Twenty-two states ask appeals court to bring back net neutrality • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by drak0n1c » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 5:31 PM UTC

_bxg1 wrote: post #27

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.

The ISP's are more important because of their physical locality. It's infinitely easier to create a competitor for Facebook than a competitor for Time Warner (Google, one of the world's most powerful companies, tried and failed). That said, with the amount of ubiquity and sway on society that self-proclaimed platforms like Facebook and Google have started to have, I would not be opposed to regulating some of those as…

Is it infinitely easier? Google tried and failed to make a Facebook competitor too.

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

#92

Post by lozenge » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 5:34 PM UTC

mtgx wrote: post #66

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…

FPTP is bad but it's compounded by the presidential system. For example the UK's Prime Minister is elected by MPs, so it's not possible for them to be of a party that doesn't have enough voting power to actually pass laws, whereas in the US this is a common occurrence (as well as the President vetoing laws that the assembly has passed).

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

#93

Post by raverbashing » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 5:35 PM UTC

danjoc wrote: post #89

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.…

>The system seems broken when When it does stuff you disagree with personally. That's a pretty universal feeling. While you may get plenty of internet points from your friends that agree with you, you have to realize, you are the one with the unpopular opinion this time. >50% of the population Counting illegals. 22 states isn't 50% either. This is the "not my president" argument all over again. The people won. ISPs w…

Thanks for the comedy relief. Putting Ajit Pai and internet freedom in the same phrase can only exist on a crass comedy or a complete malicious misunderstanding of the cause.

The people won nothing, who won are entrenched monopolistic companies that don't step on their customer's neck just because it's illegal. Fb and Google are not yet that evil, though Fb is definitely making an effort.

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

#94

Post by _bxg1 » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 5:37 PM UTC

deadmik3 wrote: post #90

_bxg1 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people have exactly one choice of ISP. If you're lucky, there might be a second one with the same price and 1/10 the speed. Whereas I could go build an auction site myself if I really wanted to. Scaling a business takes work, but the power of software is that it requires no material resources to get started. Laying fiber is not only immensely expensive in and of itself, but ISP's have also lobbied to stack the d…

I think the amount of effort and traction you'd get from trying to launch your own auction site to compete with eBay would be about equal to getting a couple shovels and burying some cat5 around your neighborhood to compete with comcast

Not if eBay started making extremely anti-consumer choices like Comcast has. At some point it would get to be too much, and competition would step in. We see that starting to happen a bit with Facebook lately, although the network effect there is stronger than with an auction site. But Comcast can do whatever the hell it wants, because nobody can even try to provide a way out.

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

#95

Post by smsm42 » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 5:38 PM UTC

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 think it's a very common pattern now - to use courts as substitute for policymaking, since finding one judge that would issue necessary injunction, whatever it is, is easier than assembling a broad coalition to pass the decision through legislative/executive branches. It is also very wrong and very corrosive to the respect to the rule of law - if judges turn from independent arbiters watching for rules of the game into partisan players that use their power to bend the game to their side, eventually they'd have as much respect as other rank-and-file politicians, and that's not a very good place for the country to be in.

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

#96

Post by tjoff » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 5:40 PM UTC

narrator wrote: post #45

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…

The argument against net neutrality that I like the best is that net neutrality takes power away from the regulated telecom monopolies, which are more firmly under government control and scrutiny, and gives it to the tech multinationals who are much more loosely regulated. The tech multinationals are more and more acting a lot like governments with their coordinated content policies, so it's more about giving power b…

That's like saying cancer is good because it means fewer die of old age (fine print: because they are already dead).

Also, multinationals are the ones that can bend the telecom monopolies to their advantage and crush competition.

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

#97

Post by ilikehurdles » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 5:41 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #31

javagram wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The House of Representatives majority, which is held by the GOP and is anti - net neutrality, also represents more than 50% of the US population by this method of counting (which says the state AGs “represent” people who didn’t vote for them). Under the constitutional system of the US something like net neutrality could be passed as a law by the congress, but there hasn’t been a congress that chose to do so.

It represents a gerrymandered "50%" of the population.

Not sure why you’re downvoted when you’re right. The senate is meant to be the equalizer, where all states are on equal footing. The House is intended to favor more populous regions. It’s not that the people of the US don’t have as much of a say as they should — it’s that they don’t have _any_ say, anywhere.

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

#98

Post by smsm42 » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 5:41 PM UTC

peterwwillis wrote: post #61

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…

> The states are doing what they can to limit damaging actions by the federal government.

Or rather, absence of action in this case.

> This is the system working for the people.

The system working for the people would be the states to make their own legislation. Using courts to force federal government to take action that elected executive and elected legislature do not support is not system working.

> Currently, trying to pass meaningful legislation is like trying to squeeze a watermelon through a pinhole.

Legislature is complex and hard. Not the reason to try and make courts into its replacement. That's not how the system is supposed to work, and doing that will result in a system even more broken than now.

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

#99

Post by jimmy1 » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 5:41 PM UTC

delinka wrote: post #46

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…

What makes these companies "public utilities" as opposed to others? I don't need Twitter in my life. Nor Google. Definitely not Facebook. And maybe lots of web sites use CloudFlare, but consumers don't interact directly with them. Maybe applying common carrier status is something that's more palatable, but classifying them as "public utilities" doesn't have to be the mechanism by which CC is applied.

These days if you are a local or small to medium business and you aren't on these sites, you practically don't exist. Then again, this censorship isn't averted even if they are regulated by the government. I imagine Alex Jones would also have a hard time getting a 30 second ad on public access televison, despite however much money he was offering.

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

#100

Post by elago » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 5:42 PM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #65

asdkhadsj wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've seen electric companies bill like that to reflect the realities of power generation and usage, but it's applied equally to all consumers of electricity at the time of day.

Using 1000w of electricity with a 1950's toaster cost the same as using 1000w of electricity with a 2018 microwave.

And hopefully it would cost the same to use 1000w of electricity to power your home server hosting a website that criticizes the local electricity company.