Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ajit Pai is right

stratechery.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 316 posts

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#191

Post by jack9 »

jakelarkin wrote: post #52
Sumaso wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the rules Ajit Pai wants in place were to be in place when Amazon got started its likely Wal-Mart could have paid to simply make them disappear for most internet providers by "buying" the right to e-commerce traffic. Isn't this covered by anti-trust laws?

only if walmart and ISPs are a monopoly, which by very technical legal arguments, they're not. having to pay off ISPs to the tune of millions for network access to e-commerce customers, prevents Amazon from ever getting started selling books in the 90s

> only if ... ISPs are a monopoly,

This is already the case.

Google's inability to push fiber everywhere shows the market is demonstrably closed. It's so cost ineffective due to corruption and in-place infrastructure, that it's an effective monopoly. This is why I have between 0-2 providers to choose from, depending on where I go in the US.

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#192

Post by passive »

masklinn wrote: post #101
Shivetya wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

prior to the rule change in 2014 did we have such a problem? I recall the days of my choices in a highly regulated environment of being ISDN or T1. Provided I could even get either at my home. The issue I have is one of perception. People are magically convinced that NN will grant them all sorts of benefits but no one seems to agree with what they are. I can almost guarantee one thing, continue as is and the rate bro…

> prior to the rule change in 2014 did we have such a problem? Cable ISPs were only moved from Title II (common carriers) to Title I in 2002, and dial-up and DSL in 2005. And yes there were problems, here's a list of related issues and breaches: https://np.reddit.com/r/KeepOurNetFree/comments/7ej1nd/fcc_u... Not to mention the move absolutely destroyed DSL competition (as its opponents had predicted) as it ended line…

Thank you, this is a great summary of many important points on this topic.

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#193

Post by jack9 »

ABCLAW wrote: post #184
colept wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.freepress.net/blog/2017/04/25/net-neutrality-vio... That argument is akin to saying "let's strip the regulations because ___ wasn't so bad before." Should it be terrible in order for us to realize when regulations are in our best interest? Should we go back to cars without seatbelts because at one point it wasn't so bad? Should we de-regulate smoking because it wasn't really so bad in the 40's?

No, the argument is worse than that because it is intentionally inaccurate. The re-framing it aims to perform is misleading and distracts from the issue.

> No, the argument is worse than that because it is intentionally inaccurate.

Seems on the nose to me shrug

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#194

Post by and0 »

j2kun wrote: post #15

> It is worth noting, by the way, that BitTorrent users were free-loaders, using massively more bandwidth than the vast majority of Comcast’s customers. I don't think that's how a service agreement works. If I'm paying for a certain bandwidth and latency, I should get that (to within reasonably improbable outages) if I use it 100% of the time or 1% of the time. If the ISP can't keep up, they should be penalized for i…

Paying customers are "free-loaders"? That's so nonsensical.

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#195

Post by takeda »

thehardsphere wrote: post #165
cptskippy wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fundamental flaw in your argument is that you're failing to ask one very important question. Why was the rule put in place in 2015? Most regulations, like laws, are reactive in nature. If our existing laws and regulations were good enough then why would we need to elect new law makers? Why would we even need them at all? The fact is that people are constantly finding new and creative ways to exploit others and or…

Actually, I am asking that. Several other commentors have asserted that "the world changed" a few years before the rule passed, yet nobody has really explained in detail how. So far I've gotten a hypothetical about Wal-Mart paying ISPs to destroy Amazon, which didn't actually happen. (Though I haven't read other responses yet, so maybe there's something more here I just have missed.) But, let's take a closer look at…

The reason FCC made change in 2015, because in 2014 court ruled that with prior classification, FCC had no authority to enforce anything unless they reclassify the Internet.

Before the ruling, the companies were still respecting what FCC said (here are some cases that happened between 2002 (when FCC reclassified Internet as a telecommunication service) and 2015[1]), now the cat is out of the bag.

Also note that 2015 change essentially brought back what was changed in 2002.

[1] https://www.freepress.net/blog/2017/04/25/net-neutrality-vio...

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#196

Post by jack9 »

thehardsphere wrote: post #31
zbruhnke wrote: post #6

This person misses the entire point of the argument for Net Neutrality - Yes it can be convenient if you know ALL of the apps and or services you'd like to use, however the entire internet being visible means putting small companies you have not yet heard of on nearly equal footing - giving them the chance to compete against the giants of commerce and sometimes (yes, sometimes it happens) WIN! The beauty of the inter…

Did I miss some new proposal that Ajit Pai has put forward? It is my understanding that "The rules Ajit Pai wants in place" were in place from sometime during the ninties or earlier, until 2015. That is, Ajit Pai merely wishes to undo a rule that was only in force from 2015 to the present. Am I mistaken? Because I think the world you say you don't want to live in is the one we actually did live in for most of the his…

2015 is a misleading goalpost. The problems that were tied up in the courts and led to a FINAL decision in 2015, started a decade earlier.

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#197

Post by ABCLAW »

apple4ever wrote: post #176
dd36 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pre-2015 rules were overturned by the courts in 2014. That’s why reclassification happened... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verizon_Communications_Inc._... Apologies to those that have seen my comments 10x in this thread. It’s amazing how uninformed some people are about how this all came about. The FCC didn’t want to use Title II. It had a much lighter touch NN schema but Verizon destroyed it. The courts said the…

No, the solution isn't Title II, but a new law. Title II is terrible, and should be opposed both by NN supporters AND opponents.

Perfect is the enemy of good.

I'm sure there's a utopian piece of legislation which would be specifically tailored to ISP regulation. Unfortunately it doesn't exist.

Why remove Title II prior to getting that magical piece of legislation finished? Because it is PROFITABLE $$$$.

It has nothing to do with an intellectual argument about the merits of Title II vs. other regulatory control mechanisms. If it was, we'd be debating drafts of that piece of legislation, not the FCC's actions in implementing it.

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#198

Post by djrogers »

vxxzy wrote: post #77

Really the argument is what type of service do these companies provide? It should forever be just a "dumb data pipe". Many interests are attempting to bastardize this and call the Service something else to eek out more profit. I as a consumer should simply be able to purchase "access". That is, I should be able to purchase a pre-defined pipe from my provider. I should be allowed to pass as much traffic in and out tha…

That's a pipe dream - there are no services built this way, not even the electric grid you referenced. If everyone in your neighborhood fully utilized their 200A service, guess what happens? Yeah, you all lose power.

ISPs are built the same way - resources are built out to provide service levels acceptable to most customers most of the time, but they can't be built so everyone gets all of their bandwidth all of the time and still be sold at consumer prices.

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#199

Post by manderson89 »

apple4ever wrote: post #176
dd36 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pre-2015 rules were overturned by the courts in 2014. That’s why reclassification happened... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verizon_Communications_Inc._... Apologies to those that have seen my comments 10x in this thread. It’s amazing how uninformed some people are about how this all came about. The FCC didn’t want to use Title II. It had a much lighter touch NN schema but Verizon destroyed it. The courts said the…

No, the solution isn't Title II, but a new law. Title II is terrible, and should be opposed both by NN supporters AND opponents.

Would a law be better than Title II? Sure. Let me know when congress gets around to that. I'm not holding my breath.

Until then, Title II seems like the only realistic option.

Post reply on HN