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

Mozilla Fights for Net Neutrality This May (and Always)

blog.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 180 posts

Re: Mozilla Fights for Net Neutrality This May (and Always)

#31

Post by eurleif »

craftyguy wrote: post #30
eurleif wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My ISP is capable of determining the services it offers to me, its customer. Your ISP is capable of determining the services it offers to you, its customer. No ISP is capable of mandating behavior from third parties who haven't chosen to engage in an economic exchange with it, meaning that no ISP is capable of regulation.

My ISP is capable of denying services to me, its customer, based on principle (e.g. it conflicts with their business model). Ergo, they regulate what I can/cannot do. Without government regulation to say "bad ISP, bad", they can regulate my ability to access services and charge me more to slowly peel back that regulation. In case you are still confused, here's the definition of 'regulation': > to control or direct by…

Ok, and right now I'm "regulating" my fingers into typing a comment.

Or maybe there's more to the word, particularly in context, than the shortest dictionary definition you were able to find.

Re: Mozilla Fights for Net Neutrality This May (and Always)

#32

Post by devwastaken »

tphan wrote: post #22
devwastaken wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a very partisan way of looking at a complex issue. 'liberals wrapping their arms around net neutrality' is not why net neutrality is being repealed, and not why the coalition to repeal Net Neutrailty was created. You can look towards the significant amount of contributions to various politicians and individuals in government that have come from ISP's and see quite a clear picture of the source of NN be…

I just want to raise a couple of points. It's not necessarily always true that corporate donations are simply to bribe politicians into doing their bidding (which is what I took away when I read your commend). Companies will give money to politicians who are already aligned with their interests. I watched a video once which tried to address the idea that Ted Cruz was being bribed by Comcast. Once of the arguments put…

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/7xwknx/republican...

The difference between giving money to change alignment, and 'already being aligned', is appearances. It's still money being sent, and that absolutely influences the individual being funded. It's a complete conflict of interest, and especially in this case it's an absurd amount of money being sent to many politicians, not just one.

I think there are some good points against NN. Such as the FTC's role in investigating unfair practices. But the FTC is always playing catch-up when it comes to the myriad of bad practices ISP's get up to. With the repeal of NN there has been no real replacement to prevent the ISP monopolies from being unfair, as they have done in the past. I generally side with libertarian arguments and that markets can do a better job. But in the U.S, we have monopalies. ISP's grew under non-NN rules, and there are significant anti-competative practices to blame rather than the easy one of 'regulation'.

Re: Mozilla Fights for Net Neutrality This May (and Always)

#33

Post by bhhaskin »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #26
forapurpose wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> independent hacker culture Independent hackers need net neutrality; otherwise access to their innovations and startups will be limited, and their access to the Internet from which they get ideas, inspiration, and collaboration, will also be limited. I wonder how that spirit would survive if people only had access to major commercial websites. EDIT: Imagine the FOSS project with no budget to buy access, and any proj…

Hackers don’t need anything, that’s the point. Hackers find a way.

Hackers might find away, but regular users do not.

Re: Mozilla Fights for Net Neutrality This May (and Always)

#34

Post by sp332 »

tinalumfoil wrote: post #20
sp332 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not enough independent hacker spirit to cover the whole country in decent internet. The big ISPs depend on government-enforced franchise agreements and all the public money they can get to eliminate competition. That said, hackers are citizens too, and we can at least fight for protections from the ISPs that exist.

You can't separate NN from being government control of the internet. Even if the government made some bad deals with ISPs isn't really relevant. And you can try to do mental gymnastics to get around it, but what NN supporters basically say is, "the companies that provide our access the internet can't be trusted to act in the best interest of the consumer, so we need the government to tell them how to do their job". A…

The internet has always been controlled by the government from day 1. And while you may wish to work toward a more independent net, wishing won't make it so overnight. We've go to do what we can with what we've got.

Local governments make deals with ISPs to get coverage to a certain % of the population in exchange for exclusivity. Adding NN to the deal is just negotiating terms in an existing agreement. If we had a free-r market or some competition that might be a better way to get what we want, but we don't.

Re: Mozilla Fights for Net Neutrality This May (and Always)

#35

Post by homero »

eurleif wrote: post #25
craftyguy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well we have two choices: 1) government regulation, or 2) ISP regulation. We are on track for #2 thanks to ajit.

You're confused. ISPs aren't regulators. They're incapable of regulating anything.

Sure they regulate bandwidth right now

Re: Mozilla Fights for Net Neutrality This May (and Always)

#36

Post by Mononokay »

ghba66 wrote: post #2

I don't know why Mozilla thinks it's okay to politically align themselves. Shouldn't they stay neutral if they want to make a browser for everybody and all of that? Reminds me of the Tor project calling themselves a "human rights project"

> Reminds me of the Tor project calling themselves a "human rights project"

It fundamentally is a human rights project.

Re: Mozilla Fights for Net Neutrality This May (and Always)

#37

Post by shirakawasuna »

eurleif wrote: post #28
craftyguy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They definitely are capable of regulating traffic to/from you, based on its content and source/destination, and charging you differently based on how much regulation you want to endure.

My ISP is capable of determining the services it offers to me, its customer. Your ISP is capable of determining the services it offers to you, its customer. No ISP is capable of mandating behavior from third parties who haven't chosen to engage in an economic exchange with it, meaning that no ISP is capable of regulation.

When there are basically two ISPs in most municipalities, there is no independent third party. And this is before we get to what happens when people start inserting these ideas into peering a la the money grab on Netflix.

The ISPs can filter what you request and host, simple as that. And if you want to start a business, better hope it doesn't compete with any of the ISP parent company's holdings, because they have every right to scuttle access to it. Want to make the best new Netflix? Stay away from any ISP even tangentially associated with Hulu - which might be every ISP in your area. Even if you pick a small, independent ISP, the peering issue remains.

Re: Mozilla Fights for Net Neutrality This May (and Always)

#38

Post by lern_too_spel »

tinalumfoil wrote: post #20
sp332 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not enough independent hacker spirit to cover the whole country in decent internet. The big ISPs depend on government-enforced franchise agreements and all the public money they can get to eliminate competition. That said, hackers are citizens too, and we can at least fight for protections from the ISPs that exist.

You can't separate NN from being government control of the internet. Even if the government made some bad deals with ISPs isn't really relevant. And you can try to do mental gymnastics to get around it, but what NN supporters basically say is, "the companies that provide our access the internet can't be trusted to act in the best interest of the consumer, so we need the government to tell them how to do their job". A…

The Internet was a government network, fully controlled by the government until the transit links were privatized. Once that happened, it took government-granted monopolies to connect ordinary people to it. The fact is that the Internet has been government regulated since day one and deregulating it without a plan in place to ensure the deregulation goes well for the users of the Internet is sheer lunacy, especially since the ISPs have already shown what they plan to do.

Re: Mozilla Fights for Net Neutrality This May (and Always)

#39

Post by craftyguy »

eurleif wrote: post #31
craftyguy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My ISP is capable of denying services to me, its customer, based on principle (e.g. it conflicts with their business model). Ergo, they regulate what I can/cannot do. Without government regulation to say "bad ISP, bad", they can regulate my ability to access services and charge me more to slowly peel back that regulation. In case you are still confused, here's the definition of 'regulation': > to control or direct by…

Ok, and right now I'm "regulating" my fingers into typing a comment. Or maybe there's more to the word, particularly in context, than the shortest dictionary definition you were able to find.

Well it's a widely accepted definition[1], so it's a bit ironic that you fail to understand there's more to the word, particularly in context. Popular synonyms include things like "restrict", "restrain", "control".

1) https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/regulate

Re: Mozilla Fights for Net Neutrality This May (and Always)

#40

Post by earenndil »

forapurpose wrote: post #23
acheron wrote: post #6

I still find it amazing that everything has degraded from the independent hacker culture of the 90s to continually begging for the government to control and regulate the Internet. If you ever posted “what the Internet could really use is for the US Congress to control it!” to Usenet or 1999 Slashdot you would have gotten flamed to a crisp. I mean, God knows I’m not going to use a Google product, so I’m sticking with…

> independent hacker culture Independent hackers need net neutrality; otherwise access to their innovations and startups will be limited, and their access to the Internet from which they get ideas, inspiration, and collaboration, will also be limited. I wonder how that spirit would survive if people only had access to major commercial websites. EDIT: Imagine the FOSS project with no budget to buy access, and any proj…

Would not the 'independent hacker culture' be to found its own, independent ISP?
Post reply on HN