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

Twenty-two states ask appeals court to bring back net neutrality

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 250 posts

Re: Twenty-two states ask appeals court to bring back net neutrality

#61

Post by peterwwillis »

EpiphanyMachine wrote: post #2

The system seems broken when states representing more than 50% of the population have to sue in court to try to change something like this. Instead with that much backing it should be done through the legislative branch. I'm concerned about the growing use of courts to try to decide policies because our legislative bodies can't work together and instead just try to force one sided issues through or block each other.…

I came here to say the opposite. The states are doing what they can to limit damaging actions by the federal government. This is the system working for the people. Without the ability or interest from the states to push back against the federal government's decrees, we would be stuck with an authoritarian nation.

Currently, trying to pass meaningful legislation is like trying to squeeze a watermelon through a pinhole. That should certainly be addressed, but we can't ignore the current battle just to focus on the bigger war.

Re: Twenty-two states ask appeals court to bring back net neutrality

#62

Post by jerf »

mullen wrote: post #60
justinzollars wrote: post #40

I would like to see Twitter, Google, CloudFlare and Facebook classified as public utilities. While Alex Jones is a nut case (And shouldn't be defended), other less publicized incidents of censorship by Social Media companies has occurred (related to picking winners between Israel and Palestine) [1]. While I am a Democrat who has been elected in the past, I agree with the conservative argument that: Corporate censorsh…

This is silly. We don't have to have Twitter, Google, CloudFlare or Facebook in our lives. We can live perfectly happy lives without them and they can be replaced by other companies as quickly as they were created by Twitter, Google, CloudFlare or Facebook. Electricity and phones are two physical services that we really need and can be ran by any company. Cable television is regulated because cable companies need rig…

"they can be replaced by other companies as quickly as they were created by Twitter, Google, CloudFlare or Facebook."

You may not have Free Speech on the biggest platforms on the Internet today, but if you wait 15 years and are lucky, you may have it by then.

As arguments defending the status quo goes, that stinks.

(I'd sharpen my argument by saying "biggest and growing", but I'm not sure that's the case anymore. Facebook is definitely showing some signs that they've peaked, for instance. I'm not saying it has 100% happened, but it's a lot stronger of a claim now than it was even six months ago.)

Re: Twenty-two states ask appeals court to bring back net neutrality

#63

Post by ocdtrekkie »

fedorareis wrote: post #56
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has almost no competition in several different market categories, and not just regionally, but on a global scale. I have three ISPs which offer about comparable service offerings, and four major wireless carriers. And no wired ISP even can say it has national coverage. Tech monopolies are bigger, they have more money, and they've spent more of that money convincing you ISPs are the big bad. I'm not opposed to…

You are lucky to have 3 comparable ISPs. In the area where I live each town has at most 2 ISPs. One of them provides DSL and the other cable. This means if you want speeds above about 5Mbps you have 1 choice. We were forced to switch to cable because our DSL provider couldn’t even manage to maintain a consistent connection much less the 5Mbps we were paying for. All this to say there are plenty of places where there…

You are missing most of the point: ISP competition and tech competition are not dissimilar, and their placement in the product market is not dissimilar. They should be subject to the same regulations. But the tech companies pushing these regulations are strongly opposed to being subject to these same regulations.

Most people cannot easily leave tech companies easily, even if they believe they can. You actually can't leave Facebook, for instance, if you want to talk to your friends who are on Facebook. You can't leave Gmail without finding every contact and online account you have and updating your email address. (This is why AOL still has so much email!) Similarly, most people have options for ISPs, both wired and wireless, though it may be a worse service offering.

Re: Twenty-two states ask appeals court to bring back net neutrality

#64

Post by Apocryphon »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #22

Be careful what you wish for. A significant portion of the general population see Twitter, Google, and Facebook as infrastructure companies. If a large enough portion of the population is convinced that net neutrality is important and legislation must be written to accomplish it, the three companies and likely CloudFlare will likely fall under its umbrella. If you ask people to recall an incident of Internet censorsh…

At this point, the public is probably sick of the tech giants enough to want to nationalize them, or to at least break them up.

Re: Twenty-two states ask appeals court to bring back net neutrality

#65

Post by School-Cotton »

asdkhadsj wrote: post #48
corerius wrote: post #11

I'm still trying to grok why ISPs are supposed to treat all customers equally while PayPal, eBay, youtube, GoDaddy, Twitter, etc. are allowed to pick and choose. I'd be more comfortable with the arguments if people were consistent in them.

Do you think your water company should pick and choose? How about your electric company? Maybe they can charge you a higher electric rate during Game of Thrones because they know you want your power more than normal then? etc I don't want a company picking and choosing which bytes of mine are fast or slow. I'm buying byte containers, their job is to ship them. I dictate how fast, and who it gets shipped to. End of de…

Actually, electric companies already do charge higher rates at different times when demand is higher.

Re: Twenty-two states ask appeals court to bring back net neutrality

#66

Post by mtgx »

EpiphanyMachine wrote: post #2

The system seems broken when states representing more than 50% of the population have to sue in court to try to change something like this. Instead with that much backing it should be done through the legislative branch. I'm concerned about the growing use of courts to try to decide policies because our legislative bodies can't work together and instead just try to force one sided issues through or block each other.…

> because our legislative bodies can't work together

This is not (just) a people failure, it's a system failure. More precisely, it's the highly polarizing FPTP voting system that allows one party to dominate almost completely every election cycle instead of having to cooperate with others to government, regardless of how bad their behavior was the last time they run the government. With FPTP, it's just a matter of time before each of the two parties regains power, regardless of the policies they may promote. With FPTP the whole "red team vs blue team" game is inevitable, because FPTP promotes the existence of only two (very) long-term parties.

The second issue is of course the issue of companies and wealthy people buying politicians' votes through lobbying. I mean, who can deny it at this point? It's very clear that this is what lobbying actually does. It's not used just to "try and convince politicians" of something at this point - it's almost literally used to buy the votes.

A solution for each of these problems would be these:

http://www.fairvote.org/fair_representation#what_is_fair_vot...

https://anticorruptionact.org/

https://www.wolf-pac.com/the_solution

Re: Twenty-two states ask appeals court to bring back net neutrality

#67

Post by drdaeman »

fivre wrote: post #29
corerius wrote: post #11

I'm still trying to grok why ISPs are supposed to treat all customers equally while PayPal, eBay, youtube, GoDaddy, Twitter, etc. are allowed to pick and choose. I'd be more comfortable with the arguments if people were consistent in them.

For consumer-facing eyeball ISPs, in almost all US markets, consumers have an extremely limited set of ISPs to choose from, typically a traditional telephone provider like AT&T or Verizon and a traditional cable provider like Comcast or Cox (if they're lucky enough to have both). As such, those eyeball providers have an effective monopoly, and if I don't like the network policies of my ISP, I have almost no recourse…

So, you don't really need a law for AT&T to not policy your traffic, but that you need competitors to be able to enter the market and provide services. Something even Facebook and Google has (although they're quite close to a monopoly) but US ISPs don't.

If a service provider starts to do some silly stuff no one wants, there's no reason not to start a competing business, offer service without that silliness and win over the market. Except if entry barriers are too high.

Re: Twenty-two states ask appeals court to bring back net neutrality

#69

Post by edko »

mberning wrote: post #4

One thing I don’t understand is why states do not enact their own net neutrality legislation. As far as I know every state has a public utilities commission of some sort that regulates power, water, etc. Why could this not work for ISPs?

Doing it at the state level would only protect the consumers in that state, but not the producers. As a producer, your content could still be throttled in states where there are no neutrality laws.

Re: Twenty-two states ask appeals court to bring back net neutrality

#70

Post by dpflan »

The Entities involved:

The coalition of 23 Attorneys General collectively represents over 165 million people – approximately 50 percent of the U.S. population – and includes the

Attorneys General of:

1. New York

2. California

3. Connecticut

4. Delaware

5. Hawaii

6. Illinois

7. Iowa

8. Kentucky

9. Maine

10. Maryland

11. Massachusetts

12. Minnesota

13. Mississippi

14. New Mexico

15. New Jersey

16. North Carolina

17. Oregon

18. Pennsylvania

19. Rhode Island

20. Vermont

21. Virginia

22. Washington

23. District of Columbia

Post reply on HN