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

FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 206 posts

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#131

Post by carry_bit »

bo1024 wrote: post #90
artursapek wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if I understand, they're disguising this as "Netflix eats up so much bandwidth" but really it's "we want an unfair advantage over Netflix"? Otherwise, I have no idea why republicans would support this.

Yes, that's a good assessment. You can think of it this way: ISPs act like roads between people's houses and the sites they want to access. People currently pay ISPs to reserve a certain amount of road, and net neutrality says they can drive whatever cars they want over that fraction of road without being discriminated against in pricing or speed. The ISPs say things like "xx% of traffic is Netflix -- that uses up an…

> People currently pay ISPs to reserve a certain amount of road, and net neutrality says they can drive whatever cars they want over that fraction of road without being discriminated against in pricing or speed.

In the case of roads, heavy vehicles like big rigs cause more wear-and-tear than light vehicles like compact cars. It would be fair then to charge heavy vehicles more so users of light vehicles aren't paying for users of heavy vehicles.

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#132

Post by dragonwriter »

slouch wrote: post #16
grokas wrote: post #2

After reading about Pai, it seems like he was hand selected to be the figure head with which the ISPs would finally take down Net Neutrality. This whole situation sucks, and no matter how much noise we make and activism we take part in, if Pai has the legal footing to ruin the internet, he will.

We've only had the rules for two years, and this only shows that the next administration can also pull and about-face. The lawsuits might not even be settled by then.

We've had net neutrality enforcement from the FCC for 13 years; case-by-case until that was struck down in 2010; neutrality rules very similar to those later adopted under Title II adopted under Title I authority from 2010 until those were struck down by the courts in 2014, and Title II rules from 2015 till now.

And even prior to 2004, much of what then passed for broadband was regulated in ways which incidentally protected or encouraged neutrality, though that was piecemeal and incidental to regulation of the particular underlying phone or cable infrastructure, not part of a coherent internet-related policy.

The new rules would not seek to enforce neutrality as the new FCC majority claims enforcement is unnecessary, and that what minimal enforcement against anti-competitive practices should be done should be done by the FTC. This would be a condition which has not existed in the history of the publicly-relevant internet, not a return to the status quo of two years ago.

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#133

Post by logfromblammo »

masklinn wrote: post #93
c3534l wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telecommunications tend to form a natural monopoly. It's a bit like roads and railroads, only you're transporting information rather than people. I looked online and it's got all the common characteristics: there are few close substitutes, the product is non-storable (although, maybe if it gets bad enough in the US we'll start seeing services that mail us USBs full of last week's Hacker News posts), supply is all abo…

Oh no, don't you read mises and vood^H^H^H^HAustrian Economics? Natural monopolies don't exist: https://mises.org/library/myth-natural-monopoly

Natural monopolies exist, but they don't perpetually persist. They can fluctuate between monopoly, single firm with pricing power plus challenger(s), unstable market, and complete market collapse with no suppliers.

Legally protected monopolies are intended to avoid the latter state, especially where interruptions of service could have ripple effects on other industries.

I believe the legislative goal was never about costs or overbuilt infrastructure, but to ensure that at least one provider was always available. So they chose to mandate that there could never be more than one. For the sake of having a dial tone 99.99% of the time, they made the choice for everyone that phone service would cost more, for everyone, every day, forever.

Talking about "natural monopoly" is just a distraction. The de jure monopoly is about the difference between "no choice" and "zero choices". You may have made the same choice on a smaller scale when designing code that expects exactly one input instead of zero to N inputs. An alternate solution would be to operate a state-owned, not-for-profit utility, as the supplier of last resort, but that has its own problems, which may be more or less difficult than the monopoly problems, depending on specific circumstances.

Von Mises is a good economics resource for libertarian-leaning folks, but you can't trust any single macro-economist to get everything right. I'm actually not sure any single one of them is more than 50% correct, or even if their amount of correctness is stable over time. Markets have this annoying habit of integrating all information, whether true or false, and reacting to it. This includes everything that all economists in all schools have ever written. It truly is a dismal science.

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#134

Post by bo1024 »

carry_bit wrote: post #126
bo1024 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if all it is is them charging customers more for using more bandwidth It's not -- this is currently legal. Examples of what they can do if NN is repealed are: charge you extra per month to use SSH, VPN or other forms of encrypted traffic; and charge the guy down the street extra per month to stream Netflix (but Comcast video comes bundled free). > what changes can we expect as ISP consumers if this happens? It's ha…

> 3. Censorship. This I think will start slow but is the biggest medium and long term threat. We already have that under NN (the Daily Stormer incident a few months back).

That did occur, but two points. First, any additional avenue for censorship is bad. Second, it's a completely different mechanism. There, if I recall right, web hosting companies refused to host the website. Worth noting, this can be routed around by hosting the website in other countries or even on one's own computers. Still I agree it's a form of corporate censorship.

However, the corporate censorship opened up by removing NN is much more direct and, I argue, frightening, because there are much fewer ISPs, and they can directly block users from accessing the site very easily. Once they start it will be very easy for them to grow their blacklists quickly. Further, it's actually in the direct business interest of these ISPs to block sites in many cases, which was not the case for web hosting. Finally, it's much easier for governments to step in and start censoring via this mechanism since they can control all ISPs in their own country -- not true for web hosting.

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#135

Post by sjg007 »

srmatto wrote: post #88
Delmania wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He doesn't. Ignoring the public comment period and making comments like demonstrate he's not acting in the interest of the consumer. There's a good chance a federal judge will strike this down.

But what move comes after that? If congress intervenes next and its not in our favor, the outcome could be far worse and harder to reverse.

Vote them out.

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#136

Post by paulmd »

Facemelters wrote: post #98
omginternets wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's a good chance a federal judge will strike this down. Is there any historical precedent for this? I'm trying to assess the resemblance between this case and such a hypothetical case. I want to believe...

Yes. The notice and comment period is intended to prevent arbitrary or capricious decisions by agencies.

What makes this decision arbitrary or capricious? The administration and the FCC see a policy objective in deregulating the internet, just because you disagree with it doesn't make it arbitrary.

It's going to have definite winners (telcoms) and losers (tech companies) but that is true of literally every type of regulation.

There are respects in which, say, fracking is not the best thing for the public either (lighting your tap water on fire, etc). The party in charge gets to decide what the best interests of the public are, and what policies to use to achieve them.

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#137

Post by rhino369 »

paulmd wrote: post #110
grokas wrote: post #2

After reading about Pai, it seems like he was hand selected to be the figure head with which the ISPs would finally take down Net Neutrality. This whole situation sucks, and no matter how much noise we make and activism we take part in, if Pai has the legal footing to ruin the internet, he will.

> After reading about Pai, it seems like he was hand selected to be the figure head with which the ISPs would finally take down Net Neutrality. He's not. He's a generic Republican, appointed by Obama (since the commission is obligated by Congress to have no more than a simple majority of appointees from any one party). The problem is, this is what all Republicans are like nowadays. Any other person that Obama could h…

>They are un-interested in any semblance of reasonable governance, it's siphoning your money to their backers in the most direct and aggressive fashion, plain and simple.

They are uninterested in your view of reasonable governance. Reasonable people can and do disagree with things like net neutrality.

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#139

Post by dragonwriter »

paulmd wrote: post #136
Facemelters wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. The notice and comment period is intended to prevent arbitrary or capricious decisions by agencies.

What makes this decision arbitrary or capricious? The administration and the FCC see a policy objective in deregulating the internet, just because you disagree with it doesn't make it arbitrary. It's going to have definite winners (telcoms) and losers (tech companies) but that is true of literally every type of regulation. There are respects in which, say, fracking is not the best thing for the public either (lightin…

> What makes this decision arbitrary or capricious?

Disregard of the integrity of the legally-mandatory public comment process is, in and of itself, strong evidence that there is a violation of procedural rules governing regulation.

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#140

Post by boomboomsubban »

paulmd wrote: post #110
grokas wrote: post #2

After reading about Pai, it seems like he was hand selected to be the figure head with which the ISPs would finally take down Net Neutrality. This whole situation sucks, and no matter how much noise we make and activism we take part in, if Pai has the legal footing to ruin the internet, he will.

> After reading about Pai, it seems like he was hand selected to be the figure head with which the ISPs would finally take down Net Neutrality. He's not. He's a generic Republican, appointed by Obama (since the commission is obligated by Congress to have no more than a simple majority of appointees from any one party). The problem is, this is what all Republicans are like nowadays. Any other person that Obama could h…

There isn't a "reasonable" party, the Democrats could have made this a law making repealing it difficult. They found the to give ISPs billions of dollars, and to legalize spying on their customers though.

Both parties are a joke, voting for either is an awful choice.

Post reply on HN