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

GOP net neutrality bill would allow paid fast lanes and preempt state laws

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 156 posts

Re: GOP net neutrality bill would allow paid fast lanes and preempt state laws

#61

Post by dragonwriter »

Buttons840 wrote: post #38
Spivak wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't very charitable. You should be happy that the GOP doesn't rotely apply their 'principles' even when it's idiotic to do so. Federal laws that create 'maximums' like this always come with preemption. Otherwise a different states are going to enact different versions of NN to score political points accomplishing one of two things: a rule that tries to simplify the regulatory environment will actually make it…

I don't think the FCC did, nor can they, create a new "federal law" though, right? The FCC removed a regulation. Do states not have the right to regulate in the absence of any federal regulation?

> I don't think the FCC did, nor can they, create a new "federal law" though, right? The FCC removed a regulation.

The FCC being able to pass and remove regulations in an area means Congress has created federal law governing that area and assigned to the FCC regulatory authority in that area.

Further, even with no federal law, dormant commerce clause concerns come into play.

Re: GOP net neutrality bill would allow paid fast lanes and preempt state laws

#62

Post by 1024core »

> and prohibit state governments from enacting their own net neutrality laws.

So much for "States' rights", huh? Fucking hypocrites.

A man is known by the company he keeps, as the old adage goes. Anyone who supports Republicans in any shape and form is also a fucking hypocrite and a liar.

Re: GOP net neutrality bill would allow paid fast lanes and preempt state laws

#63

Post by ictoan »

jessaustin wrote: post #29
ictoan wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This! "They just say what they need to say, in the moment, to get what they want" And Trump is the magnification of the GOP. We need to hold them accountable!!!

OMG you're serious. Partisans are so cute.

Yes I am serious. And how is this partisanship when pointing out the need to hold politicians accountable for what they say vs what they do? Care to explain your comment? Why is accountability a sign of partisanship?

Re: GOP net neutrality bill would allow paid fast lanes and preempt state laws

#64

Post by davexunit »

Y_Y wrote: post #43
e40 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Came here to say this. It shows the GOP doesn't really stand for anything. They just say what they need to say, in the moment, to get what they want. If Clinton were POTUS and Russian ties like had been found to the Trump administration, she would have been impeached already. But it's their man, so let's look the other way. Same with State's rights.

I hope you aren't implying that the Democratic party is any different.

They most certainly are different.

Re: GOP net neutrality bill would allow paid fast lanes and preempt state laws

#65

Post by wtallis »

djschnei wrote: post #57
paulmd wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Joke's on me, you were only pretending to be an idiot! You were actually just a sealioning libertarian all along!

Dude, I am trying to understand your POV. F&$%# me right? People paying more for something that costs more to provide seems completely logical to me. The anti-competitive nature of the regional monopolies isn't fair and turns all the normal rules on their heads, I understand that. I wish we would fix that rather than regulating the monopolies.

> I wish we would fix that rather than regulating the monopolies.

See, that's the kind of bullshit that makes it hard to tell whether you're honestly misinformed, or disingenuous. The ISPs at issue are the ones providing last-mile connectivity. That's a textbook example of a natural monopoly. You can't make it not a natural monopoly. The free market will never settle on a strategy of providing competition in the form of multiple parallel and competing cables along every residential street and driveway. Regulation of the inevitable monopolies is the only solution that doesn't completely ignore reality and basic economic concepts. There's no alternative that can be expected to be at all effective.

Re: GOP net neutrality bill would allow paid fast lanes and preempt state laws

#66

Post by ensignavenger »

24gttghh wrote: post #33

Here [0] is the actual text (i.e. hosted directly by congress.gov) which arstechnica was so thoughtful to not link to. >“(2) may not impair or degrade lawful internet traffic on the basis of internet content, application, or service, or use of a non-harmful device, subject to reasonable network management. Seems like what NN proponents want, isn't it? >“(1) IN GENERAL.—Except as provided in paragraph (2), nothing in…

I was going to ask if anyone had actually read the proposed bill. It isn't very long, and I didn't see anything about "paid" prioritization, though that might be considered a "specialized" service. From what I can tell, this bill puts give a lot of power to the FCC to determine what types of specialized services would "offered or provided in ways that threaten the meaningful availability of broadband internet access service or that have been devised or promoted in a manner designed to evade the purposes of this section".

So the FCC could still potentially prevent prioritization that would degrade broadband internet service.

Of course, I am not a lawyer.

Re: GOP net neutrality bill would allow paid fast lanes and preempt state laws

#67

Post by 24gttghh »

ensignavenger wrote: post #66
24gttghh wrote: post #33

Here [0] is the actual text (i.e. hosted directly by congress.gov) which arstechnica was so thoughtful to not link to. >“(2) may not impair or degrade lawful internet traffic on the basis of internet content, application, or service, or use of a non-harmful device, subject to reasonable network management. Seems like what NN proponents want, isn't it? >“(1) IN GENERAL.—Except as provided in paragraph (2), nothing in…

I was going to ask if anyone had actually read the proposed bill. It isn't very long, and I didn't see anything about "paid" prioritization, though that might be considered a "specialized" service. From what I can tell, this bill puts give a lot of power to the FCC to determine what types of specialized services would "offered or provided in ways that threaten the meaningful availability of broadband internet access…

And neither am I, but I could see how the paid prioritization may be considered a "specialized" service. I am leaning towards reading it as double-speak.

Re: GOP net neutrality bill would allow paid fast lanes and preempt state laws

#69

Post by AnthonyMouse »

wanderingbort wrote: post #32
coldcode wrote: post #2

If it allows paid fast lanes, then clearly it allows degradation.

That is objectively false. Degrading the "slow" lanes is only one way to produce a fast lane. Direct peering arrangements and co-location of services are two ways to create "fast" lanes without having to degrade anything. They are also not free, so it makes sense that business-to-business deals would be made to establish them (aka paid fast lanes). The effective bandwidth of the internet looks like an hour glass. As…

> Direct peering increases the capacity of the ISP's "edge" but only for the services available on the peer. Co-location puts those services on the internal side of the bottleneck, again increasing effective capacity, but only for the services that are co-located in the ISPs datacenters. Almost all major providers (google, akamai, netflix, facebook) offer some form of co-locatable server however, those cost money to deploy and maintain.

This is a textbook lobbyist argument -- something which is technically true without doing the math.

A 10Gbps port on a switch is maybe $100. Say it can service a hundred customers, so $1/customer, and has a lifetime of two years. So $0.04/customer/month.

These are very conservative numbers. In reality it doesn't even cost that much.

The fact that the ports go to different places is irrelevant in the aggregate, because there is no need to add a port when the existing links to that peer aren't at capacity. And it's not as though the fact that Netflix and Google have separate ports would allow a 100Mbps customer to get 100Mbps from each of them at the same time.

Colocation is independent of this. If anyone with traffic could get peering at cost (i.e. ~free), they might still do it or might not, but then the ISP would have to charge market rates for space and power instead of monopoly prices because they're really charging for gatekeeper access to customers.

Re: GOP net neutrality bill would allow paid fast lanes and preempt state laws

#70

Post by pixelbill »

Corporations exist only to increase profits and serve the shareholders. Any decisions made are made without thought given to human rights or what is fair, only what is legal and most profitable.

Governments (in theory) exist to serve the people. They do things that are not profitable, and are objectively bad business decisions sometimes.. because what is most profitable is not always what is best for the people.

What we have now is a government run like a corporation, with no checks in place to preserve what is best for the people.. only what is best for those at the very top.

Post reply on HN