, Google and FB make some choices we probably don't like, but it's impossible to regulate everything (and most people wouldn't want to), so we leave it for cases where the free market has proven not to work.
chasing 12y ago
The word "neutrality" is confusing you. "Net neutrality" isn't about content neutrality, exactly. It's about common carrier neutrality. Common carriers are essentially required to grant equal access to anyone who wants to use their service. They're neutral in that they can't say "no" to anyone. The idea being that it gives someone too much power to be able to block access to a critical service at their whim. (Say, for example, the phone company wanted to stop connecting phone calls between anyone they thought might be politically against their interests.) "Balance" has nothing to do with it. If 90% of an ISPs users want to download pictures of cats, the ISP is not required to also force users to download an equal number of dog pics. Or to force content providers to offer an equal number of cat and dog photos.

TomGullen 12y ago

One thing that seems to get me is most of this sort of action is defensive, they propose a new bill and the population has to respond on mass to have it rejected and put us back to square one. They then go away, rephrase, and we're on the defensive again. Eventually, people who only defend will capitulate. You can't win if all you do is defend.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

andrewescott 12y ago

startups would struggle to compete against those who were able to afford paying for a fast lane--or an exclusive fast lane. Even the slightest discrimination or paid prioritization significantly affects startups, as microseconds matter with both webpage-loading and real-time content. This suggests that startups struggle to compete against those who are able to pay to use CDNs to improve their webpage-loading times. However, this is clearly not the case, and undermines the argument. If a "fast lane" cost as much as using a CDN, then presumably most startups wouldn't have a problem with it.

jsonmez 12y ago

I know I am in the minority here, but while I prefer net neutrality, I don't support it. I'd like to have it, but I'd rather not see it enforced, because I believe private property rights are more important than anything else. Should we really be able to force someone to use their property an a way that serves the public interest? If so, where do we draw the line? If ISPs start taking money to throttle bandwidth, alternatives will be established. Perhaps, widespread public wifi will become more prevalent--I don't know. But, what I do know is that forcing companies--even if they are big corporations to use their property in a way we deem in our best interest is a slippery slope. Want to call broadband an public utility? Good, then make it one. But, do it officially...

raldi 12y ago
> Should we really be able to force someone to use their property an a way that serves the public interest? Yes, that's the price of a government-granted monopoly. > If so, where do we draw the line? If you don't have a government-granted monopoly, you don't have to be neutral. For example, that's how the Internet backbone works.
- steamer25 12y ago
  Instead of trying to get politicians and bureaucrats to thoroughly understand the technology and hoping that they'll steer these monopolies in a favorable direction, why don't we demand that said monopolies be dissolved? I.e., if the terms of the deal are going to be altered, why not declare that there may be two or even several players? Also, why can't this be resolved at the regional level? Why does Netflix have to be as uniformly slow as obscure-and-poorly-optimized-cat-pics.com across the entire country?
  - arg01 12y ago
    One of the problems is they're natural monopolies. You only need the one data link and so it's (arguably) more cost effective to have a single regulated monopoly on the last mile side. You can create hybrid systems (like the UK) where other businesses buy capacity wholesale from the monopoly provider and compete over the same infrastructure.

robinhoode 12y ago

What exactly is meant by this? Is there a source behind it? > The fate of reddit may have been very different if Comcast had discriminated against our little two-person-startup in favor of the NBC.com news portal and the sites of other news giants.

stan_rogers 12y ago
The may have indicates speculation. What's to source?
omegaham 12y ago
Comcast owns NBC. They want to have a large news audience to fit their business model. Reddit directly competes against that, as a news aggregator collects information from all sorts of places (including those hostile to Comcast). Comcast could say, "Well, you're directly competing with our website, and you're putting hostile articles about us on the front page. We'll just throttle your access until your users get frustrated and leave." They're not the government; they can refuse service to whomever they please. If the FCC doesn't create rules that enforce net neutrality, this is a reality. And what's more is that no one can stop them otherwise because many people have no alternative to Comcast. As the South Park episode goes, "Oh, you must be really bummed. I guess you could switch services... oh... wait, you can't. We're the only one." (nipple rubbing intensifies) Basically, if you have the resources, you can enforce dominance in the market with money. One of the cool things about Internet startups right now is that the barrier to entry is pretty low - anyone with a laptop, an Internet connection, and some pretty cheap web hosting service can create the next Facebook. The lack of net neutrality changes that.

sethbannon 12y ago

The EFF set up a nice site that allows you to easily contact the FCC yourself: https://www.dearfcc.org/ https://www.dearfcc.org/

natch 12y ago

"Let me be clear: we need a bright-line, per se rule against discrimination, access fees, and paid prioritization on both mobile and fixed." It would be hard to be less clear than this. When you have a comma-separated list of things you want a rule against, you need to either repeat the word "against" or risk having people at the FCC, who may just be dumb enough to make the mistake, think that you mean you want a rule against only the first thing you mention. A naive reading of this (again, this is the FCC) would be that you mean we DO need access fees and paid prioritization, which I guess is the opposite of what you mean.

jdoliner 12y ago
I think it's pretty unlikely that the FCC is going to try to follow this letter exactly only to make a semantic slipup like the one you describe. I don't know why you think the people at the FCC are dumb. They do seem to be an organization with several conflicts of interest, but I think they're capable of figuring this sentence out.

mauz 12y ago

I've heard Alexis say it many times before but I still don't understand what a flat World Wide Web means. Could someone explain?

marvy 12y ago
As in "level playing field". Might be a reference to this book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Is_Flat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Is_Flat

samrt85 12y ago

yeah i have read about it on google

lotsofmangos 12y ago

Apologies for the cynicism, as I do support this letter, however I do think that some people will read it as reasons to block net-neutrality as y-combinator is a shopping-list of companies that annoy entrenched interests. "It's the economy, stupid" has seemingly been replaced with "It's my economy, stupid", as the mating call of the political class.

chris_wot 12y ago

Er, did you misspell one of their surnames?!?

theiostream 12y ago

The same way capitalist concentration made building a small business very hard by the start of the 20th Century, the same process is taking place right now with the Internet. We usually don't notice or even like it (why, isn't it great to have every service in the same place?), but it is a tendency. Many arguments in favor of the small business and the virtues of free competition that were used back then are being used now by this post. The post even acknowledges that "the world isn't flat", but presumes the Internet needs to be, as if it was isolated from the rest of the system. Even if net neutrality were approved, I don't think that unless there are other technological revolutions that open new sectors up like the PC or the Internet were, that subdivisions of large companies will be responsible for most new stuff, taking the most of the market for itself anyway and making competition harder, as we can see today in many ways. It'd just be a (very positive) way to preserve the current state of things a while longer, but not something capable of keeping the Internet "flat" in the long term.