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

Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 131 posts

Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

#121

Post by rayiner »

betterunix wrote: post #104
rayiner wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh you say you can't pay $50M out of your garage? Well our internet isn't for people like you anymore. The fact that it doesn't work that way already is largely just an accident of history, and I don't know if its necessary to keep that status quo artificially. Small entities are just in a bad leverage position, especially when their "product" depends heavily on someone else's very expensive and hard to reproduce i…

"Small entities are just in a bad leverage position, especially when their "product" depends heavily on someone else's very expensive and hard to reproduce infrastructure" Small entities already pay their fair share for access to that infrastructure. Have you forgotten that startups have to pay for their Internet service? The Internet is not a fancy cable TV system where service providers negotiate contracts with web…

What you're describing is a fiction, a fiction that only exists because of the status quo. At the end of the day, the internet is just very expensive physical infrastructure in the form of coaxial and fiber optic cables and wireless base stations all over the country. Right now, the companies that own the physical infrastructure are happy to sell bandwidth on a non-discriminatory basis, but there is nothing inherent in the technology that requires them to do this. There is nothing inherent in the technology that prevents them from giving better service to the big company that is willing to pay a lot of money than to the start-up that can't afford to pay a lot of money.

Imagine an urban parking lot that's near a number of stores. For awhile, it operates on a non-discriminatory basis. Everyone pays to park, and then goes wherever they want. One day, Wal-Mart moves in and cuts a deal with the parking lot. In return for a giant check each month, the parking lot will let Wal-Mart customers park for free. Now, Wal-Mart has a huge edge over the neighboring mom and pop stores. Is this wrong? Or is this just how the world works?

What you're doing is making a normative point: nobody should need leverage on the internet. That's a fine thing to believe, but it's just a belief. It's nothing inherent in the architecture of the internet.

Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

#122

Post by AaronFriel »

anExcitedBeast wrote: post #120

I know this isn't a popular opinion, but I think we need to reconsider accepting precedent that we're OK with the US government regulating the Internet (without legislation, no less). With the concern about surveillance, copyright abuse, DMCA/Computer Fraud and Abuse Act abuse, and content regulation (in the case of the UK and China), is this really the solution we're looking for? Neutrality is a real problem, but th…

The US Government has regulated telecommunications for nigh a century now. AT&T had cleverly figured out that the right way to avoid scrutiny for their monopoly was initially to provide a very good service and start a two-way relationship with the government.

I'll clarify two things here. First: this actually had a net-positive effect on telephone communications in the US. Regulators were initially more informed, and Vail was able to grow AT&T by making legitimate concessions and demonstrating universal access and service. Second, we know in hindsight that this was also the start of a practice of regulatory capture, but regardless, that the history of regulating telecommunications has often-times been beneficial even when the regulators were biased.

Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

#123

Post by [deleted] »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #114

We could make all the laws we want about Net Neutrality, it wouldn't change the fundamental flaw that made this problem possible in the first place: too much centralization. I hear that the US, there are only 2 ISPs: one of the big 2, or the little local one. In France, we have about 4. At the other end, we have Google, Amazon, but most notably we have YouTube and Netflix. Clearly the market is not efficient. Why do…

[deleted]

Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

#124

Post by saalweachter »

declan wrote: post #98
saalweachter wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is entirely irrelevant. I say outright that the exact reason I want to see more judges appointed to this court is to pack it with judges who are more likely to produce decisions I agree with. You respond by accusing my of wanting to do exactly what I want to do. So? As an aside, why do you say that the DC Circuit is "underworked" instead of saying that the 11th Circuit is "overworked"?

Points for honesty, but unless other HN readers share your own particular political preferences, saying "I want it!" isn't exactly a compelling policy argument. I mean, I want ponies. If you're right that the 11th Circuit is overworked, then that point actually cuts against your argument: let's put more judges there where they need more help, and not the DC Circuit.

I think it's a much easier argument to make. It is not necessary to convince people that they want the President's nominees -- presuming they are qualified -- confirmed to the judiciary. It is only necessary to convince people that it is fair for the President's nominees to be confirmed. People like fairness, so it's an easy argument.

The system is, we have these seats, created by acts of Congress, which need to be filled. The President nominates candidates -- ideally candidates recommended by the Congressmen in the region, for regional appointments -- and the Senate vets them, and confirms or denies their appointment. The Republicans, however, aren't playing fair: they have been refusing to even allow votes on the candidates, even while admitting the candidates are qualified. Furthermore, they are not cooperating in the nomination process, refusing to recommend candidates to the President.

It's not fair, and everything after that is camouflage. If it was really a concern about the workload of the judiciary, and act of Congress could add or remove seats as necessary. But it isn't, and Congress isn't acting -- they are refusing to act, never in good faith and rarely at all.

Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

#125

Post by stox »

BrainInAJar wrote: post #93
rayiner wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Congress of 1996 did more or less what technologists wanted at the time: told the FCC to not regulate the internet.

I'm excited to see what kind of crazy side-effects the stuff we the technologists of today are demanding (like net-neutrality) have

Any good idea you have today can be made into a bad idea later. See Alfred Nobel.

Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

#126

Post by betterunix »

rayiner wrote: post #121
betterunix wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Small entities are just in a bad leverage position, especially when their "product" depends heavily on someone else's very expensive and hard to reproduce infrastructure" Small entities already pay their fair share for access to that infrastructure. Have you forgotten that startups have to pay for their Internet service? The Internet is not a fancy cable TV system where service providers negotiate contracts with web…

What you're describing is a fiction, a fiction that only exists because of the status quo. At the end of the day, the internet is just very expensive physical infrastructure in the form of coaxial and fiber optic cables and wireless base stations all over the country. Right now, the companies that own the physical infrastructure are happy to sell bandwidth on a non-discriminatory basis, but there is nothing inherent…

"There is nothing inherent in the technology that prevents them from giving better service to the big company that is willing to pay a lot of money than to the start-up that can't afford to pay a lot of money."

No, but the technology is also not designed to facilitate such discrimination, and everything about the design of the Internet assumes net neutrality. There is nothing in TCP/IP that uniquely identifies services, nor anything that facilitates a notion of classes of service. One service may have multiple hosts and multiple IP addresses. One IP address may be shared by multiple services. It may or may not be possible to inspect packets to determine which service they belong to; nowhere is any promise of "inspectability" made.

So while nothing prevents it, imposing such fees does require substantial new infrastructure to be deployed and new protocols to be developed. In other words, the Internet itself has to change to accommodate such a system -- because as designed, the Internet assumes neutrality.

Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

#127

Post by axus »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #114

We could make all the laws we want about Net Neutrality, it wouldn't change the fundamental flaw that made this problem possible in the first place: too much centralization. I hear that the US, there are only 2 ISPs: one of the big 2, or the little local one. In France, we have about 4. At the other end, we have Google, Amazon, but most notably we have YouTube and Netflix. Clearly the market is not efficient. Why do…

4 major broadband providers would be a lot better than 2. In the US, the two are the cable TV company, and the telephone company. Recently, a telephone companies came to a marketing agreement with the cable companies; the telco would control the wireless connections, and stop seriously competing on the wired broadband side. So, we might be moving to de facto monopolies for fixed line.

How does France have 4 providers? Wherever we tried line-sharing here, the ILEC would stop repairing the lines used by competitors until the customers switched to the incumbent.

Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

#128

Post by taproot »

macspoofing wrote: post #109
unclebucknasty wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a fairly narrow and presumptious definition of the possible consequences resulting from a lack of Net Neutrality. There is no real limitation on how the ISPs can wield their power AFAIK. For instance, why wouldn't they offer HuffingtonPost (essentially a blog) the opportunity to buy faster access for their readers? But, even if we were to take your assumptions at face value, I'm not sure how you gloss over oth…

All I argued that it isn't an ethical issue. Because it isn't. >How can something be both made willfully unfair, yet be ethical? Is it unethical that Yankees spend twice the league average on their ball-club because it is most certainly unfair. After all, not every team gets to be based in New York. And I'd be careful with words like 'fairness'. A socialist and a libertarian will have vastly different definitions of…

You know many countries are working on giving the internet natural right status.

If the net wasnt neutral there would be no google we'd all be stuck using yahooor dogpile. The net and all its services would look a lot more like cable was begining to. I find it hard to take anyone seriously when they are defending companies that would have you pay in the blood of your first born if they could get away with it. You think the net would have gone mainstream? You think that facebook would exist? Amazon?

The world has changed with open unfiltered acess to the internet, anything trying to lock it down and monopolise the network transmissions at a base level is incredibly unethical and an attack on so many parts if your life now.

Its too much of a burden on carriers to be regulated like they should be? Fuck me man, its too much of a burden on the world at large not to.

The fcc needs to call them carriers, be done with it, fix the pricing, fix the dodgy dealing and if need be deregulate the issues that seem to be getting isps in such a huf.

Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

#129

Post by unclebucknasty »

macspoofing wrote: post #109
unclebucknasty wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a fairly narrow and presumptious definition of the possible consequences resulting from a lack of Net Neutrality. There is no real limitation on how the ISPs can wield their power AFAIK. For instance, why wouldn't they offer HuffingtonPost (essentially a blog) the opportunity to buy faster access for their readers? But, even if we were to take your assumptions at face value, I'm not sure how you gloss over oth…

All I argued that it isn't an ethical issue. Because it isn't. >How can something be both made willfully unfair, yet be ethical? Is it unethical that Yankees spend twice the league average on their ball-club because it is most certainly unfair. After all, not every team gets to be based in New York. And I'd be careful with words like 'fairness'. A socialist and a libertarian will have vastly different definitions of…

I am not arguing that everything that is unfair is unethical, so your Yankees analogy doesn't apply.

We have heavily subsidized these companies. It's a bit of a rouse to say that they never agreed to Net Neutrality so shouldn't be beholden to it. The need for Net Neutrality arose because they wanted to go beyond their purview and accrete more power unto themselves. They are supposed to be serving customers, not holding access to them for ransom. Yes, they have invested in their infrastructures, and their reward is that they get to charge customers to access it, which they do handsomely.

BTW, your question implying some unfairness to the ISPs goes beyond a question of ethics (on which we'll agree to disagree) to an argument against Net Neutrality. Maybe that's where your real disagreement lies and the question of whether it's an ethical issue really isn't "all you're arguing".

Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

#130

Post by unclebucknasty »

hrjet wrote: post #117
macspoofing wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All I argued that it isn't an ethical issue. Because it isn't. >How can something be both made willfully unfair, yet be ethical? Is it unethical that Yankees spend twice the league average on their ball-club because it is most certainly unfair. After all, not every team gets to be based in New York. And I'd be careful with words like 'fairness'. A socialist and a libertarian will have vastly different definitions of…

> Netflix didn't spend billions building and maintaining the infrastructure, as well as acquiring all those customers. Neither did the telecoms spend billions in developing movie streaming software, yet they benefited from all the content consumption. > Telecoms got subsidies to build their infrastructure, but they never agreed to Net Neutrality. Is that fair? Neither did they explicitly assert that they will be net-…

Yeah, the parent seems to be advocating that the ISPs should have a right to double-dip, else it would be unfair to them.
Post reply on HN