IDEA: "Network Hostility:" Coordinated response to political deregulation of network accessibility (anti-"net neutrality")
TL;DR: We need an automated method (e.g. Apache plugin) for rejecting access to a service based on the connecting ISP (and their behavior regarding network neutrality.
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Given the fact that the FCC is bent on deregulating network neutrality for internet providers, We the People need a direct and targeted response to the threat of providers that fail to respect the spirit of network neutrality.
This response would be most effectively implemented as a software plugin for Web server software such as Apache or IIS. Simply enough, if the IP address of the client connecting belongs to a given ISP in a list curated by an organization such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, then access is rejected with an explanation as to why (reasons such as anti-competitive prioritization). The list can be updated automatically (or neutralized, if the threat ever disappears).
In effect, we fight fire with fire by making it impossible for disrespectful providers to take advantage of any service from a provider flagged in the list. Let the little guys band together, make a nuisance, and get the word out.
Posted Dec 14, 2017, 7:27 PM UTC
This is a terrible idea, and diminishes rather than strengthens net neutrality.
This strategy seems like a coordinated political maneuver, intended to "send a message" and motivate political action, rather than to simply address the problem and directly preserve net neutrality.
Given that the current threat to net neutrality is the (entirely predictable) consequence of politicizing the question in the first place, and allowing net neutrality to be construed as something to be sustained by regulatory intervention by a bureaucracy that's always been easily co-optable by the targets of regulation, it makes little sense to continue to fight the battle via the means of politics.
The correct solution to the problem is to go back to construing net neutrality as something to be sustained by the bottom-up complex of market incentives and technical constraints that prevailed for decades prior to the question being politicized. The best thing to focus on at the moment is propagating technology that makes breaches of net neutrality less and less feasible, i.e. promoting:
This is a technical problem and a market problem, not a political one, and making it into a political issue is the thing most likely to put control over the outcome in the hands of adversarial interests.
On the contrary. This idea is to be applied when net neutrality is revoked.
Also, I'm not suggesting that VPN access be blocked (unless the operator wants to).
Hey, I'm not the one who started the debate about dismantling net neutrality, but if it dies, then I'm 100% OK with being the one to drop a nuke on what's left.
Encryption is a start, but your ISP might still throttle data that is coming from, say, Netflix, regardless of its encrypted status.
Companies love their walled gardens. Good luck getting them to give that up.
Good luck with that. Nobody is willing to do the work.
It is a political issue and will remain a political issue until net neutrality is abolished.
How can net neutrality itself be "revoked"?
There doesn't seem to be any clear and manifest threat to net neutrality apart from people politicizing the matter, and it seems like your proposal plays directly into that problem. In other words, what you're suggesting would be advantageous to the people who want to dismantle net neutrality, rather than an obstacle for them.
Only if they know it's coming from Netflix, but there's no reason why they need to know that -- a very large portion of the data traversing the internet today is already routed through large-scale CDNs, and there's no reason why the particular user of a given CDN needs to be known to the endpoint ISP. They'd have to throttle all connections to e.g. Akamai or Cloudfront, which would effectively amount to throttling all traffic indiscriminately.
The problem isn't that "companies" love walled gardens, the problem is that users do. A well-organized effort by FOSS communities to bring open and decentralized platforms up to the same level of usability as walled-garden offerings will go a long way to mitigate the problem.
Manifestly false, given the vast amount of work that people are already putting into open-source projects.
Net neutrality can only be "abolished" if it's allowed to be dependent on politics in the first place!
"Net neutrality" refers to the rules that the FCC imposes on internet service providers. By eliminating the rules that bind ISPs, net neutrality is effectively revoked.
Net neutrality is a policy. It makes sense that any threat to a policy is political.
Except that every internet packet contains source and destination address information. It's true that you can hide specific details of content within the distribution scheme of that content, but if the content provider is (for example) Netflix, then the content itself might not matter. The fact that the IP data contains Netflix's address as the source of content means that any ISP can block/throttle/shape the traffic throughput for any number of reasons (soon to include "because competition"). Sure, it doesn't mean they need to know that, but it puts undue burden on content and service providers to hide their traffic in a larger distribution scheme.
A ridiculous amount of effort for near-zero return.
Users couldn't give a shit about walled garden apps. Downloading the Netflix app instead of playing in a browser is mildly annoying, but it allows Netflix to inject DRM and other methods of control over user behavior.
I think you vastly overestimate the amount of work that people are putting into open-source projects. Sure, plenty of libre software exists, but this is pure altruistic benefit. Most "open source" developers don't make money from their projects. In fact, I frequently see pleas for users to contribute financially to the development of a project. Given the precedent, I don't expect a pot of gold to be waiting for anyone who solves this problem. That's not to say people won't clamor for it. They just won't lift a fucking finger to make it happen.
No, it doesn't. "Net neutrality" refers to a state of affairs in which ISPs price bandwidth as a commodity without content- or destination-based discrimination.
The idea that this state of affairs must be sustained by regulatory intervention is highly dubious, and your verbal conflation of net neutrality itself with regulatory rules ostensibly intended to protect it is part of the problem.
Again, incorrect. The FCCs policy was -- on the surface -- intended to uphold net neutrality, but the policy and the state of affairs it's aimed to perpetuate are two different things.
From the perspective of the endpoint ISP, the source of every packet transmitted via a CDN is the CDN itself.
It doesn't. The inbound packet is coming from the CDN, not from Netflix.
And squandering resources on political activism for a return on the other side of zero is a better plan?
What are you talking about? What does whether the client is in a browser or a standalone app have to do with anything we're discussing?
I don't think I am, given the manifestly extant range of open-source software in widespread use.