Kill Net Neutrality and You'll Kill Us, Say 800 US Startups (google.com)

A group of more than 800 startups has sent a letter to the FCC chairman Ajit Pai saying they are "deeply concerned" about his decision to kill net neutrality -- reversing the Title II classification of internet service providers. The group, which includes Y Combinator, Etsy, Foursquare, GitHub, Imgur, Nextdoor, and Warby Parker, added that the decision could end up shutting their businesses. They add, via an article on The Verge: "The success of America's startup ecosystem depends on more than improved broadband speeds. We also depend on an open Internet -- including enforceable net neutrality rules that ensure big cable companies can't discriminate against people like us. We're deeply concerned with your intention to undo the existing legal framework. Without net neutrality, the incumbents who provide access to the Internet would be able to pick winners or losers in the market. They could impede traffic from our services in order to favor their own services or established competitors. Or they could impose new tolls on us, inhibiting consumer choice. [...] Our companies should be able to compete with incumbents on the quality of our products and services, not our capacity to pay tolls to Internet access providers."

Comments

Why the fuck would he care?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's one of Trump's cronies. They're all in it to get rich together. You think they care about some place where a bunch of hippies share open source code or hipsters try to sell pretty trinkets for peanuts? Fuck no.

Welcome to America made great again. Better get used to it, because it's gonna get a whole lot worse before it gets any better.

Re: Why the fuck would he care?

[Maritz]

should not have to fund these lazy entitled bums at the bottom who buy designer shoes with their salaries and then claim welfare because they can't afford food.

Do you get mad about real stuff, too?

Re: Why the fuck would he care?

[Anonymous Coward]

“Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.” -- Mark Twain

Re: Why the fuck would he care?

[Anonymous Coward]

And folks say the humanities are a waste of time.

Re: Why the fuck would he care?

[pr0t0]

I'd like to suggest a different approach as to how you view your hard-earned wealth. View it not as a treasure trove to place behind you and defend with sword and shield against the hordes clashing at your gates. Instead, think of it as a wellspring that affords you the privilege of helping others in times of drought.

It's easy to stand where you stand and call people on welfare "lazy". But you couldn't be counted among the top 1% if there was no 99% below you. You are fortunate to live in a world where the education you gained, the knowledge and skills you acquired, and the choices you made, led to doing something that people were willing to pay enough for to put in you in that bracket. There are nearly as many reasons for a particular person to be impoverished as there are impoverished people. To label them all as lazy, is well...that's kind of lazy, and simplistic thinking.

You worked your ass off so you could live a life that wasn't focused on survival. The ability to help others not focus as much on survival is a gift. It's a gift of a society built upon, for good or ill, inequality; the same society that placed a high enough value on your chosen profession to remunerate you in the way it did.

But your money isn't the reward for your hard work. The reward is the ability to help others.

Re: Why the fuck would he care?

[gnick]

My parents only helped me pay for school (half me half them). Other than that, I made my own wealth.

Yeah, and Warren Buffet gave me a million dollars to invest in the stock market. Other than that, I made my own wealth.

Starting your adult life with $1M in the bank is a far cry from getting help from your parents to fund school. Most parents cover school costs for their kids through grade 12 in the U.S. Many parents continue to help for a few years after if they're able. Sure it's an advantage, but it's a world away from a "Warren Buffet gave me a million dollars" advantage. My dad helped a little bit while I was in school, but you're off by multiple orders of magnitude. Do you only consider people who start as parentless street urchins self-made? Getting free formula or milk as a baby is a shameless handout and clearly a sign of privilege.

Re: Why the fuck would he care?

[Anonymous Coward]

For the record, also in tech. I'm not a 1%er, I'm a 4%er, so not as well off as you but certainly not entirely dissimilar.

Here is the questions people are trying to guide you to be asking:

How much is your skillset worth in a society with no tech infrastructure?
How is it society can afford to throw so much money and so many skilled people at an activity not related to immediate day-to-day survival?
Isn't it fortunate that a school and materials that teach your skills existed, so you didn't have to personally discover how to build a computer, generate and distribute electricity, or any other number of required factors?
Isn't it fortunate that while you did likely have a school job, you didn't have to spend most of your day hunting and gathering and recovering from injuries sustained while hunting and gathering, while going to said school?

You did indeed work hard for your skills, and did indeed make good choices. But those skills are valuable BECAUSE that market exists and the infrastructure existed to let you even TRY. You are more reliant on the infrastructure of modern society than you seem to realize, and failing to support that same infrastructure closes opportunities for others. We all drive down the same road, and some of us go further than others, be it from luck, good choices, hard work, or usually combinations of the three. But don't pretend you owe the road and the people who pave it nothing for your success.

Re:Why the fuck would he care?

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazing that any non-progressive voice on Slashdot gets voted down, as flamebait.

Every time someone says something like this you know that THEY are the ones who are biased and are the sort who seek validation in the number of people who think the same way.

For me, I've been in the Internet business since before most of you had graduated from middle school.

What do you want, a cookie?

And the Net was fine with light-touch regulation, all the while. But suddenly, we get a heavy handed liberal progressive in the White House and the light shines upon the problem and NOW we need to regulate and control everything.... including what you can say and write??? Yeah, that was the next foot-fall, regulation of "equal speech".

In the early days of the Internet, there were like 50 dialup ISPs all competing for your business. These days, you're lucky if you have TWO choices for an ISP. Any time a group of people get fed up with shitty service from one of those ISPs, and decides to do the "free market" thing of creating their own co-op ISP, the Comcast and AT&Ts of the region will bury them in lawsuits. Then they'll bribe conservative lawmakers to pass protectionist laws prohibiting anyone other than the incumbent ISP from being able to offer service. Also, companies like Comcast didn't own NBC/Universal, making them both a content PRODUCER and content PROVIDER.

The "light regulation" you talk so fondly about is what led to the situation we have today. In situations like with Comcast, they have every incentive to try and hobble competing services like Netflix and Hulu. So in order for those companies to just be on an equal footing, they have to pay a toll to Comcast to NOT be throttled into oblivion. That doesn't even get into how Comcast's streaming videos don't tend to count against your bandwidth cap, while Netflix does, EVEN IF Netflix has some CDN servers inside Comcast's network -- which they had to PAY Comcast to do, where ISPs that AREN'T content producers were generally happy to let Netflix put some servers inside their network because it provides better service for their customers.

My personal belief is that the free market finds a way to convey services that are in-demand and perceived as having value, from the consumers perspective. Look at all of the examples (e.g. the music industry fought digital music and streaming, VoIP, on-demand TV, etc. etc.)

All of those things are directly threatened by the reversal of net neutrality regulations. I'll just keep picking on Comcast as a stand-in for all major ISPs. Say Comcast wants to promote it's own "triple play" packages with phone and TV service, so they start throttling any other VoIP provider and Sony's TV service competitor to DirectTV Now. Under the free market/light regulation system you're so fond of, there's nothing stopping Comcast from doing this, and in most parts of the country, you don't even have the option to just move to another ISP.

Now you might be able to make an argument that the free market has been stifled in regards to a healthy number of competitors. If you can create a scenario where everyone has at least 3 choices for broadband providers, I think you'd find a lot of the liberals and progressives you like to blame for everything would be happy to revisit the idea of net neutrality and whether it's still necessary.

Re:Why the fuck would he care?

[atrimtab]

So you think that every road should be a toll road where the owner that road can discriminate on who can use that road or crowd out those that won't pay the latest toll?

The free market does not work where a monopoly, duopoly, or a small oligopoly exists. The players will simply set prices and policies in the same way that gas stations watch each others prices across the street from each other.

This is why utilities are all regulated to prevent the purposeful discrimination and market distortions created by rent seekers seeking maximum advantage.

I've been in the ISP business also. Net Neutrality is a good thing for everyone except the toll road owners.

Re:Why the fuck would he care?

[WheezyJoe]

Chairman Ajit Pai says net neutrality "hurt investment" and "small internet providers don't have 'the means or the margins' to withstand the regulatory onslaught" of net neutrality.

So, obviously, all you startups are just wrong. Because he said it. Good Mr. Pai and his holiness overlord Trump are looking out for you, and you should grovel in appreciation.

Someday, the Republicans will deregulate... the NFL. No refs, no rules. Football played the way it's meant to be played: all out war, with guns!

Re: Why the fuck would he care?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your parents' ability to partially pay for your schooling is something that most people don't have working in their favor, which is something you should take into consideration before declaring yourself the captain of your own destiny. No, it's not the same DEGREE as having a million in the bank from go, but it is the same concept. You were born into a family that had the ability to give you a head start. Have some respect for those who weren't so lucky.

But but, it'sâ a Republican idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

And as we all know, Republicans are all about being good for business.

And the businesses of America have always thought about the people of this country, first and foremost, whether importing hundreds of thousands of African slaves to toil on Cotton and Tobacco plantations, to starting wars over bananas, pineapples and guano.

Truly, they are blessed

Re:But but, it'sâ a Republican idea!

[Z00L00K]

Republicans are conservatives so they only care for big established business, never for small business and startups unless they can show a huge profit or impact the trade balance.

Re: But but, it'sâ a Republican idea!

[Jzanu Syr]

No, actually I doubt that seriously. Hilary would have been a vast improvement over Trump as someone who studied and understood law, international relations, had exposure to military strategy, and faced over 30 years of investigations while continuing to be squeaky clean. In contrast, Trump has 300+ active lawsuits, flagrantly violated labor laws, immigration law (yeah!), tax law, and everything else. As well as the whole committing treason bit by selling state secrets to Russia as a bribe not to expose his homosexuality.

Re: But but, it'sâ a Republican idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

You are eitherâ ignorant or deceitful. I wish it was the former, but I seriously doubt it's an honest mistake. Lies and half-truths to score political points, that's the only way politics are played. It's disgusting.

Well, bye.

[rsilvergun]

Seriously, the last thing major investors (the kind that run Goldman Sachs) want is disruption. Just keep the gravy train going and fire off a little war every now and then and they're happy. Nobody wants another Google, Netflix or Square changing the landscape. Well, nobody Congress is listening too anyway.

Re:Breaking News

[Anonymous Coward]

[Sorry, your ISP requires a Slashdot® SuperPremiumExpansionPack to view the content of this post]

Current rules flawed

[Anonymous Coward]

The FCC's Obama-era net neutrality rules were far too weak and failed to protect net neutrality when there was a chance. And now that Trump is in place, the window of opportunity will probably be closed for quite some time.

During the whole time that the current regs were in place (since 2015), Verizon and AT&T violated net neutrality about as blatantly as you could imagine with their zero-rating policy that promotes and benefits their own streaming services to the exclusion of all others. The FCC did squat. Of course, things will only get worse now, but the situation was certainly not rosy up until this point.

Re:We need free bandwidth

[The Cisco Kid]

If you think these companies don't pay for their Internet connections, you are deluded.

Re:We need free bandwidth

[sdinfoserv]

meanwhile Comcast, leader of the Cabal, experienced revenue growth of 7.91% from 74.51bn to 80.40bn while net income improved 6.52% from 8.16bn to 8.70bn.
With a gross margin of a mere 69.5%, the CEO could be heard screaming blocks away "MORE MORE MORE", as the board room followed in his lead and a chant broke out.

Tone down the trolls?

[irving47]

I think network neutrality is a good thing. And I'm willing to bet most republicans and even slightly right-leaning people that will read these comments on /. feel the same way. Now might not be the best time to alienate them/us further with "Moscow Donald" remarks and more demonization.

Just a thought, guys.

Re:Tone down the trolls?

[guyniraxn]

Really? If memory serves, the anti-net neutrality posters on /. back when it was first introduced were all justifying their position with typical Right/Republican talking points about capitalism and free markets.

I paid for them

[goombah99]

They are sending data to me. I paid comcast to get it. COmcast can't say what data I should be able to get. They are a common carrier not a gate keeper.

I will say it again (we killed Trusted computing )

[Billly Gates]

Remember 13 years ago when we all posted links to our American representatives and with their phones and email exploding the DRM trusted PC requirements went away from a potential bill.

Can you all afford 3 minutes of your life

Ok most senators and congressman are too stupid to know what net neutrality is. They gain their information from experts ... experts brought to by lobbyists from Cox, Comcast, Time Warner, to educate our politicians what this issue is. They are simply ignorant.

So here is the link for your congressman. Here is the link to your senator. The people who read these are called scriptwriters and if they get thousands of angry emails I can guarantee you it will at least get your politicians attention.

When I linked this in 2003 or 2004 here Slashdot posted a story a few days later stating congress was confused, dumbfounded, and shocked. The bill died :-D

If you have a Republican write professionally that you do not want big brother government to trample innovation and stop jobs. Explain your I.T. position and career and explain your employer and startups already pay extra for bandwidth and this amounts to a bribe. End it off with if the United States won't allow us to be a leader in technology another cheaper country like China or India will who do not have these problems with Net Neutrality and can operate simply on bandwidth uses without double and triple dipping.

If your senator and or congressman is a democrat explain politely that this is a terrible bill that will hurt lower income internet users and new startups. Explain your I.T. position and career and explain your employer and startups already pay extra for bandwidth and this amounts to double dipping which will hurt America's competitive advantage. Also mention the top 5 technology companies are active Democratic donors to your party including Facebook, Google, and Microsoft and that if America fails to take initiative for regulating tax payer infrastructure then another country with more freedoms like India or China will take the jobs instead and this will help lower income consumers by keeping prices lower.

 

Re:We need free bandwidth

[UnknowingFool]

"Our business model depends on the fact that we don't pay for network infrastructure upgrades." - Internet content companies.

Only people who don't understand net neutrality would say that. How do you think these 800 start-ups get the Internet? They pay for it just like every other business. What they can't pay for is privileged or special access because ISPs want more money.

Re:big businesses asking for special favors

[Anonymous Coward]

I stand up a server in a datacenter. Then I pay for throughput, do I not?
I install a computer in my home. Then I then pay for throughput, do I not?
Then we've got Tier 1,2 and 3 ISP's all motivated to build a fair and honest market for clearing throughput. If Netflix wants to consume 50% of a data centers throughput, it's all already paid for, lock stock and barrel.

Let me tell you what this debate really is about.

In a world where everyone has a 100Mbps bidirectional internet connection, you can download 3TB of data, or 360, 8GB DVD's, in 3 Days; that's a year's worth of movie watching. What happens when someone torrents the last 50 years of TV and an app to organize it all? That's the hard death of their business model.

I am seeing 2PB (2048TB) of storage in a 2U rack, today; in 8GB DVD's, that's 262,144 DVD's. An 80 year old has 29,200 days in their life. Today, that storage is a million bucks. What happens in 10 years when it's $150? Someone goes into business cloning and selling them for $200. The collapse of their model is inevitable.

We've changed from connecting residential properties to the internet over a public utility, POTS, to connecting residential properties to the internet using a private utility, cable. And these companies want to charge pay-per-page-view pricing to their customers, as well as keep them from blocking ad's. They want to dice and slice the internet and serve it up piecemeal. They want to be the content billing service. Once they have done that, then they own the distribution channel lock stock and barrel, they can do anything they want.

We literally have rural customers none of these companies want to touch with a 10 foot pole being sued for running their own municipal fiber. Why are they so afraid? How does a community running their own internet lines affect them in the slightest? This kind of activity only makes sense in a 3rd world country, and that's exactly where we are headed. If we were getting away from ad's, everyone would have a voluntary supercookie they'd use for billing. Bam. Done. I Guarantee you, you'll pay per page view, and you will still have ad's, but the ISP will prevent you from blocking them. You will have zero privacy, your comments and user-generated content will be confiscated or censored at their whim. All just like a 3rd world country.

Re:Pay for your bandwidth

[KeithIrwin]

And that'll work great until you get big enough that the ISPs think that you're big enough that it's worth shaking you down for extra dough and then they'll claim that they need extra money to carry your traffic. Comcast literally starting shaking down Level 3 demanding money for the traffic which was being sent to their users. If they'll go after backbone providers, I promise you that having a "commercial grade pipe" isn't going to make a difference.

Re:Pay for your bandwidth

[Anonymous Coward]

This comment alone shows that YOU have no idea what Net Neutrality means. These companies ARE ALREADY paying for their commercial grade connections. Absent Net Neutrality the ISPs can throttle traffic to them or even just block them for all their customers. Suppose Comcast launches a competing service called ComCastImageur.com instead and uses their dominant position to supplant imgur, which would probably happen when 30% of US viewers couldn't load an image posted to imgur. What are you going to do, go get another provider? Not if you're one of the tens of millions of US citizens with access to only one broadband provider at their address. You'll just suck it up and live with it.

Or suppose Comcast decides that if you want to watch Netflix you'll pay another $15 a month for the privilege. Or of course you can subscribe to ComNetCastFlix for only $5 a month....

THAT is the problem we're talking about.

Why didn't the courts overrule this last time?

[KeithIrwin]

So, we had a long period where ISPs were classified as Information Services rather than Telecommunication Services. This allowed them to not have to be treated as common carriers and thus not have to be neutral or share their lines. They loved that and this decision is an attempt to bring that back. But why on earth would the courts allow this classification when it's so clearly a lie? Why did they let them be classified this way for a decade?

An Information Service is a service you pay so that they will themselves provide you with information. For example, if you subscribe to a stock ticker service which provides you with information about what stocks have sold at what prices, that's an Information Service. A Telecommunications Service is a service you pay so that they will connect you to a network where you can contact other parties which may be distant from you and communicate with them. For example, a telephone company. It's very, very clear that no one signs up for an ISP to get information from the ISP. We sign up to use the internet to communicate with servers the vast majority of which are not owned or operated by the ISP. When Comcast attempted to argue that they shouldn't be classified as a Telecommunications service, they cited the fact that they provided information to customers because they ran DNS servers. The idea that most customers are paying their ISP primarily because they want DNS service is laughable. So why is the FCC even allowed to classify these services as something they aren't?

Re:Why didn't the courts overrule this last time?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Why did they let them be classified this way for a decade?

Because the courts give strong deference to the agencies to interpret the fairly general laws congress writes for them. Ordinarily that makes sense because the agencies are the closest to the issues and thus typically have a better understanding of the details and implications than the court.

But when you get ideological people in charge instead of functional people, then that argument doesn't apply. But the deference is still there.

FWIW, Scalia really hated the ruling in the BrandX case that officially let the FCC decide the classification. He wrote a dissent much like your argument. When his own ideology wasn't applicable to a case he was actually a reasonable guy.

Re:I will say it again (we killed Trusted computin

[Gravis Zero]

Ok most senators and congressman are too stupid to know what net neutrality is.

The head of the FCC is saying it needs to be done away with. Pai isn't ignorant, he knows exactly what he's doing. This isn't an accident, this is malicious.

Re:Favorable?

[Maritz]

Why wouldn't we just deal with the issue when it happened rather than making a bunch of rules for everyone to follow and hiring police to enforce them on everyone?

Applied to a wider context, this is pretty much why our species is doomed. No pre-emption. All reaction.

Re:Favorable?

[Maritz]

Everything but the IP header is not addressed to them and therefore interpreting it in any way should be considered illegal wiretapping.

They greased the right palms. End of story.

Re: Breaking News

[silentcoder]

Sorry my ISP says I need the racism+ premium service with complementary white sheet with eye holes in it to view your post. An I just can't imagine it's worth the extra 15 bucks a month.

Re:big businesses asking for special favors

[peragrin]

Content owners have to pay for bandwidth too.

Without net neutrality isps want content owners to pay twice. First for their own outbound connections, and again to distribute those connections to the people who asked for them.

Right now Netflix was to pay their isp. Comcast wants to charge Netflix money for delivering Netflix content to Comcast customers who want to watch Netflix as oppsoed to Comcast own services

Netflix then has to back charge you the customer who ends up paying three times for the same bandwidth to watch a show on Netflix.

That is net neutrality. And only idiots are against it

Re:Pay for your bandwidth

[thegarbz]

If your app needs a big commercial grade internet pipe to get it tested, pay for it.

They already do. What net neutrality is about is ensuring that they don't get charged more than someone else who happens to not like competition.

Or do you think the internet works by bits only being charged at your end of the pipe?

Meanwhile, in Uganda

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of third world countries: Here in Uganda, we have nationwide infrastructure sharing that includes towers, 2.4/5G meteo WIFI APs, metro fibre, and backhaul fibre. We have MVNOs, nearly ubiquitous mobile coverage, an extremely competitive market, a healthy interconnection ecosystem, and a growing amount of local traffic. We're in a race to the bottom for prices, and a race for the top in service quality. Glad I don't live in America.

Forget 800 companies, make it X0,000 Jobs!

[ThomasBHardy]

They need to collectively get the job rolls for those companies and make this a jobs issue. That's a topic that has traction these days and will make it a political issue that has to be discussed.

Even worse than that

[drinkypoo]

Of course they care if net neutrality will kill off 800 startups. The government loves to kill off small corporations, small business, etc. Big corporations lobby for laws which benefit them and harm new players. These 800 startups would have better stayed quiet, because all they've done is just give just one more reason to kill net neutrality.

Only a total cuck dumbfuck could believe that our government supports free trade.