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Comment by jrs235 | Hacker News Reader

>How can so many of those who are usually anti-regulatory "free market" extremists also be so strongly in favor of this regulation?

Because in the US, network providers (at least the last mile providers; those charging end consumers) are local monopolies. Most people in the US have one legit high speed internet option, a few have two. There is little competition and the barriers to entry for new comers is very high (cost of obtaining easements and running cable to every house). In situations like this, monopolies are to be regulated.

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It would be wasteful to duplicate the last mile fifteen times. Are there any municipalities that create/manage this infrastructure themselves? Having local, public ownership of the lines and contracting out the maintenance seems like the most efficient option. It seems that most IT monopolies lobby hard against this.

Chattanooga's super-fast publicly owned internet

http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/20/technology/innovation/chatta...

Every time a monopoly arises, that is the market telling you the most efficient way to produce the good is with a single centrally planned organization, and that competition is not possible or effective.

A monopoly is the market's way of saying an industry/service should be nationalized.

> A monopoly is the market's way of saying an industry/service should be nationalized.

The U.S. doesn't have a nationally run garbage service. Police departments aren't national. There is no national toll authority.

So yeah, publify not nationalize. But the argument is clear. Not going to resist the rationality of the market, after all.

Wonder why there’s no standard term for “publify”? Let’s change that!

But there still is a market. Cities compete against each other and that keeps them honest. If a city neglects it's police force, it faces demographic consequences. And if citizens are hurt by poor policing, they have other cities to choose. These properties are not true to the same degree in national issues.

I'm not sure I agree, but an interesting thought. Thanks.

I'm not convinced that such local monopolies change the equation here. Access to the internet might be a right, but is unlimited access to Netflix a right? A monopoly on essentials must be regulated, because there's no market elasticity (and the extremists often deny even that). A monopoly on entertainment, though? Even a monopoly is constrained in how much in can charge for such a thing before customers just walk away.

Network Neutrality(tm) isn't about constraining these monopolies. It doesn't even address the issues of price gouging or discrimination against consumers. If that's what we want, there are whole different sets of laws to talk about. The regulations currently at issue only seem to address concerns orthogonal to those related to monopolies.

The ISPs (with their local market monopolies) are also content providers. How is them using their network/distribution monopoly to gain an unfair advantage for their content distribution different from Microsoft using their OS to gain an unfair advantage for their browser in the 90's? Isn't NN about constraining unfair competition practices?

That is FTC not FCC.

Fair enough. If the ISPs don't what to be liable for the content that traverses their network then they ought to be neutral to content and not prioritize traffic based on it's content (or source, destination, protocol, etc). But if they are inspecting the packets then they should have some liability for what they are delivering and the content on their network. The ISPs want it both ways like someone else mentioned, the want to control what people see but not be liable (responsible).

How about they don't inspect any content, but I download the media player provided by my ISP and it doesn't contribute to my data cap, but netflix does?

I would think if they have data caps then they will have to determine how much data their own content consumes and count it against the data cap. Otherwise this is abusing their network monopoly to support and provide an unfair advantage to their content business.

In the United States there are often deals where certain services used on certain networks do not count against mobile data caps. For example, DirectTV Now app does not count against an AT&T datacap.

> That is FTC not FCC.

It's the FTC in the case of Microsoft because Microsoft isn't a carrier. Regulating communications carriers is the FCC's entire purpose.

That is correct and I should not have conflated the two. Personal opinion, media should be moved to FTC in the context of internet.

I don't know if internet access is a "right", but it is pretty important in a modern society because internet access equals information access. It is hard to be an informed, productive participant in a modern society without information. Therefore unlimited access to Google search is a better example than Netflix.

And I would argue it isn't unlimited. It's limited to the rate the ISP offers. If I'm sold a line that offers up to 100mbps/sec then it shouldn't matter from what source I'm requesting to receive those 100mbps/sec from. Now if the source can't provide them at that rate that's on the source, but the ISP ought not be throttling them.

Unlimited access meaning I can access the website as often as I want without having to pay more money.

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