Obama calls for municipal broadband • Hacker News Board

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#41

Post by WillNotDownvote » Wed, Jan 14, 2015, 9:30 PM UTC

jfb wrote: post #30

NoPiece wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think the federal policy on torrents will be? Ask Disney.

Who cares? The Feds here are not in the business of bandwidth provision; they're acting to counterbalance the elephantine mass of Comcast by preventing them from overpowering municipal politics.

A thought that occurs to me is that if the government is providing internet access, various pressure groups will leverage that for various kinds of censorship.

Why is my government providing access to porn? To religious sites? To sites that violate copyright? To sites that contain many sorts of 'unsavory' content? Allowing children uncensored access to many things?

I don't know how those complaints would fare, but I'm absolutely certain they'd be made.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#42

Post by metaphorm » Wed, Jan 14, 2015, 9:30 PM UTC

jMyles wrote: post #15

Absent from the conversation is the actual obvious generational shift: final-mile mesh networks in every sufficiently large and dense community.

not a mature technology. how would the mesh be established? run ethernet cables between people's homes? have everyone open a port on their wifi router? this is beyond the technical capability of the vast majority of people. it would require a company to coordinate this, and at that point you've got just got an ISP running the last mile anyway.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#43

Post by hawkice » Wed, Jan 14, 2015, 9:30 PM UTC

NoPiece wrote: post #14

jfb wrote: post #6

Really, he's calling for the FCC to prevent rent-seeking by local ISP monopolies by allowing the option of municipal networks. It's a really good idea; you can tell because of how stridently Comcast/Verizon/AT&T oppose it.

What do you think the federal policy on torrents will be? Ask Disney.

The ability to encrypt torrent traffic (requiring encryption is tremendously easy to do through the guis I use, and might even be the default in many clients) combined with the American reflexive response to government censorship leads me to think this won't be as big an issue as you imply.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#44

Post by gaius » Wed, Jan 14, 2015, 9:30 PM UTC

Saves having to wiretap commercial ISPs, is why he's doing it.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#45

Post by ksk » Wed, Jan 14, 2015, 9:31 PM UTC

jfb wrote: post #6

Really, he's calling for the FCC to prevent rent-seeking by local ISP monopolies by allowing the option of municipal networks. It's a really good idea; you can tell because of how stridently Comcast/Verizon/AT&T oppose it.

> you can tell because of how stridently Comcast/Verizon/AT&T oppose it.

How so? Whether its good or bad, ISPs would be against it. Most companies do not want competition. (regardless of what they say)

>by allowing the option of municipal networks.

I personally think its rather unfair to ask a for-profit company to compete against a tax funded service.

>Really, he's calling for the FCC to prevent rent-seeking

You can prevent rent-seeking by repealing any "sponsored" laws that protect their monopoly.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#46

Post by metaphorm » Wed, Jan 14, 2015, 9:32 PM UTC

cubano wrote: post #40

metaphorm wrote: post #13

I wish we had seen this more progressive, pro-active Obama 6 years ago. Squandered his political capital on a shitty health care reform bill, got shell shocked by Republican opposition and crawled up his own ass for a couple of years. Now that he doesn't give a shit about elections anymore he's actually doing something.

I wish we had seen this more progressive, pro-active Obama 6 years ago. More progressive and pro-active then basically socializing 1/7th of the US economy with the ACA? Wow. [edit] I used the wrong term "socializing" when I meant "intervening in"

are you serious? you can't be serious. i usually assume that hacker news has a bit more sophistication than this. i would actively celebrate a legitimate socialized health care system in the U.S. but that's not what we got. ACA is basically a huge middle class tax with the proceeds paid almost entirely to health insurance companies. its a massive expansion of a deeply entrenched private industry.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#47

Post by sp332 » Wed, Jan 14, 2015, 9:32 PM UTC

metaphorm wrote: post #38

sp332 wrote: post #2

Oh, municipal governments. From the headline, I though he was proposing some national thing.

the united states is a federal republic. municipal government is SUPPOSED to be the level of government where programs like this are implemented. communities will have varying needs and their local governments are best equipped to evaluate and meet those needs.

Is there really that much variation in basic infrastructure like internet access though?

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#48

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 14, 2015, 9:33 PM UTC

bcheung wrote: post #26

The government can't even manage its own budget, I don't trust them with the Internet.

[deleted]

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#49

Post by hawkice » Wed, Jan 14, 2015, 9:34 PM UTC

Arnor wrote: post #39

> Last year, the Republican-controlled House passed language banning the FCC from banning states from banning cities from building municipal networks. This should be a case study in every civics class...

A less pathological phrasing: Congress says states can boss around cities and force them not to build municipal networks, and the FCC can't do anything about that.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#50

Post by jfb » Wed, Jan 14, 2015, 9:34 PM UTC

ksk wrote: post #45

jfb wrote: post #6

Really, he's calling for the FCC to prevent rent-seeking by local ISP monopolies by allowing the option of municipal networks. It's a really good idea; you can tell because of how stridently Comcast/Verizon/AT&T oppose it.

> you can tell because of how stridently Comcast/Verizon/AT&T oppose it. How so? Whether its good or bad, ISPs would be against it. Most companies do not want competition. (regardless of what they say) >by allowing the option of municipal networks. I personally think its rather unfair to ask a for-profit company to compete against a tax funded service. >Really, he's calling for the FCC to prevent rent-seeking You can…

The problem is that you have an asymmetry in resources between e.g. local officials who might want to stand up a fiber network and a company the size of Verizon, who very badly do not want this to happen. You need countervailing size, and in the US only the federal government has it.