Live data from Hacker News

FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

techcrunch.com

321–330 of 745 posts

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't help but suspect that the ultimate effect of paid prioritization would be to stifle future growth. Say you're a mobile carrier in the not-too-distant future. Lots of your customers are addicted to the hottest new social network in the Valley, FaceFlix. Trouble is, you're catching hell from both sides -- your customers are complaining about sluggish performance, and FaceFlix is complaining about inadequate ban…

LTE direct allows peer to peer routing of traffic over high capacity, licensed spectrum. In rural areas where a device has shoddy coverage, you could conceivably route traffic from devices with poor coverage to devices with strong coverage and then out to the Internet. You wouldn't want to do this for streaming traffic, as it could negatively impact the experience of the device with the strongest coverage. But you co…

The thing is, "net neutrality" arguments are not really about peering agreements. They are a consequence of a deeper, unfortunate reality: anyone who uses a packet-switched network to emulate a circuit-switched one is in a state of sin. Streaming applications like to pretend that they have a dedicated circuit connection to their peer, whether that peer is a centralized service like Netflix (or their CDN provider), or another end user's cable box or handset. That's not the case, but we have to maintain the fiction that it is, and treat packets that are part of a Netflix stream just the same as transient ones to or from Twitter.

Just how to preserve this unnatural state of affairs is what is being debated. If we don't understand this fact -- if we create laws or technical standards that favor one type of packet over another -- we risk foreclosing all sorts of interesting and valuable applications in the future that no one has even imagined yet.

So no, I don't think it's a good idea to promulgate standards that work well with transient messages and datagrams but not streams. If that's true of LTE Direct (and I'm not familiar with the spec, so I don't know if it is), then that's a problem. We've already baked that behavior into the architecture of the Internet itself, and it's only going to become a bigger issue as time goes on.

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#322
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My thesis is that these accounts are not here for legitimate argument. They are here to spread FUD via talking points If you feel anyone's opinion that isn't your own is somehow FUD, that's a problem. For example, you are unlikely to change my viewpoint or opinion on a great number of things, even through well thought-out and concise arguments. I also happen to believe Fox News isn't as terrible as a lot of people…

"For example, you are unlikely to change my viewpoint or opinion on a great number of things, even through well thought-out and concise arguments." Thank you. I think this is sufficient grounds for me to avoid wasting any of my time arguing with you.

> Thank you. I think this is sufficient grounds for me to avoid wasting any of my time arguing with you.

Conversely, has anyone managed to change your mind here in this thread?

Probably not...

The point of good argument isn't to convince the other party they are woefully wrong and everyone should just eventually come to the same conclusion.

Some debate for sport/fun, others to make a point. In the end a good debate serves to strengthen one's own ideals via plugging of logic holes poked by the opposite party. Occasionally someone may change their viewpoint -- but only someone with a very strong ego would believe their sole argument was so compelling...

If you surround yourself in an echo chamber, it's easy to believe your viewpoint is the only correct one.

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#323
post #251
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing is going to happen in the next couple of weeks. There are going to be lawsuits galore that will hold up any significant changes to internet services for years.

What? The regulations will certainly be released in the next couple weeks. Yes, that's also when the lawsuits will start. But I was talking about the regulations being released (since that's what the comment I was replying to was talking about.) Feel free to take your terrible attitude elsewhere.

You ad hominem attack aside, whatever wording may or may not be in the regulations will not matter near as much as how things will actually be implemented, and how these implemented changes will affect us all here on the web.

For example, there are 1000's of crazy laws on the books here in the US. Plenty of websites document "laws" like "it's a misdemeanor to walk your dog on Sunday within 100 feet of a church"

Since no police actually enforce these type of laws, the wording in the statue goes unnoticed...no one cares.

But if they did, all hell would break loose and the current local officials would probably quickly change them.

That is the gist of the direction I was trying to take.

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#324
post #316

Okay, as a Canadian with no dog in this fight, this seems to be a good thing for America. So I'm having a very hard time understanding the opposition. The arguments for title II are pretty clear and logical. The arguments against include giving up personal freedoms (You live in America, you've been giving up most of your personal freedoms willing for the pack two decades) and this isn't one of them. There are some co…

It's pretty common for Americans to argue against things that are actually good for them. The dis-information campaigns funded by billions in contributions are very good at convincing people universal healthcare, etc. would actually be bad.

Of course, every other developed country knows the truth.

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#325
post #52

There's a lot of echoing of telco FUD in here. Let's get some things straight: - The FCC is unelected, but so is the EPA, FBI, CIA, DOD, DOJ, etc. We can't elect everybody who works in government. That wouldn't work. - This does not mean the FCC is uncontrollable or unanswerable for what it does. It answers to both the executive and legislative branches of government, and of course anything it does can be subject to…

For those interested, here is a fact sheet outlining the rules (PDF from NPR):

http://media.npr.org/documents/2015/feb/fcc-wheeler-openinte...

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original Title II classification which included local loop bundling killed DSL investment and allowed cable broadband to take over the market. Ever wonder why America has cable broadband and the rest of the world uses some version of DSL or fiber provided by the telephone company? Title II. As soon as it was deregulated, Verizon and AT&T began upgrades. But before then, they weren't going to build upgrades to net…

> The original Title II classification which included local loop bundling killed DSL investment Then why, when reclassified as an information service, did it not get better? It got better from 1999 to 2005 (768kbps -> 1-6Mbps), but only in very select regions has it actually improved beyond that in the past ten years.

By the monopoly phone provider's logic, it did "get better" after it was reclassified.

(This is where AT&T switched to "Uverse" fiber-to-the-neighborhood network, with speeds up to 40+mbps. And since that's an "information service", no other companies are allowed to use it to sell internet, even though it's literally the same phone line as DSL, with almost identical technology and performance seen in other countries faster DSL services)

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thesis is that these accounts are not here for legitimate argument. They are here to spread FUD via talking points. I attempted to prove the futility of attacking the arguments by showing that they have been clearly countered before while failing to budge this account from their fixed talking points.

Let's turn the tables- I'm going to apply a hypothetical: I find all of your arguments to be talking points. How can we possibly have a reasonable dialog? I have just insulted you by explicitly stating that you are insincere in your position. This is how you're treating everyone who disagrees with you. It is utterly unproductive. You are executing a Denial of Service attack on any reasonable dialog.

No. Not everybody. Go see my comment history over a long period of time. On this particular topic, with a couple of particular accounts, I have strong reason to believe that cogent arguments are futile. I'm openly assuming such accounts to be at best ideologically driven, rationally blind or at worst astro-turfers. And I'm openly refusing to engage in rational argument with these accounts. paulhauggis is one such account

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#328
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, that's all most of us want. Transparency. The FCC is un-elected, that's always scary. Not that our elected officials know better. Haha.

That is definitely not scary to me. There are a number of things that absolutely shouldn't be directly elected, like the Federal Election Commission, the Federal Reserve, and the Supreme Court. Politicians spend much of their time getting re-elected, and they have to focus a great deal on whatever the electorate's current opinion is. That is excellent for things that should respond relatively quickly, and terrible fo…

John Oliver did a nice piece on judges getting elected in the U.S. as opposed to getting appointed. Basically, what you said. Judge's elections turn into politics as usual (money, political ideology, various other unrelated banter) as opposed to, you know, law.

While in theory it seems like a good idea, in practice it's not and all of a sudden you have judge's (or in the case at hand, FCC officials) with "interests" other than the law (communications).

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#329
post #316

Okay, as a Canadian with no dog in this fight, this seems to be a good thing for America. So I'm having a very hard time understanding the opposition. The arguments for title II are pretty clear and logical. The arguments against include giving up personal freedoms (You live in America, you've been giving up most of your personal freedoms willing for the pack two decades) and this isn't one of them. There are some co…

Agree, this just aligned the US with most other industrialized countries (I'm also not American).

Mostly I envy the US for its free markets! But now and then I get amazed seeing lobbying/monopoly/regulatory-capture being stronger in the US than other places.

I think it was Friedman who used to say he was pro-market, not pro-business [a sound principle]. Sometimes US politicians seems to get that wrong.

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty typical for HN. You get a lot of techno libertarians who think any form of regulation is the worst thing ever. To say that the new classification is somehow going to be worse I think is a bit of a stretch.

Because recent government conduct has been stellar, I really want more government regulation, government always knows best, government does an amazing job, is very fair, is very open and transparent, government is democratic and responsive to citizen concerns. What typical myopic bullshit.

>Because recent government conduct has been stellar

Recent government conduct has been the result of decades of deregulation.

Post reply on HN