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Comment by eurleif | Hacker News Reader

My ISP is capable of determining the services it offers to me, its customer. Your ISP is capable of determining the services it offers to you, its customer. No ISP is capable of mandating behavior from third parties who haven't chosen to engage in an economic exchange with it, meaning that no ISP is capable of regulation.

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My ISP is capable of denying services to me, its customer, based on principle (e.g. it conflicts with their business model). Ergo, they regulate what I can/cannot do. Without government regulation to say "bad ISP, bad", they can regulate my ability to access services and charge me more to slowly peel back that regulation.

In case you are still confused, here's the definition of 'regulation':

> to control or direct by a rule, principle, method

Ok, and right now I'm "regulating" my fingers into typing a comment.

Or maybe there's more to the word, particularly in context, than the shortest dictionary definition you were able to find.

Well it's a widely accepted definition[1], so it's a bit ironic that you fail to understand there's more to the word, particularly in context. Popular synonyms include things like "restrict", "restrain", "control".

1) https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/regulate

> My ISP

It was said a few gajillion times, but let me repeat it once again. Here is the real problem: it's singular.

My ISP works reasonably well for me, because I have at least 5 other non-wireless options whom I can pay if I'm not satisfied.

It is this simple, and I've heard that it works not only where I've lived but in other cities and countries as well.

And if all my options collude, then there is government to call.

Absolutely this. Competition is the best regulation there is because it responds directly to the customer.

Competition is only the best regulation if the majority of the customers both know and care about correcting for the issues that regulation would usually cover, which is not true here (a maximum of 16 million legitimate comments were filed by the public on the FCC's decision, less than 10% of the 280 million or so internet users in the US), and so your comment is irrelevant, even ignoring the government-enforced regional monopolies that many ISPs have as a result of buying off local politicians.

Yeah, true. The best way towards safe food and drugs certainly is by relying on the expertise of the average customer to figure out what's dnagerous and what is not. Who is better equipped to judge the biological long-term effects of some mislabeled, contaminated food than your average customer?

Counterpoints: Tobacco. Cocaine. Morphine. Heroin. Laudanum. Alcohol. Car seatbelts. Leaded gasoline, paint, and glassware. Mercury (in hats, as a toy). Radon (in water), X-rays (for shoe fitting!), and Uranium (dentures).

My country is capable of determining the services it offers me, its citizen. Your country is capable of determining the services it offers to you, its citizen. No country is capable of mandating behavior from third parties who haven't chosen to engage in a citizenship relationship with it, meaning that no country is capable of regulation.

If you are an US-american I would like to point out your president just regulated how other companies, citizens and countries have to interact with Iran.

When there are basically two ISPs in most municipalities, there is no independent third party. And this is before we get to what happens when people start inserting these ideas into peering a la the money grab on Netflix.

The ISPs can filter what you request and host, simple as that. And if you want to start a business, better hope it doesn't compete with any of the ISP parent company's holdings, because they have every right to scuttle access to it. Want to make the best new Netflix? Stay away from any ISP even tangentially associated with Hulu - which might be every ISP in your area. Even if you pick a small, independent ISP, the peering issue remains.

> The ISPs can filter what you request and host, simple as that.

Within the SLA.

It all depends on whenever you can be rejected as a customer or not, and whenever the offering must be public or each peer negotiates for their own terms, though.

Any proof this is happening now? Is there any proof that services aren’t actually getting better now? Or does the NN crowd feel like FUD is warranted?

I’m just waiting for all of the dystopian horror we’ve been promised, but still not seeing it. When are the ISPs going to start charging small websites to allow their traffic? When has legitimate traffic been throttled because of the content? Citations and examples needed — and post-NN examples are all that count.

Any proof at all that someone making the next Netflix is getting harmed? Because NN is already gone. So where is all of this horrible stuff happening. We were promised an internet catastrophe and it hasn’t happened yet. And before NN— what happened then? That was when the actual Netflix was getting started and somehow Netflix was able to be born without NN.

But prices seem to be going down.

Stop spreading FUD. It isn’t happening. Things are getting better in fact. Markets are more powerful than governments.

Proof: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/05/level...

I was paying for 100 Mbps from my ISP back when this was going on, but YouTube and Netflix were unusable in prime time. Those were the two high bandwidth services I was paying my ISP for, but my ISP held my video streaming for ransom and got away with it because I had no other choice for high speed Internet.

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