4 ms·
Not a fan of net neutrality I take it? As much as I hate patent trolling, I'd hate politics and ridiculous laws to restrict the free flow of information more i
by schmichael 14y ago
Not a fan of net neutrality I take it?
As much as I hate patent trolling, I'd hate politics and ridiculous laws to restrict the free flow of information more instead of less.
- carbocation 14y agoNoonespecial is talking about private actors, not the state. This is essentially a call for a boycott, and I can't see this as a reflection on noonespecial's views on net neutrality one way or the other.
- Miky 14y agoThe whole point of net neutrality is preventing private actors from manipulating the flow of information.
- Flenser 14y agoFlow is not the same as supply. Noonespecial is talking about blocking things at source not by an intermediary.
- 001sky 14y agoFlow is not the same as supply Its like a synthetic variation, not a logically novel form of argument. The flow is cutoff when the supply is witheld. The supply is withheld when the flow is cutoff. Etc.
- Flenser 14y agoCutting off flow is not the same as withholding supply.
- 001sky 14y agoFunctional equivalents, and often the Law will see through such transparency. Are you going to withould supply from [an ethnic group, or a protected class] for example?
- Flenser 14y agoI'm not sure we're talking about the same thing. I was trying to say that noonespecial's suggestion for "technology companies everywhere to boycott a certain district in East Texas" isn't about net neutrality as schmichael objected because net neutrality is about intermediaries blocking or throttling access to services, whereas as the boycott noonespecial suggested would be by the providers of the service.
- 001sky 14y agoNo, i do understand; but you are missing the point of the comment that you replied too -- which is that the purpose (public policy) of net neutrality is to prevent the collusion of private actors from acting against the common good. This type of collusion has issues associated with it that are far broader than what you are thinking of. And there are other laws/policy ideas beyond net neutrality to consider. This consideration isn't optional or arbitrary. [And this isn't an adversarial or snarky comment its just how the world works.]
- Flenser 14y agoBut those private actors that the policy applies to must be middle men or acting on middle men in a network. Net neutrality as I understand it is about placing restrictions on network operators and regulators can do so that they cannot restrict access to content. So Wikipedia blocking access to it's own website would not be a network neutrality issue, but an ISP blocking access to it would. And there are other laws/policy ideas beyond net neutrality to consider. I was responding to a comment about network neutrality to say that it didn't apply. I wasn't discounting the possibility there could be other issues, although if Wikipedia decided to block access in Texas for a day (perhaps only allowing access to pages about patents, prior art etc.) I think that would be for the public good.
- AgentConundrum 14y agoThe suggestion was for companies to forego doing business with certain people as a risk management tactic. It's akin to Amazon pulling their affiliate program from California to avoid sales tax. I don't see how net neutrality factors in here.
- jlebar 14y agoThe OP's suggestion has nothing to do with net neutrality. Net neutrality is about the /network/ being neutral to what it carries. The network should deliver skype, or google, or HN, or whatever, and treat them all the same. The network operator shouldn't get to charge Google for the privilege of using its pipes, just because Google is a big company with lots of cash. The OP was suggesting something entirely different: That tech companies (and, yes, websites), should boycott this district of Texas. That's no different than AmazonFresh being available only in the Seattle area.