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

FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

481–490 of 745 posts

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

#481

Post by cubano »

pnut wrote: post #221
covzzire wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ars has been playing on the 'Republicans are against it so it must be good' emotion card for awhile now. That's almost all I see on this issue in the tech media. What's been happening is that all objections are being dismissed as "Republicans lol" and "Fox News reporting so must be wrong". Our national discussion is literally at the level of Jon Stewart's mockery of things that warrant serious discussion.

When was the last time you heard a Republican politician on the national stage raise an issue that was not obviously directed at their base, or donors? A comment that plainly stated a fact in a noninflammatory way? Or proposed a course of action that was not designed to be punitive to some group, or alternately, designed to disproportionately benefit the powerful? Republicans inhabit a carefully-crafted parallel real…

> When was the last time you heard a Republican politician on the national stage raise an issue that was not obviously directed at their base, or donors?

Do you seriously believe that it's only Republicans that pander to their base?

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

#482

Post by xiata »

chaostheory wrote: post #465
grecy wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two problems, and the FCC has solved one of them perfectly. Problem 1: ISPs trying to charge to (de)prioritize packets. Problem 2: The two biggest ISPs suck, and should be broken up, and/or it should be mandated that competition is much easier. Would you be happy if they solved problem 2 without solving problem 1? Leave problem 2 for another day, and celebrate that problem 1 has been dealt with.

Wouldn't drastically increased competition solve problem one over time?

This is a bad assumption that any new competition would act differently than the status quo. More competitors would make it harder to have a solid argument of "pay me, or else", but that wouldn't stop some behind-the-scenes collusion.

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

#483

Post by forgottenpass »

bcheung wrote: post #360

Can someone clarify "paid prioritization" and "fast lane"? If I buy the 50Mbps ISP plan and someone else buys the 10Mbps isn't that a faster lane / paid prioritization? What about if a company decides to put their server in a datacenter instead of hosting out of their office? Aren't they paying for better access? What about CDNs? Aren't those "fast lanes"? It doesn't seem like this is the intent but based on how it i…

Offering different levels of service to be purchased at the types of endpoints you describe is not the target of this. It is (generally) about network peering, and throttling based on deep packet inception.

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

#484

Post by shmerl »

hawkice wrote: post #475
shmerl wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And other people will never have fiber Internet, lower prices and higher bandwidth because current monopolist in their area doesn't care to do any of the above. So how do you propose to fix that? Unbundling is the only way. Not sure about Kitsap, but unbundling worked well in Europe. How weren't they scared there of the same thing?

A lot of the difference in economics between Europe and rural Washington state has to do with the extremely high fixed cost of "last mile" internet connection in rural areas, which are, for a number of reasons, substantially more prohibitive in America. Trying to pay off $9000 in fixed costs with $30/mo internet simply isn't going to happen if a competitor can swoop in and offer the same service for $20/mo with no in…

> Are you saying we need unbundling because otherwise we won't have both fiber internet and low prices?

I guess it can differ in scenarios when there is no infrastructure in place yet, and when it's already there.

For instance when infrastructure is in place and there is one monopolist owning it (it can be already fiber, or coaxial cable for example) charging high prices for mediocre bandwidth while having an ability to provide way more bandwidth for lower price, unbundling can fix it. But if there is nothing there, it's of course different. May be unbundling rules can be applied based on that difference.

There sure should be some incentive to build up the network, but it has to be balanced with restricting the natural monopoly which develops when that network is built.

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

#485

Post by rayiner »

wpietri wrote: post #118
jes wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment would have been better, in my view, without the ad-hominem attack on older people. Especially if you wish to advocate for a pro-science, reason and evidence approach to argumentation.

As a relatively old person, at least for HN, I don't believe it's ad hominem to suggest that old people don't understand new things as well as younger people do. And it's clearly an issue for the Internet. Note, for example, the strong correlation between age and internet use here: http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-age-literature/#many There's also the term "digital native": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_native There's…

> As a relatively old person, at least for HN, I don't believe it's ad hominem to suggest that old people don't understand new things as well as younger people do.

As a pretty-young curmudgeon, I will say that young people often throw out "he's old and doesn't understand the internet" when they really mean "he's old and doesn't share our values re: the internet." "Neutrality" is a value you subscribe to, not a technology to be understood.

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

#486

Post by oceanstone »

tptacek wrote: post #473
oceanstone wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> PS: The accusations of astroturfing on HN are a vile sort of rhetorical tactic. You sound upset about the accusation. What if it were true though?

Comments like this are what make musings about astroturfing so toxic. I don't know what it is about us message board nerds that makes this so hard to grok, but you cannot suggest that someone is a shill without overtly calling their integrity into question. Questioning someone's integrity is intrinsically uncivil . Don't be uncivil.

What I'm hearing is you'd like to make the topic of astroturfing "off-limits", because you feel its discussion is "toxic".

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

#487

Post by cubano »

ebbv wrote: post #374
cubano wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I repeat your attitude sucks. That's not an ad hominem attack. An ad hominem attack is an attack directed at your person, I'm attacking the nature and premise of your comments; they come from a place of useless negativity. Your attitude is basically "This means nothing because only the implementation and enforcement means anything." Which is just absurd. Of course the implementation and enforcement matter, but the re…

Yes, but of course, my attitude is a part of my "person".

Perhaps it is you who should lighten up a bit, my friend.

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

#488

Post by dang »

travie7273 wrote: post #91
chetanahuja wrote: post #76

Wow.. This thread has turned into an astro-turfing campaign for the anti-NN advocates. The main gist of the the new regulations is the classify broadband access as a utility under Title II of Communications act. This has long been generally agreed upon by reasonable people as a good thing... and a necessary thing seeing how there's virtually no competition in broadband access for most people in the US. Reading commen…

Even Eric Schmidt told Obama it was a bad idea. IBM, Intel, and Cisco are against it. My posts were shadow banned on HN for being against these regulations. It's odd that people like you can't fathom that there are two sides to this issue.

> My posts were shadow banned on HN for being against these regulations

HN accounts get banned for breaking the HN guidelines, not for being against regulations.

For example, a jab such as "people like you" in a comment breaks the HN guidelines.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

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

#489

Post by mortehu »

cubano wrote: post #323
ebbv wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Plenty of websites document "laws" like "it's a misdemeanor to walk your dog on Sunday within 100 feet of a church"

I recently learned that these are actually mostly jokes, and have never been real laws anywhere.

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

#490

Post by codyb »

chaostheory wrote: post #465
grecy wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two problems, and the FCC has solved one of them perfectly. Problem 1: ISPs trying to charge to (de)prioritize packets. Problem 2: The two biggest ISPs suck, and should be broken up, and/or it should be mandated that competition is much easier. Would you be happy if they solved problem 2 without solving problem 1? Leave problem 2 for another day, and celebrate that problem 1 has been dealt with.

Wouldn't drastically increased competition solve problem one over time?

Possibly but it hinges a lot on drastically increased in an often prohibitively expensive commercial sector and it would take a lot longer than enforcing one, and then encouraging competition to bring speeds up and overall cost of bandwidth down for consumers.

And there's been lots of no compete agreements among these ISPs and I'm sure there's other examples out there where the "competition" makes it better for all of them at the expense of consumers.

Post reply on HN