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

FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 674 posts

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#51

Post by ajmurmann »

dinoleif wrote: post #40

"Net neutrality" is one of the most Orwellian terms in modern usage. It's a corporate welfare play by large tech companies to "solve" a "problem" that nobody can identify. It's pre-emptive, busy-body regulation at its worst. Who was being harmed in the first 20 years of the internet without these regulations? Whose lives have been made better? Compared to what? Net neutrality advocates are utterly unable to give conv…

OK, I take the bait: Netflix and it's customers were harmed by traffic being throttled and customers being held hostage.

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#52

Post by jjoonathan »

ams6110 wrote: post #34
fokinsean wrote: post #18

Tweet in article: >On December 14, the FCC will vote on Chairman Pai's plan to repeal President Obama's heavy-handed Internet regulations and restore Internet freedom. I love how these laws are veiled with patriotic sentiments, e.g. "Internet Freedom". Just like the "Patriot Act", it is reasonable to assume anything with these sort of labels will likely be an encroachment on your freedoms. Also >"The job of the FCC i…

People are dropping cable due to the heavy-handed control and lack of choice. Why would ISPs want emulate that failing model? If Comcast is going to try to charge me more to be able to access Netflix, I'm gone.

To where? Or are you one of those lucky few who have a choice of ISP?

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#53

Post by vorpalhex »

dinoleif wrote: post #40

"Net neutrality" is one of the most Orwellian terms in modern usage. It's a corporate welfare play by large tech companies to "solve" a "problem" that nobody can identify. It's pre-emptive, busy-body regulation at its worst. Who was being harmed in the first 20 years of the internet without these regulations? Whose lives have been made better? Compared to what? Net neutrality advocates are utterly unable to give conv…

Does your ISP have the ability to censor the internet for you?

Do you watch Netflix? If you don't, that's ok, because most consumers do use it or a competing service. Internet Companies absolutely did try to charge Netflix extra, and in some cases throttled them. This was well documented.

I don't know if you're a corporate shill or just genuinely lack the ability to comprehend how bad this is. Spectrum, Verizon and their ilk have absolutely shown zero regard for consumers and there is no reason to believe that pattern of behavior is going to change anytime soon. If they can screw over their consumers for a dollar, they will, just like they have continually done so in the past.

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#54

Post by mmjaa »

pneill wrote: post #32

Maybe I'm lone dissenter, but I don't understand the push back on this. People who read hacker news should be among the elite technologist, do we really all believe that every packet should be treated the same? Should an E911 call or tele-surgery packets really be treated the same as Netflix? Net neutrality forces the ISP to do that and that seems like madness to me.

Instead of a single source of censorship, against which the people can fight, there will be multiple sources of censorship, and fighting one won't solve the problem.

And in your E911 example, there are already ways for this to be solved without requiring censorship or throttling of data on the public networks. You can already buy life-/safety-critical bandwidth that is "off-Internet bands", if you need it - the point is, this isn't lumped with the 'general public Internet'.

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#55

Post by ams6110 »

mirimir wrote: post #42
spystath wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't decide if titling it "Restoring Internet Freedom" is a perverse sense of humour or just blatant effrontery.

Freedom for ISPs, right? And for enterprises to buy preferential connectivity. For the rest of us, not so much :(

You will be free to accept the ISPs offered plan(s), or not.

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#56

Post by Lukeas14 »

wnevets wrote: post #44
fokinsean wrote: post #18

Tweet in article: >On December 14, the FCC will vote on Chairman Pai's plan to repeal President Obama's heavy-handed Internet regulations and restore Internet freedom. I love how these laws are veiled with patriotic sentiments, e.g. "Internet Freedom". Just like the "Patriot Act", it is reasonable to assume anything with these sort of labels will likely be an encroachment on your freedoms. Also >"The job of the FCC i…

> "If you like your cable company, you'll love what this does for the Internet" HAHAHHAHAA, wow they're not even trying

That quote was from Tom Wheeler, ex-chairman of the FCC who opposes ending net neutrality. He was being sarcastic.

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#57

Post by dopamean »

Dangeranger wrote: post #13

Note that there is a discussion about how to fight this plan here: “Ask HN: How can we stop the plan to end net neutrality?” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15745057

It seems the fight has already been lost.

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#58

Post by make3 »

cwyers wrote: post #22

I don't know, the Internet got on fine without those rules for a lot longer than we've had those rules, I feel like the gloom-and-doom over this is highly overstated.

the times were extremely different, and the rules can't hurt

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#59

Post by e1ven »

jjoonathan wrote: post #52
ams6110 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are dropping cable due to the heavy-handed control and lack of choice. Why would ISPs want emulate that failing model? If Comcast is going to try to charge me more to be able to access Netflix, I'm gone.

To where? Or are you one of those lucky few who have a choice of ISP?

It's not there yet, but mobile broadband is becoming increasingly viable.

It's far from ideal, but 4 (soon 3) competitors are better than the 1 choice I have for wired broadband.

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#60

Post by eduren »

ams6110 wrote: post #34
fokinsean wrote: post #18

Tweet in article: >On December 14, the FCC will vote on Chairman Pai's plan to repeal President Obama's heavy-handed Internet regulations and restore Internet freedom. I love how these laws are veiled with patriotic sentiments, e.g. "Internet Freedom". Just like the "Patriot Act", it is reasonable to assume anything with these sort of labels will likely be an encroachment on your freedoms. Also >"The job of the FCC i…

People are dropping cable due to the heavy-handed control and lack of choice. Why would ISPs want emulate that failing model? If Comcast is going to try to charge me more to be able to access Netflix, I'm gone.

>Why would ISPs want emulate that failing model?

It's profitable and with their lobbying, they can protect themselves from competition. If cable companies had the opportunity to cut streaming services at the knees 10 years ago (and the foresight to understand how it would affect their market) you bet they would have.

This is as anti-consumer as you can get.

Post reply on HN