6 ms·

So government should buy the infrastructure from different ISP and nationalize it. Then ISPs can rent the it from the government. However if I want to start a I

by rtx 9y ago

So government should buy the infrastructure from different ISP and nationalize it. Then ISPs can rent the it from the government. However if I want to start a ISP which only delivers Netflix, I should be allowed to.

LoSboccacc 9y ago
gov can also rent infrastructure and enforce neutrality on gov't resold lines, leaving private provided lines unregulated.
coldpie 9y ago
I would love this, but can you imagine the gnashing of teeth from the 63 million people who voted for Trump? Not gonna happen. We're stuck with the for-profit Internet thanks to the scary, shouty man on TV.
- metalliqaz 9y ago
  Honestly I don't care what those people think. Their judgement is bad and they should feel bad.
  - rtx 9y ago
    People should feel bad for using CDNs.
    - sleepychu 9y ago
      Can you expand? I don't understand this viewpoint.
      - rtx 9y ago
        https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/07/09/what-does-net-neutrality-mean-for-akamai.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/07/09/what-does-...
  - masondixon 9y ago
    I think liberals' judgement is bad. They thought they would win the election and did not.
- muninn_ 9y ago
  "voting for trump" != voting for ISP monopolies and anti-net neutrality. Don't blame everything in the world on people who voted for Trump. Look at how difficult it was to get any sort of good regulation for net neutrality under Obama. You need to go after ISPs, Comcast, etc... and the people both R and D who get money from them.
  - coldpie 9y ago
    Don't try to "both sides are the same" this. Look at the accomplishments of the previous administration's FCC and the current one. There is a stark difference.
    - muninn_ 9y ago
      I didn't say "both sides are the same" even though they largely are. But you're naive if you think that Comcast isn't lobbying their democratize representatives in Philly to vote against net neutrality regulations. Furthermore, look at how much work it took to get net neutrality passed even under Obama. If the democrats are so much on our side, why was it so difficult?
      - coldpie 9y ago
        Under the Democrats, the FCC passed net neutrality, twice, after a court order struck down the first attempt. Under the Republicans, the FCC isn't just doing nothing, it's actively going out of its way to repeal it. The difference could not be more stark. If a neutral Internet is important to you, the sides are not even remotely the same.
        muninn_ 9y ago
        Right. My point is look how difficult it was. We (dems) dragged our feet doing it. Why? I'm not defending the republican's choices here, I don't agree with what they're doing.
  - belltaco 9y ago
    Many of those people have actually been led believe it has something to do with quashing conservative media. From the man himself: Donald J. Trump‏ Verified account @realDonaldTrump Obama’s attack on the internet is another top down power grab. Net neutrality is the Fairness Doctrine. Will target conservative media. https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/532608358508167168?lang=en https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/53260835850816716... Like those millions of people who believed the fake news fed to them, these people don't even know what it means, much less make an informed decision, so the Republicans aren't going to lose many votes over this compared to informed voters who are typically in the cities and vote D anyway.
- TallGuyShort 9y ago
  Yeah I miss Obama. Remember last year when the Internet wasn't run by private companies? And when the people who voted for Trump weren't Republicans yet? Suddenly on January 20th all these things that happened before were suddenly his fault.
  - unityByFreedom 9y ago
    Uhhh Obama's FCC didn't push to remove net neutrality after pushback from the public. With a new administration, content providers are looking amp up lobbying and give it another go. We need to forget politics red vs. blue and consider that this may be a bad idea. If we make it an unpopular position for politicians to support, they won't pass it. Votes beat dollars because at the end of the day, without your vote, politicians supporting a given position don't have the job.
    - TallGuyShort 9y ago
      >> We need to forget politics red vs. blue and consider that this may be a bad idea. If we make it an unpopular position for politicians to support, they won't pass it. Then let's stop blaming the shouting man for stuff other than being the idiot he is. There's plenty of other folks to blame, and plenty of them were in power before now. There was plenty of scary and stupid Internet regulation discussed under Obama that he didn't react to the way I would have liked AT ALL. There's plenty of stuff Democrats suddenly decided they didn't like and Republicans suddenly decided they like when in reality it's hardly that different at all. There's a bunch of shitty people in Congress and in many other sectors of government, and let's not forget that they're not going to go away once anyone's President-of-choice wins the next election, or that they're not partly responsible for a whole bunch of conservatives feeling disenfranchised and going with a lunatic as an overreaction.
      - unityByFreedom 9y ago
        > Then let's stop blaming the shouting man for stuff other than being the idiot he is I can't control what other people say =) > There was plenty of scary and stupid Internet regulation discussed under Obama that he didn't react to the way I would have liked AT ALL I agree. For example, he was totally wrong about how to deal with everyone having access to E2E encryption in their pockets. All I can do is advocate for focusing on this one issue. I believe in net neutrality and I think if more people understand how it contributed to today's internet, then more would be on board. One thing to note is that net neutrality was always built into ISPs until content providers started focusing on subscriptions to data via the internet rather than TV. At that point, content companies started to see how they could corner markets by using dollars to persuade ISPs to give them better throughput than smaller competition. So, while the neutrality regulation only came into place in 2015, it was really standard practice up until then. > There's a bunch of shitty people in Congress and in many other sectors of government, and let's not forget that they're not going to go away once anyone's President-of-choice wins the next election, or that they're not partly responsible for a whole bunch of conservatives feeling disenfranchised and going with a lunatic as an overreaction. Yes, well, I think in this case we can set aside how inept many in government seem to be. On this issue, I think we can come together and agree that net neutrality is a good thing, and that Netflix or Comcast shouldn't be able to give you faster speeds to certain websites, because that means you'll be paying more to visit sites that they don't own, thus limiting your choices.
- masondixon 9y ago
  You think the internet would be just as efficiently run if the government controlled it without a profit incentive? I think the left are naive to how lazy people are without the right incentives, and how without a monetary incentive office politics can be ridiculously crippling. Maybe the HN perspective is driven by the fact that open-source in software engineering has flourished - leading many to think that great things can be built without monetary incentive. Or perhaps its because they are surrounded by very smart people and start believing that the rest of society operates at the same calibre. There is enough politics involved inside companies where huge monetary incentives are up for grabs, when you take away this monetary incentive, it becomes insanely political.
  - therpe1 9y ago
    As usual, "the right" likes to speak of "incentives" like they are these magical fairies that overdetermine human behavior. Let's look at some actual facts in the real world. Compare the internet infrastructure of Britain, France and South Korea to the US. In all of these countries the internet backbone and especially the last mile of local networks is largely owned and maintained by the government. And in all of these countries the internet is generally faster, more widely available, and cheaper than what you see in the US. In fact when you compare broadband penetration in the OECD you find that (1) the US barely makes it into the top 20 and (2) every country ahead of the US employs the government lease model. It's gotten to the point that even a few conservatives who are honest enough will admit what is the very obvious reality [1]. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-02-20/americas-10-year-experiment-in-broadband-investment-has-failed https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-02-20/americas-...
  - coldpie 9y ago
    Water and streets are doing relatively well. Any problems lately have occurred after Republicans cut infrastructure spending.
- simonh 9y ago
  Is the internet not for-profit right now? Comcast doesn't seem to be struggling. ISPs are highly profitable as it is.
simonh 9y ago
Should the only ISP covering a territory be allowed to only deliver Netflix? Should one of the ISPs that serves your area be allowed to buy all the others and then block Youtube and Netflix to your house and only allow Vimeo? In a perfect world competing infrastructure companies should spring up out of thin air due to infinite availability of capital and an endless supply of engineers to implement all of this. But real markets have to operate within the confines of a finite world and limited resources. Results and outcomes matter.
- rlpb 9y ago
  > In a perfect world competing infrastructure companies should spring up out of thin air due to infinite availability of capital... You wouldn't need an infrastructure company, nor would you need a big capital expenditure. The point is that the infrastructure would be state-owned and available on a non-discriminatory basis already. If demand exists, a competitor could bootstrap by buying fractional bandwidth from the last mile infrastructure, fractional bandwidth from a peering provider, and connecting the two. The problem at the moment is that huge capital expenditure is required because I need the majority of a street to be interested before digging it up becomes economically viable. This problem would go away.

by rtx 9y ago

LoSboccacc 9y ago

gov can also rent infrastructure and enforce neutrality on gov't resold lines, leaving private provided lines unregulated.

coldpie 9y ago

I would love this, but can you imagine the gnashing of teeth from the 63 million people who voted for Trump? Not gonna happen. We're stuck with the for-profit Internet thanks to the scary, shouty man on TV.

metalliqaz 9y ago
Honestly I don't care what those people think. Their judgement is bad and they should feel bad.
- rtx 9y ago
  People should feel bad for using CDNs.
  - sleepychu 9y ago
    Can you expand? I don't understand this viewpoint.
    - rtx 9y ago
      https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/07/09/what-does-net-neutrality-mean-for-akamai.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/07/09/what-does-...
- masondixon 9y ago
  I think liberals' judgement is bad. They thought they would win the election and did not.
muninn_ 9y ago
"voting for trump" != voting for ISP monopolies and anti-net neutrality. Don't blame everything in the world on people who voted for Trump. Look at how difficult it was to get any sort of good regulation for net neutrality under Obama. You need to go after ISPs, Comcast, etc... and the people both R and D who get money from them.
- coldpie 9y ago
  Don't try to "both sides are the same" this. Look at the accomplishments of the previous administration's FCC and the current one. There is a stark difference.
  - muninn_ 9y ago
    I didn't say "both sides are the same" even though they largely are. But you're naive if you think that Comcast isn't lobbying their democratize representatives in Philly to vote against net neutrality regulations. Furthermore, look at how much work it took to get net neutrality passed even under Obama. If the democrats are so much on our side, why was it so difficult?
    - coldpie 9y ago
      Under the Democrats, the FCC passed net neutrality, twice, after a court order struck down the first attempt. Under the Republicans, the FCC isn't just doing nothing, it's actively going out of its way to repeal it. The difference could not be more stark. If a neutral Internet is important to you, the sides are not even remotely the same.
      - muninn_ 9y ago
        Right. My point is look how difficult it was. We (dems) dragged our feet doing it. Why? I'm not defending the republican's choices here, I don't agree with what they're doing.
- belltaco 9y ago
  Many of those people have actually been led believe it has something to do with quashing conservative media. From the man himself: Donald J. Trump‏ Verified account @realDonaldTrump Obama’s attack on the internet is another top down power grab. Net neutrality is the Fairness Doctrine. Will target conservative media. https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/532608358508167168?lang=en https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/53260835850816716... Like those millions of people who believed the fake news fed to them, these people don't even know what it means, much less make an informed decision, so the Republicans aren't going to lose many votes over this compared to informed voters who are typically in the cities and vote D anyway.
TallGuyShort 9y ago
Yeah I miss Obama. Remember last year when the Internet wasn't run by private companies? And when the people who voted for Trump weren't Republicans yet? Suddenly on January 20th all these things that happened before were suddenly his fault.
- unityByFreedom 9y ago
  Uhhh Obama's FCC didn't push to remove net neutrality after pushback from the public. With a new administration, content providers are looking amp up lobbying and give it another go. We need to forget politics red vs. blue and consider that this may be a bad idea. If we make it an unpopular position for politicians to support, they won't pass it. Votes beat dollars because at the end of the day, without your vote, politicians supporting a given position don't have the job.
  - TallGuyShort 9y ago
    >> We need to forget politics red vs. blue and consider that this may be a bad idea. If we make it an unpopular position for politicians to support, they won't pass it. Then let's stop blaming the shouting man for stuff other than being the idiot he is. There's plenty of other folks to blame, and plenty of them were in power before now. There was plenty of scary and stupid Internet regulation discussed under Obama that he didn't react to the way I would have liked AT ALL. There's plenty of stuff Democrats suddenly decided they didn't like and Republicans suddenly decided they like when in reality it's hardly that different at all. There's a bunch of shitty people in Congress and in many other sectors of government, and let's not forget that they're not going to go away once anyone's President-of-choice wins the next election, or that they're not partly responsible for a whole bunch of conservatives feeling disenfranchised and going with a lunatic as an overreaction.
    - unityByFreedom 9y ago
      > Then let's stop blaming the shouting man for stuff other than being the idiot he is I can't control what other people say =) > There was plenty of scary and stupid Internet regulation discussed under Obama that he didn't react to the way I would have liked AT ALL I agree. For example, he was totally wrong about how to deal with everyone having access to E2E encryption in their pockets. All I can do is advocate for focusing on this one issue. I believe in net neutrality and I think if more people understand how it contributed to today's internet, then more would be on board. One thing to note is that net neutrality was always built into ISPs until content providers started focusing on subscriptions to data via the internet rather than TV. At that point, content companies started to see how they could corner markets by using dollars to persuade ISPs to give them better throughput than smaller competition. So, while the neutrality regulation only came into place in 2015, it was really standard practice up until then. > There's a bunch of shitty people in Congress and in many other sectors of government, and let's not forget that they're not going to go away once anyone's President-of-choice wins the next election, or that they're not partly responsible for a whole bunch of conservatives feeling disenfranchised and going with a lunatic as an overreaction. Yes, well, I think in this case we can set aside how inept many in government seem to be. On this issue, I think we can come together and agree that net neutrality is a good thing, and that Netflix or Comcast shouldn't be able to give you faster speeds to certain websites, because that means you'll be paying more to visit sites that they don't own, thus limiting your choices.
masondixon 9y ago
You think the internet would be just as efficiently run if the government controlled it without a profit incentive? I think the left are naive to how lazy people are without the right incentives, and how without a monetary incentive office politics can be ridiculously crippling. Maybe the HN perspective is driven by the fact that open-source in software engineering has flourished - leading many to think that great things can be built without monetary incentive. Or perhaps its because they are surrounded by very smart people and start believing that the rest of society operates at the same calibre. There is enough politics involved inside companies where huge monetary incentives are up for grabs, when you take away this monetary incentive, it becomes insanely political.
- therpe1 9y ago
  As usual, "the right" likes to speak of "incentives" like they are these magical fairies that overdetermine human behavior. Let's look at some actual facts in the real world. Compare the internet infrastructure of Britain, France and South Korea to the US. In all of these countries the internet backbone and especially the last mile of local networks is largely owned and maintained by the government. And in all of these countries the internet is generally faster, more widely available, and cheaper than what you see in the US. In fact when you compare broadband penetration in the OECD you find that (1) the US barely makes it into the top 20 and (2) every country ahead of the US employs the government lease model. It's gotten to the point that even a few conservatives who are honest enough will admit what is the very obvious reality [1]. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-02-20/americas-10-year-experiment-in-broadband-investment-has-failed https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-02-20/americas-...
- coldpie 9y ago
  Water and streets are doing relatively well. Any problems lately have occurred after Republicans cut infrastructure spending.
simonh 9y ago
Is the internet not for-profit right now? Comcast doesn't seem to be struggling. ISPs are highly profitable as it is.

simonh 9y ago

Should the only ISP covering a territory be allowed to only deliver Netflix? Should one of the ISPs that serves your area be allowed to buy all the others and then block Youtube and Netflix to your house and only allow Vimeo? In a perfect world competing infrastructure companies should spring up out of thin air due to infinite availability of capital and an endless supply of engineers to implement all of this. But real markets have to operate within the confines of a finite world and limited resources. Results and outcomes matter.

rlpb 9y ago
> In a perfect world competing infrastructure companies should spring up out of thin air due to infinite availability of capital... You wouldn't need an infrastructure company, nor would you need a big capital expenditure. The point is that the infrastructure would be state-owned and available on a non-discriminatory basis already. If demand exists, a competitor could bootstrap by buying fractional bandwidth from the last mile infrastructure, fractional bandwidth from a peering provider, and connecting the two. The problem at the moment is that huge capital expenditure is required because I need the majority of a street to be interested before digging it up becomes economically viable. This problem would go away.