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

#121

Post by smsm42 » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 6:05 PM UTC

peterwwillis wrote: post #113

smsm42 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, try…

> 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. It's called checks and balances, and it was how the system was designed to work. > Legislature is complex and hard. Not the reason to try and make courts into its replacement. That's not how t…

> It's called checks and balances, and it was how the system was designed to work.

No, it's not. Just repeating "checks and balances" doesn't mean courts can be abused for doing something that is not court's purpose. The court's purpose is preserving the consistency of legislation (including the Constitution as supreme, very hard to change part of the law) and adherence of executive to the law. In this case, the executive is clearly within the law, but some people are unhappy about it, so they want to abuse the courts to make them legislate from the bench that the policy must be different. This is not how the system is designed to work, this is the exact opposite of it.

> The courts aren't being used as a replacement, they're being used as a court.

They are being used to force through a policy that is not supported by either legislature or executive. That's not a function of a proper court.

> When one part of the government does something, you use another part of the government to counter it, until you've exhausted all your options.

No, that's not how it's supposed to work. It's not "try anything until my side wins, then block any attempt of other side to try anything at all". Your side may temporarily win, but when the other side does the same, you end up with the broken system where nobody respects any decisions and the only thing that matters is which side you're on. I call such system broken.

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

#122

Post by s73v3r_ » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 6:05 PM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #105

barneygumble742 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Senate actually came up with a resolution to reinstate NN but Paul Ryan refuses to bring it up for a vote in the House. So there is your legislative bottleneck. If it passes the house and the senate, of course trump will sign it and take credit for it. Not a difficult task there.

> If it passes the house and the senate If. It is likely to pass the House? > of course trump will sign it If Trump supports it, why doesn't he instruct Ajit Pai to implement this policy, or if he doesn't want to do it, why doesn't he replace Ajit Pai with somebody whose views on the subject align with those of Trump? I think it might be because Trump doesn't actually support it.

Trump doesn't actually care about it, and I would be surprised if he understood it. Right now he's against it because Obama did it.

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

#123

Post by komali2 » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 6:08 PM UTC

kevin_b_er wrote: post #83

nulbyte wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current situation is a mess. The FCC derives its power to regulate telecommunications from the Congressional power to regulate interstate commerce. However, the FCC believes it is limited to interstate telecommunications—when it suits them. They refused to defend their own price caps on intrastate prison calls because it was not a matter of interstate commerce. However, despite this, they purport the reclassifica…

It is not mind-boggling because your logic is oriented toward things like law or service to the public. The logic is Greed. Price caps would interfere with price gouging prisoners. Net neutrality would interfere with price gouging both content providers and their own customers stuck in monopolies or duopolies. Both are "follow the money" cases. The Party will always argue in favor of greed and whatever suits the rich…

Yea, this is the world view I'm starting to work with here.

Before, I'd say, "companies can't do that, it'd be illegal!" Now I think, "would it cost more to do the thing and fight a legal battle over it than the profit possiblity? Do the damaged parties have the means to fight a pitched legal battle? Is there a lobby angle than can be taken to simply change the laws?"

I wish I didn't have to be so cynical.

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

#124

Post by smsm42 » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 6:08 PM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #110

smsm42 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, try…

> 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. The tension between federal and state power is an intentionally designed feature of the system, and the fact that the states can push back is one of the several ways the system is supposed to…

> The tension between federal and state power is an intentionally designed feature of the system

True, but "AGs of states finding friendly judge to force federal legislature to do their bidding" is not part of that design. If they just passed state-wide regulations and federal AG would sue them for it, then it'd be a different case, where one could justifiably invoke state rights. But in this case it's just plain lawfare.

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

#125

Post by wang_li » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 6:11 PM UTC

monocasa wrote: post #109

wang_li wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be honest, your objection really confuses me. You seem to argue that ISPs can do whatever they want, because we're inconsistent with other sites/etc. I don't have an objection against net neutrality. I have an objection to net neutrality policies that concentrate control with a small number of companies while stripping such autonomy from other companies. It's absurd to say that backbone providers are required to…

> I don't have an objection against net neutrality. I have an objection to net neutrality policies that concentrate control with a small number of companies while stripping such autonomy from other companies. It's absurd to say that backbone providers are required to carry any traffic, but microblogging sites, video streaming sites, etc. can curate and have any bias they choose. Why? Going back to the common carrier…

> Why? Going back to the common carrier regulations pre-Internet, it's like you're saying that just because mail carriers have to carry anything (as long as it's safe), then magazines delivered by mail carriers would have to allow anyone to write articles.

I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that an entity that wants common carrier protections has to act like a common carrier. If they want to be a publisher with full editorial control of the content they publish content, then they don't get common carrier protections. If Facebook and Youtube/Google want to say "you can't say that here", then they can take responsibility for what they do allow to be distributed on their platform. I feel the exact same way about Comcast or Level 3.

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

#126

Post by komali2 » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 6:12 PM UTC

corerius wrote: post #49

_bxg1 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It seems to me that I have more choice between ISPs than in auction sites, as an example. The tendency towards monopoly in networks makes all these cases similar I think.

For selling a product, off the top of my head we've got eBay, Craigslist, Facebook marketplace, nextdoor, and whatever other social network you can think of. Amazon, with a bit of work. Crowdfunding sites if you wanna go that route. If that thing you're selling is a car there's specialized websites for that (shift, for example).

I have only ever been able to have Comcast, ever. In the 9 houses in 6 different cities in 3 different states I've lived, always Comcast was the only option.

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

#127

Post by _bxg1 » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 6:13 PM UTC

drak0n1c wrote: post #91

_bxg1 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Correction: They succeeded in making one, it just didn't take off as a business. There's a difference. When it comes to simply getting a certain piece of functionality, even an open-source community is free to go build a competitor and give it away for free. The obstacles when it comes to internet infrastructure are encountered before you even get in the gate.

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

#128

Post by komali2 » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 6:13 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

You aren't allowed to bury cat5 in your neighborhood without government approval, and they'd tell you to just lease time off Comcast lines.

What will you connect your cat5 cable to?

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

#129

Post by fein » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 6:14 PM UTC

moorhosj wrote: post #108

fein wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would this other platform be that provides a similar reach? Freedom of speech isn't just saying what you want while alone on your back patio. Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc is the "digital public space". Hell just take a look at what private companies are doing to the attempts at making alternatives: gab is threatened daily, and BitChute keeps getting bumped by payment processors.

==Freedom of speech isn't just saying what you want while alone on your back patio.== It's also not going onto other people's property and doing whatever you want. Having a successful platform doesn't make them the government.

> It's also not going onto other people's property and doing whatever you want.

It is when that property is considered the public space.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama

The internet should be regulated in the same way with defacto monopolies over "public" communications wrt. Twitter, FB, YT, etc.

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

#130

Post by monocasa » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 6:15 PM UTC

wang_li wrote: post #125

monocasa wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't have an objection against net neutrality. I have an objection to net neutrality policies that concentrate control with a small number of companies while stripping such autonomy from other companies. It's absurd to say that backbone providers are required to carry any traffic, but microblogging sites, video streaming sites, etc. can curate and have any bias they choose. Why? Going back to the common carrier…

> Why? Going back to the common carrier regulations pre-Internet, it's like you're saying that just because mail carriers have to carry anything (as long as it's safe), then magazines delivered by mail carriers would have to allow anyone to write articles. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that an entity that wants common carrier protections has to act like a common carrier. If they want to be a publisher with f…

Facebook/YoutTube/Google don't want to be common carriers though. They're DMCA safe harbors, but that's totally different.

Do you think newspapers shouldn't be allowed to have opinion articles that are prefaced with "not the opinion of the paper"?