4 ms·

I'm a consumer and I think this is a good thing. Can't make all the people happy all the time. Edit: Besides, government policies reflexively guided by consume

by pvnick 9y ago

I'm a consumer and I think this is a good thing. Can't make all the people happy all the time. Edit: Besides, government policies reflexively guided by consumer sentiment is called populism, which is dangerous.

aaomidi 9y ago
Please explain.
- pvnick 9y ago
  Read this article by the brilliant Ben Shapiro: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2014/11/10/7-reasons-net-neutrality/ http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2014/11/10/7-reasons... Edit: To those knee-jerk rejecting the argument based on the Breitbart domain, besides being intellectually lazy, you should know that Ben Shapiro is a very well-respected author on matters of economics and politics (and indeed that Breitbart used to be a very respectable media outlet before the founder, Andrew Breitbart, passed away and the company was taken over by Steve Bannon)
  - digitalneal 9y ago
    Had to stop reading after this quote "ISPs generally do not discriminate against highly-trafficked websites. If they did – holding a figurative gun to the head of those websites by throttling back speed to those websites – consumers would dump those ISPs in favor of others." I'd believe this true if any of the large cities I have lived in actually had competition between ISPs.
    - pvnick 9y ago
      Ok well you made it about 10% through the article - at least you made a modest attempt at understanding the other side of the debate.
      - digitalneal 9y ago
        Oh I get both sides of the debate. I also understand why we put regulations in place. Don't get me wrong, our government has fumbled the ball on a few occasions but generally regulations are only put in place once an industry habitually breaks the trust of our citizens.
    - maxxxxx 9y ago
      That's the same phantasy they have in health care. They think there is a functioning market with choices where there simply isn't for most of us.
    - problems 9y ago
      Interesting, I think an alternative to the net neutrality ruling might be to go the way that Canada and the UK did which largely prevented this from becoming a significant issue: force the major ISPs to lease last mile lines to the upstarts. Make a market that works. It also did great good for competition on speed grounds.
  - r34yll2k 9y ago
    Breitbart. I bet this link is credible.
  - metalliqaz 9y ago
    Well, there's a great way to ruin your credibility on Hacker News.
  - falcolas 9y ago
    Already have net neutrality? Except we don't. ISPs are already prioritizing their own content over 3rd party content. Sometimes via bandwidth limitations, sometimes via throttling. Companies putting a lot of bits on the net? Yeah, and they're paying for it! And the customers are paying to pull those bits down. Why, again, do those companies have to pay a third time on those bytes? The Government Still Allows Discrimination In Traffic? Sure, they allow prioritization of (for example) real time traffic over web traffic. The key is that this is done equally across all real time traffic, not just the ISP's VOIP offering. That article is shoveling BS pretty hardcore.
  - lostcolony 9y ago
    Citing Breitbart? Really? Okay, fine. Let's pretend this is a credible argument. "Companies won't prioritize traffic" - they do, and they have. Cell carriers routinely do, counting traffic to ~their~ paid services as not counting against their data cap. "Or else consumers will just change providers" - there is very little choice in ISP in most of the country, and almost entirely owned by large, established players. 'Duopoly' it's called. And due to the costs, it makes it hard for a scrappy third party to come in. Also, Pai is pushing for "competitive" to literally mean "at least one other high speed provider providers service within half a mile of a residence". Meaning he'd say there was no monopoly even if you literally had choice of only one ISP. So trying to act like competition will save people, when he's actively trying to fight against competition being required, and the market is too expensive for a non-incumbent to enter, is really disingenous. "Some companies take up more bandwidth". Actually, no. The -consumers- do. Netflix isn't using that bandwidth; consumers are. They're demanding to use the connection and bandwidth -that they paid for-, on whatever service they want to use it on. To correct Shapiro's analogy, this is like charging the person taking delivery of a truck a fee for a certain number of trucks, then turning around and charging the companies operating those trucks differing amounts -because you feel like it-. Yes, the network can be 'reasonably managed'. If you want to clarify that, that's fine, and an -entirely different argument-. "Create barriers to entry" - actually, the reverse is true. Again, see what has already happened with mobile carriers, and their prioritizing their own services (or services willing to pay them money) over others. This is obvious. Heck, the article even negates their own example (which is just...-one- example) by showing that Google has taken both sides of the issue. "Technological stagnation" - whoa whoa whoa. This says the landscape isn't competitive; didn't this guy just say back in the first paragraph that consumers will just change ISPs, implying the landscape -is- competitive?! Otherwise this is a completely different issue; stagnation was there even before net neutrality. 2015, we were way behind everyone. You can't claim net neutrality is even related. "Internet taxes could happen" - "could". Or Pai could just say "Hey, we totally support net neutrality, and we're not collecting fees". He's totally able to do that. Same as Wheeler was doing. We're done here. "Content restrictions from the government" - I believe there's a couple of amendments here, that would lead to a legal showdown. And regardless there's nothing preventing, say, Congress, from passing legislation to mandate this anyway. Again, red herring.
  - sqeaky 9y ago
    > To those knee-jerk rejecting the argument based on the Breitbart domain Breitbart has destroyed their credibility, or more accurately never gained any, through constant lying and intellectual dishonesty (this is when the letter of something is true, but the spirit of it is false). I can cite any number of disreputable sources saying anything and then demand you parse through them and disagree piecemeal, but that would be a waste of your time. Or we could be reasonable people and cite reputable sources to back our coherent arguments. I am unaware of any fact-based coherent arguments against Net Neutrality.
  - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
    >you should know that Ben Shapiro is a very well-respected author on matters of economics Actually he's not.
  - jordan801 9y ago
    "you should know that Ben Shapiro is a very well-respected author..." Honestly Breitbart has destroyed their name to the point that I wouldn't be surprised if they took a well-respected author's article, rewrote the whole thing, and then published it under false pretense.
  - aaomidi 9y ago
    > consumers would dump those ISPs in favor of others. Competition does not exist in the US for ISPs. > Some Companies Take Up More Bandwidth Than Others. They pay for that bandwidth and we pay for the connection. Asking companies to pay more so they're not artificially throttled does not make sense in the actual world of the internet. > The Government Still Allows Discrimination In Traffic. Saying because there is vague language in NN we need to get rid of it entirely does not make any sense what so ever. You don't demolish a building because the window is broken. > Barriers to Entry Are Created NN removes barriers to entry for many startups that simply can't pay the "troll bridge" of the ISPs. > Technological Stagnation These ISPs that are for the removal of NN were given billions of dollars in tax breaks to make the internet better in the US. NN has nothing to do with development of the internet, and using Europe as an example is pretty stupid. Europe has NN, they also have heavy governmental regulation in terms of the last mile. Saying NN is bad because it doesn't solve that problem is like saying oranges are bad because they can't power your car. It's a totally different matter. > Internet Taxes Could Happen If these taxes are used to deploy more public owned fiber lines, I'm all for it. > Content Restrictions From The Government NN has nothing to do with this.

by pvnick 9y ago

aaomidi 9y ago

Please explain.

pvnick 9y ago
Read this article by the brilliant Ben Shapiro: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2014/11/10/7-reasons-net-neutrality/ http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2014/11/10/7-reasons... Edit: To those knee-jerk rejecting the argument based on the Breitbart domain, besides being intellectually lazy, you should know that Ben Shapiro is a very well-respected author on matters of economics and politics (and indeed that Breitbart used to be a very respectable media outlet before the founder, Andrew Breitbart, passed away and the company was taken over by Steve Bannon)
- digitalneal 9y ago
  Had to stop reading after this quote "ISPs generally do not discriminate against highly-trafficked websites. If they did – holding a figurative gun to the head of those websites by throttling back speed to those websites – consumers would dump those ISPs in favor of others." I'd believe this true if any of the large cities I have lived in actually had competition between ISPs.
  - pvnick 9y ago
    Ok well you made it about 10% through the article - at least you made a modest attempt at understanding the other side of the debate.
    - digitalneal 9y ago
      Oh I get both sides of the debate. I also understand why we put regulations in place. Don't get me wrong, our government has fumbled the ball on a few occasions but generally regulations are only put in place once an industry habitually breaks the trust of our citizens.
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    That's the same phantasy they have in health care. They think there is a functioning market with choices where there simply isn't for most of us.
  - problems 9y ago
    Interesting, I think an alternative to the net neutrality ruling might be to go the way that Canada and the UK did which largely prevented this from becoming a significant issue: force the major ISPs to lease last mile lines to the upstarts. Make a market that works. It also did great good for competition on speed grounds.
- r34yll2k 9y ago
  Breitbart. I bet this link is credible.
- metalliqaz 9y ago
  Well, there's a great way to ruin your credibility on Hacker News.
- falcolas 9y ago
  Already have net neutrality? Except we don't. ISPs are already prioritizing their own content over 3rd party content. Sometimes via bandwidth limitations, sometimes via throttling. Companies putting a lot of bits on the net? Yeah, and they're paying for it! And the customers are paying to pull those bits down. Why, again, do those companies have to pay a third time on those bytes? The Government Still Allows Discrimination In Traffic? Sure, they allow prioritization of (for example) real time traffic over web traffic. The key is that this is done equally across all real time traffic, not just the ISP's VOIP offering. That article is shoveling BS pretty hardcore.
- lostcolony 9y ago
  Citing Breitbart? Really? Okay, fine. Let's pretend this is a credible argument. "Companies won't prioritize traffic" - they do, and they have. Cell carriers routinely do, counting traffic to ~their~ paid services as not counting against their data cap. "Or else consumers will just change providers" - there is very little choice in ISP in most of the country, and almost entirely owned by large, established players. 'Duopoly' it's called. And due to the costs, it makes it hard for a scrappy third party to come in. Also, Pai is pushing for "competitive" to literally mean "at least one other high speed provider providers service within half a mile of a residence". Meaning he'd say there was no monopoly even if you literally had choice of only one ISP. So trying to act like competition will save people, when he's actively trying to fight against competition being required, and the market is too expensive for a non-incumbent to enter, is really disingenous. "Some companies take up more bandwidth". Actually, no. The -consumers- do. Netflix isn't using that bandwidth; consumers are. They're demanding to use the connection and bandwidth -that they paid for-, on whatever service they want to use it on. To correct Shapiro's analogy, this is like charging the person taking delivery of a truck a fee for a certain number of trucks, then turning around and charging the companies operating those trucks differing amounts -because you feel like it-. Yes, the network can be 'reasonably managed'. If you want to clarify that, that's fine, and an -entirely different argument-. "Create barriers to entry" - actually, the reverse is true. Again, see what has already happened with mobile carriers, and their prioritizing their own services (or services willing to pay them money) over others. This is obvious. Heck, the article even negates their own example (which is just...-one- example) by showing that Google has taken both sides of the issue. "Technological stagnation" - whoa whoa whoa. This says the landscape isn't competitive; didn't this guy just say back in the first paragraph that consumers will just change ISPs, implying the landscape -is- competitive?! Otherwise this is a completely different issue; stagnation was there even before net neutrality. 2015, we were way behind everyone. You can't claim net neutrality is even related. "Internet taxes could happen" - "could". Or Pai could just say "Hey, we totally support net neutrality, and we're not collecting fees". He's totally able to do that. Same as Wheeler was doing. We're done here. "Content restrictions from the government" - I believe there's a couple of amendments here, that would lead to a legal showdown. And regardless there's nothing preventing, say, Congress, from passing legislation to mandate this anyway. Again, red herring.
- sqeaky 9y ago
  > To those knee-jerk rejecting the argument based on the Breitbart domain Breitbart has destroyed their credibility, or more accurately never gained any, through constant lying and intellectual dishonesty (this is when the letter of something is true, but the spirit of it is false). I can cite any number of disreputable sources saying anything and then demand you parse through them and disagree piecemeal, but that would be a waste of your time. Or we could be reasonable people and cite reputable sources to back our coherent arguments. I am unaware of any fact-based coherent arguments against Net Neutrality.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  >you should know that Ben Shapiro is a very well-respected author on matters of economics Actually he's not.
- jordan801 9y ago
  "you should know that Ben Shapiro is a very well-respected author..." Honestly Breitbart has destroyed their name to the point that I wouldn't be surprised if they took a well-respected author's article, rewrote the whole thing, and then published it under false pretense.
- aaomidi 9y ago
  > consumers would dump those ISPs in favor of others. Competition does not exist in the US for ISPs. > Some Companies Take Up More Bandwidth Than Others. They pay for that bandwidth and we pay for the connection. Asking companies to pay more so they're not artificially throttled does not make sense in the actual world of the internet. > The Government Still Allows Discrimination In Traffic. Saying because there is vague language in NN we need to get rid of it entirely does not make any sense what so ever. You don't demolish a building because the window is broken. > Barriers to Entry Are Created NN removes barriers to entry for many startups that simply can't pay the "troll bridge" of the ISPs. > Technological Stagnation These ISPs that are for the removal of NN were given billions of dollars in tax breaks to make the internet better in the US. NN has nothing to do with development of the internet, and using Europe as an example is pretty stupid. Europe has NN, they also have heavy governmental regulation in terms of the last mile. Saying NN is bad because it doesn't solve that problem is like saying oranges are bad because they can't power your car. It's a totally different matter. > Internet Taxes Could Happen If these taxes are used to deploy more public owned fiber lines, I'm all for it. > Content Restrictions From The Government NN has nothing to do with this.