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I find it amusing that those in favor of net neutrality consider themselves on the side of freedom.
by alexeisadeski3 13y ago
I find it amusing that those in favor of net neutrality consider themselves on the side of freedom.
- maaku 13y agoWhat makes that amusing?
- alexeisadeski3 13y agoSeriously? Because they're demanding the freedom of the telcos be overridden in favor of our own personal interests.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- dkuntz2 13y agoSeriously? Because we don't call them inalienable corporate rights, we call them inalienable human rights. Equating a corporation to a human is part of what got us in a whole host of messes.
- CamperBob2 13y agoWould these be the same telcos that operate as regional public utility monopolies, subsidized by your taxes and mine?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- djur 13y agoThe telcos make extensive use of common property like licensed portions of the RF spectrum and a great deal of land in order to do their business. The people have every right to enforce regulations on the use of their property.
- blhack 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly Read about natural monopolies.
- nightcracker 13y agoI strongly am in favor of freedom, but not a fully free market. And exactly for reasons like this: a fully free market destroys freedom.
- vacri 13y agoThe Free Market of libertarianism reknown doesn't exist and can't exist. For such a market to work, each participant needs perfect information and capacity. If you've had any involvement with business should be enough experience to understand that there's no such thing as perfect information once the product is more complex than say, an orange, and even then it'd be a stretch (grown where? what pesticides? which labour? which transport company? where are all the other places I can purchase this orange? ...)
- maaku 13y ago> Because they're demanding the freedom of the telcos be overridden in favor of our own personal interests. Imagine that someone was allowed to own the air, and then control / privileged what you are allowed to say (sound waves). Would your opinion be different?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- cheald 13y agoThe sticking point for me is that the market is already regulated such that it makes it very difficult for a competitor to challenge companies who engage in exploitative practices (and for similar reasons, the incentive to collude is extremely high). In a free market, net neutrality wouldn't need to be regulated because companies who attempted to enact business plans like the AT&T plan described in the article would rapidly find themselves losing marketshare to competitors. I'm not really okay with the idea of regulating net neutrality from an ideological perspective, but from a practical one, we're kind of stuck with the market we have - effective regional monopolies are granted to a very small number of companies, and there is very little space for counterbalance from competition (which is why Google Fiber is such a Huge Frickin' Deal!). Left unfettered, the end result would likely be that the AT&Ts and Comcasts end up leeching their customers dry on both ends of the pipe, because those customers don't have any alternative. In my ideal world, there would be no need to regulate net neutrality because I could penalize bad companies by refusing to do business with them, and getting my friends and family to do the same, but we don't have those options - choosing an ISP is a lot like choosing which knee you want to be hit in. In a market where companies have been granted regulatory monopolies, the invisible hand is rather ineffective.
- alexeisadeski3 13y agoThey may have been monopolies once, but they're not anymore. At least in the US. Most people already have two broadband subscriptions: home cable broadband and HSPA+ or LTE. The home cable broadband is in competition with ADSL throughout much of the nation, and the HSPA+/LTE providers are in fierce competition everywhere. Furthermore, what makes you say this: >In a free market, net neutrality wouldn't need to be regulated because companies who attempted to enact business plans like the AT&T plan described in the article would rapidly find themselves losing marketshare to competitors. I certainly would not expect them to lose market share.
- dkuntz2 13y agoWhy wouldn't you expect them to lose market share? They're actively hindering customers from their desired actions. Doesn't that typically mean customers will look for alternatives?
- dkasper 13y agoFreedom of telcos to do as they wish with their pipes vs freedom of users to use the pipes that they pay for access to as they see fit.
- wyager 13y agoThe telcos don't owe users anything more than is specified in the contract. The telcos are a company; there is no moral reason to force the ISPs to do anything more than they contracted to do. Instead of having everyone continue to be pissed off at the shitty monopolistic telcos, and having the telcos continue to be pissed off because we keep demanding that the government squash the telcos' rights to provide a shitty service, let's work to change the situation so that telcos don't get exclusive rights to public resources like land and spectrum.
- nitrogen 13y agoTelcos and cablecos that own the lines in the ground are not an ordinary company; they often have a monopoly granted by the city that prevents others from running a parallel physical deployment, which would be wasteful anyway. Further, the last mile physical deployments are often subsidized by taxes. As you say in your second paragraph, removing the exclusive rights held by telcos and cablecos would be one option, but since running parallel cables is physically wasteful, I'd prefer common ownership or regulation of the last mile to save companies and customers the expense of running a parallel cable, while ensuring competition beyond the last mile.
- nostromo 13y agoMost rights are a balancing act. In this case, the freedom of the ISP is contrary to the freedom of the subscriber, so whose freedom is supreme? I could understand opposition to net neutrality if there were competition in the ISP market. However, I have no choice but to use Comcast, so the idea that they can decide what sites I visit and how fast they are is very scary.
- alexeisadeski3 13y ago>In this case, the freedom of the ISP is contrary to the freedom of the subscriber, so whose freedom is supreme? No, there is no conflict. This is black and white. I know that HN doesn't want to hear it. The subscribers freedom is to leave for another provider. The provider's freedom is to charge what it wants for whatever service it wants to provide. Only one's freedom is being infringed upon here.
- wmf 13y agoSure, if you don't admit or haven't heard of the concept of positive freedom.
- dkuntz2 13y agoBut what if there isn't another provider in your area?
- djur 13y agoThe government of the United States has the authority and the responsibility to regulate the commercial use of limited resources held in common. The freedom at stake here is the right of the people to regulate the use of public property.
- argumentum 13y agoI agree with you on principle, if there was a free market for providing internet services. However, this is totally not the case .. ISPs gain local monopolies by virtue of agreements with local governments. For example, Verizon struck a deal to provide fiber access a few years ago with my parents' hometown. Part of this deal was that no other provider could do the same. This impinges on the subscriber's freedom to leave for another provider, so your argument falls flat, unless you are ready to invalidate all such agreements with local governments.
- altcognito 13y agoI find it amusing that those think freedom is only about their ability to pay for things, not to be FREE from paying additional money for things they have already bought.
- FrankenPC 13y agoWhere I live, I only have one choice for internet provider (Comcast). One choice. And I should trust them with content censorship? I would be in idiot to believe this is anything but a terrible idea.
- super_mario 13y agoThe principle of net neutrality is directly related to freedom (or ability of a corporation to curb it, kill competition they don't like by throttling access to them etc). How net neutrality is put in practice is entirely a different matter. And for some reason you think if it is the government doing the enforcement, that it is somehow against freedom? I completely disagree. Government not allowing another private entity to abuse me is fine with me. In some countries net neutrality is the law already by the way.
- shmerl 13y agoDo you consider those who support antitrust regulations to be on the side of freedom? Monopoly is the opposite of freedom and is much closer to dictatorship.