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Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

dispatch.com

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Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

#351

Post by einpoklum »

wyager wrote: post #197
kmeisthax wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd lean into this. Instead of trying to defend Google as not being a utility we should be calling for utility regulation for both web services as well as residential access providers.

> we should be calling for utility regulation for both web services as well as residential access providers I would prefer not to completely stagnate the internet just yet.

> I would prefer not to completely stagnate the internet just yet.

Isn't Internet infrastructure in a lot of the US kind of stagnant right now?

Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

#352

Post by aaron-santos »

elliekelly wrote: post #311
jeffgreco wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usage patterns seem extremely important for building out a renewable power grid. Meanwhile, what is the privacy concern with the “shape” of your usage?

A change in your usage pattern could be used to ID any number of private things that could then be used against you: - When you’ve gone on vacation and your home is unattended. - When you have an additional tenant, a long-term houseguest, have a new significant other or even have a baby. - Whether or not you’re actually working when you’re working from home. - Homes that use greater than X amount of electricity are a…

These are all really good reasons to be against mobile device tracking and electronic telemetry too.

Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

#353

Post by Dylan16807 »

jeffgreco wrote: post #245
varispeed wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People turn out to irrationally not want smart meters. Some people may be irrational, but smart meters are a huge privacy concern - the electricity company can figure out your patterns from the power usage and the "shape" of it. This is the reason why I don't want a smart meter. Disclaimer: I actually was involved in building firmware and management software of smart meters.

Usage patterns seem extremely important for building out a renewable power grid. Meanwhile, what is the privacy concern with the “shape” of your usage?

Usage patterns at the substation level are important. They don't need household detail.

Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

#354

Post by QasimK »

Arch-TK wrote: post #330
softveda wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Australia, in the state of Victoria all meters are smart meter for few years now. They are also growing in number in other states. There has been no hacking incident. in fact it makes peoples life easier by allowing them to track energy usage at every 15 mins interval with historical data using an app from the utility company. This data cannot be sold either. In fact under the Govt. Open API scheme very shortly yo…

So sounds like Australian smart meter companies are better at security than British ones. The energy usage tracking can be done without smart meters, in this country electricity companies (and lots of private companies) offered induction clamp based electrical usage logging devices. These may not have been quite as accurate as onboard measuring but this could have easily been solved with some kind of serial protocol…

Arch-TK I absolutely agree with everything you are saying, and I don’t intend to get a smart meter myself for as long as possible.

However, you are incorrect that meters are incompatible between utility companies. You are right that SMETS1 meters _are_ incompatible. However, all new meter installations are SMETS2 and these are fully compatible between energy companies.

SMETS2 has been the standard for a number of years now. There are still old SMETS1 installations still active though.

Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

#355

Post by einpoklum »

Buttons840 wrote: post #34

> the lawsuit seeks a legal declaration that Google is a "common carrier," like phone, gas and electric companies, which must provide its services to anyone willing to pay its fee. How can something on the internet be a common carrier when the internet itself is not a common carrier?

You're forgetting what a Common Carrier is, by definition:

"A common carrier in common law countries ... is a person or company that transports goods or people for any person or company and is responsible for any possible loss of the goods during transport..."

So, a _company_ can be a common carrier. An abstract notion describing interconnected physical entities and organizational entities related to them cannot be a common carrier (nor, in fact, any carrier).

Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

#356

Post by mdoms »

genericuser314 wrote: post #148
pcmoney wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have multiple choices for water, dig a well, buy it from the local grocery store. Same for sewage because self composting toilets exist. Also electricity isn't a utility just use a stationary bike as a generator or buy solar panels... Just because you have multiple choices doesn't mean something is/isn't a utility. Its pretty arbitrary. They also aren't talking about Google products (most of which are completely…

I think you're making a category error in your analogy. DuckDuckGo is much more like Google than "dig a well" is like municipal water.

I am on my own rainwater tanks. I don't see any reason it's not a viable alternative considering how many of us use it.

Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

#357

Post by mdoms »

adrr wrote: post #95

But I have multiple choices for email, search, video hosting and browsers. I don’t have any choice for water, electricity, sewer, on any other public utility. I am sure there are a bunch of people on here that don’t use any Google products and are using DuckDuckGo, Firefox, ProtonMail, Vimeo. There are many choices.

Now put yourself on the other side of the equation. As a business you rely on Google Search because it's effectively the only search engine anyone uses. As a video content creator you rely on Youtube because no one is searching Vimeo for your product, nor are they relying on Vimeo recommendations to find it. As a developer you primarily target Chrome-based browsers because that makes up four fifths of your user base.

Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

#358

Post by quickthrowman »

ErikVandeWater wrote: post #224
supernova87a wrote: post #212

A big problem with software and people who write software (often) is that software doesn't like all the ways that human beings misbehave, change their minds, don't have immutable states, and don't fit into the categories you build for them. So any system that has a duty to serve everyone eventually ends up with an operational component that has almost as much human interaction and problem solving required as the soft…

Earnest question - Why does the utility have to honor the request of the owner? Doesn't the utility own the meter and is allowed to make changes to it as it sees fit?

The large utility in my state provides the meter, the customer provides the meter socket and everything downstream of the meter.

For 400A (really 320A, 80% of 400) and larger services (commercial) the customer supplies everything beyond the transformer (service disconnect and CT cabinet, typically), but the utility will provide meters or CTs depending on how it’s being metered.

Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

#359

Post by mdoms »

gumby wrote: post #48
ping_pong wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a direct result of their monopoly, which is why Google should be broken up. Because they have such a huge monopoly, they can afford to ignore customers and have a draconian approach to people, and can get away with it. If there were better competition, they wouldn't have been able to ignore their customers. Breaking them up will alleviate this by ensuring that each company needs to be able to survive on their…

> ...their monopoly, which is why Google should be broken up. Not denying their monopoly position, but how could Google meaningfully be broken up? It's really just a single business (advertising) with a gaggle of loss leaders adding up to less than 20% of revenue. Even pushing advertising down to 80% took a huge amount of effort. It's not like Standard Oil which was a vertically integrated trust of several points in…

> It's really just a single business (advertising) with a gaggle of loss leaders adding up to less than 20% of revenue.

I mean, yeah this is exactly the point. They have locked competition out of the loss-leading categories by undercutting them. Breaking them up forces the loss leaders to compete on an even playing field, which will mean more competition.

Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

#360

Post by loup-vaillant »

ipaddr wrote: post #292
loup-vaillant wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but that's a technicality. What matters is, if you want to make a living, you have to host on YouTube. (You can host elsewhere, but over 99% of your revenue will come from your notoriety at YouTube, if not YouTube directly.) And if you want videos, they're all on YouTube. You can search for them elsewhere but most of the content is on YouTube, and you won't avoid it even if your search started from a general…

What kind of living are you making just posting videos to youtube? A random example but most stage hypnotists sell their shows via vimeo. If you ever go to a show and want to buy a copy they will send you there. The stuff they post on youtube is mostly highlights or lower quality video. It would take them 100,000 ad views (1,000,000 regular views) to equal one copy sold. Youtube could get you some views but you need…

> Youtube could get you some views but you need to make your money elsewhere.

Yes of course. But YouTube will still be responsible for most of that money: want a sponsor to pay you? You need to have enough viewers in the first place. Want donations? You need enough viewers for donations to flow in. Selling swag? You need enough viewers to know about your store.

Even your stage hypnotists: why people go see their shows in the first place? I bet many learned about those shows from YouTube. Also, stage performers are a bit different in that their main activity happens offline. If all your activity is online, you're back to YouTube being the only point of entry.

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