271–280 of 452 posts
Honest question, but is Net Neutrality the answer to these problems? A few weeks ago on HN, someone made an analogy to water: someone filling their swimming pool should pay more for water than someone showering or cooking with it. This seems to make sense to me, water is a scarce resource and it should be prioritized. Is the same true of the Internet? I absolutely agree that ISPs that are also in the entertainment bu…
Net neutrality is fundamental to free speech. Without net neutrality, big companies could censor your voice and make it harder to speak up online. Net neutrality has been called the “First Amendment of the Internet.” Not just harder. Infinitely more dangerous. Probably the scariest implications for NN being gutted are those around loss of anonymity through the Internet. ISPs who are allowed to sell users' browsing hi…
In fact, since the anti-privacy law was put into law, removing Title II status from ISPs would allow the FTC to regulate privacy again.
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Sure -- let's say free market is a solution? Free market only works if I have choice . Right now, my only choice for internet service is Comcast. Free market won't do a thing until I have actual choices here.
Government handed comcast monopoly over the wire to your door. Now we're sweeping the problem under the rug by policing what goes down the wire. The way to get more choices is to let anyone compete to be your ISP, by liberating the wire. Remember how long distance phone service improved in the 90's?
Does anyone else find the internet market odd? Up until now net neutrality and other policies have given us the following: 1. Massive monopolies which essentially control 95% of all tech (google, facebook, amazon, microsoft, apple, etc) 2. An internet where every consumer assumes everything should be free. 3. An internet where there's only enough room for a handfull of players in each market globally i.e. if you have…
1) Without net neutrality, Facebook can simply pay your cellular internet provider to block all messaging apps but WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger (does that still exist?). Then their (as you put it) 95% monopoly can permanently increase to 100%. The only way to compete would be to either outpay Facebook (good luck!) or start your own cellular company (good luck!). In fact, the massive monopolies can already pay for…
You might want to check out the following guide https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a... especially the "supply chain" portion.
You next comment "paying higher rates for better speed" is generally considered competition and lowers overall costs. I find most of the "net neutrality" arguments highly specious and circular.
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> So, which is it HackerNews? Are we OK with companies deciding what gets on the internet, or are we not? On one hand, we laud Facebook et al. for suppressing "fake news", and then we get upset when ISPs do the same. If you could only access the internet through Facebook, you would have a point. You don't. > Furthermore, the FCC has historically engaged in content regulation. Anyone wonder why there's no more cartoon…
> If you could only access the internet through Facebook, you would have a point. Effectively, many people do. They open their web browsers, and search for "facebook", and click the first link. Don't even get me started about Google! My point is that regulating the network and regulating the endpoints are one and the same. It's bad enough when the endpoints do it under the guise of "fake news", it's worse when the go…
A common carrier is a very specific thing legally. Being a common carrier puts you in a very powerful position, so the government applies regulations to common carriers so they aren't put in the position of being "kingmakers" in a wide range of industries by either blocking certain people from using their utilities or extorting them.
Facebook is a publisher, essentially. Having the government step in to decide what a company can publish on their own website seems... problematic.
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The common response to this is that ISPs have access to everything you do (which is true), and that they could sell that (which is false). The regulations being overturned here are ones that have only recently taken effect, and non-anonymized, non-aggregate selling of ISP data is still outlawed by the Cable Communications Act of 1984, which protects subscriber privacy is 47USC § 551[1]. Put simply, neither the most r…
So you're saying this most recent regulation does absolutely nothing, even though it was the highest priority for the incoming industry friendly regulator. Seems doubtful that some 1984 law is going to protect our browsing data.
Repealing the Obama rule does mean that you can't opt out of data collection or sale. It does not mean that your individual browsing records are available to anyone with enough cash. Moreover, much of the rules Trump's executive order overturn had either very recently taken effect, or not yet taken effect.
There may be much theoretical damage from overturning the regulations, but the practical effect here will be minimal, and limited because of the other laws that already exist to prevent exactly the doomsday scenario many are predicting.
I'm not saying that Trump isn't after your privacy rights, but the surest test of that will be whether or not he goes after or seeks to circumvent the 1984 protections I referenced earlier.
>The internet is not broken,” There is no problem for the government to solve.” - FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai This is sooo true. If internet carriers were preferring some kind of content, or censoring or giving less bandwidth to certain content, or charging for certain content - and this was causing the problems described in the mozilla article - then yes - we could have legislation to solve that problem. What gets to…
http://gofccyourself.com (redirect) Edit: If it stays blank after redirect it's because it (FCC's site) can't handle the load, or [conspiracy theory].
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> Neither has hardly ever been described as innovative I'm not sure what you consider innovative, but my local comcast connection has grown by about 10x in bandwidth over the last 15 years.
Comcast tops out at 60Mbps where I live, which is basically Beverly Hills, a pretty wealthy area. Oh, the upload speed is a comcastic 5Mbps. It's $80, it's regularly throttled, and it has data caps (although I've gone over and not been charged.) If I had a 4K tv, I'd most likely be over. This is a perfect example of how they stifle innovation by being another impediment/middle man in the move to 4K TV. Previously, I…
>I don't want or need my ISP to be innovative. I want a dumb, no BS pipe that offers a decent price without bundling, since I don't need tv or a phone
No, you don't want it to be a dumb pipe. You want an ever increasingly fast service. If they installed a dumb pipe in 2003 and never upgraded you'd be mad as hell.
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How would the ISP know what pages you went to over HTTPS? Only the domain name would be available, through SNI/DNS.
They could just MITM all connections and say 'for compatibility reasons, please install this root certificate'. With a fee, this requirement could then be waived. Dystopian but technically possible.