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Comment by ethanpil | Hacker News Reader

For all practical purposes it won't make a difference. When you sign up for ISP service there will be a new small paragraph buried deep in the long 10000+ word contract text that says you consent to them selling your browsing data, which you have to sign to start the service, which nobody reads anyway.

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The bill explicitly prevents that behavior.

  "The 'opt-in' nature...would set it apart from other
  state internet privacy laws...
  
  the proposed Maine law also would prohibit any [ISP] from
  making the sale of customer data part of its mandatory
  [TOS]. It also could not charge higher fees to customers
  who refuse to opt in"

https://www.pressherald.com/2019/05/29/maine-on-track-to-pas...

I wish that would make much of a difference, but likely there will just be a small paragraph under the main TOS with a big checkbox next to it, that almost no one will read and almost everyone will check.

They can't charge more for refusing to opt in, so nobody will opt in. The only alternative seems to be a hike in rates for everybody. Which isn't necessarily bad, it's arguably better that people actually know what cost they're paying. It's just naive to assume that this is ISPs getting some "extra money" on the side. This is factored into the revenue from the service. Now they'll have to adjust their models.

> Which isn't necessarily bad

One positive is that it changes the criteria of success in the market from "who can provide quality internet at a low price, and mine and sell the most data" to simply "who can provide quality internet at the lowest price".

When new companies enter the internet market (if such a thing still happens?) they will be asking "how can we provide good internet?" instead of "how can we mine more data from our users?"

> One positive is that it changes the criteria of success in the market from "who can provide quality internet at a low price,

Since only one ISP is available in my (and many other's) area, there is no pressure to provide quality internet at a low price at all.

> The only alternative seems to be a hike in rates for everybody.

My naive understanding of the market is that the market doesn't work this way -- you charge what the market will bear. How much a product costs to make has nothing to do with how much you should charge for it; you charge what people will pay you.

So if the market is already buying a product at a given price point, and you find a way to save some money or make some extra money on the side, you shouldn't lower your prices in response unless a competitor forces you to -- and the ISP market has notoriously low competition. You happily take the extra margin and move on with your life.

In the same way, if a margin on a product goes down, but the market still refuses to pay more for it, you shouldn't necessarily expect prices to rise. Sometimes products just have different percentage margins.

In other words, if a company like Apple has good data that people are perfectly willing to buy iPhones at $1200, and they figure out a manufacturing trick that allows them to save $100 on each iPhone they build, they're not just going to drop the price to $1100. Similarly, if Apple has good data that people are only willing to buy iPhones at $1200 (and presumably they do, or else they would charge more), then a buyback or warranty program that loses them $100 per iPhone isn't necessarily going to mean a price increase.

Of course, economic majors are welcome to correct me if I'm oversimplifying this.

For an ISP in the US, at least, normal market forces are largely irrelevant, as most areas do not have competition.

In my area, there is a lot of competition among ISPs, but I have to talk to sales people on the phone in order to get the best price. The prices advertised online are much higher than what individual sales people are authorized to offer. It often feels weird to haggle, but that's a natural effect of a free market.

I thought about this as well. I guess I'd say you're basically right if this ISP is really a monopoly, and everybody has an Internet connection. But I don't know if that's quite right. "The market will bear" whatever price they're selling at now because the consumer would opt to not buy it at a higher price. I imagine the ISP's optimal situation is a price that leads to fewer than 100% of people paying for the connection, even as a monopoly. "People are willing to buy at X price" isn't really meaningful. The question is always how many people.

I certainly don't think they will pass all of the cost onto the customers; that's never how it works. But, since the costs per connection are still the same, and the revenue per connection is now lower, they probably won't be at their optimum anymore. They'll probably find a new optimum by raising their prices, making a bit more revenue per customer and losing some customers. Basic supply/demand curve stuff. Again, those curves are not quite the same in a monopoly market, but iirc it still applies to an extent. If the monopoly really had total control, they would take the customers for everything they have, and it's not quite that bad.

:shrug: maybe the actual effect will be marginal. I'm not an economist either.

This is not a competitive business. It’s just monopoly companies grabbing what they can. They don’t need to sell data, they just do because they can. Nobody weeps for the poor ISPs, ultimately perhaps the owner will get a slightly less tall stack of money each year.

The bill prevents the company from denying or penalizing you for opting out of the data selling, and gives consumers the right to opt out at any time.

It should be opt-in but ... hey. It's something.

May as well forbid it outright at that point.

(They should. Everybody deserves protection from this, even the people who don't understand the threat it poses. The uninformed, ignorant or naive all deserve protection, since preying on ignorance or naivety is generally considered abhorrent by anybody who's not totally morally defective.)

> May as well forbid it outright at that point.

I was wondering about that point myself. I am thinking that they may not have the authority to create such law, so they still allow ISPs the ability to track but make it as restrictive as possible.

Could be. Where might such a restriction be coming from though? I don't think it would run afoul of interstate commerce stuff. Is there something in their state constitution that interferes with it?

Alternatively maybe they didn't have the votes necessary for a more potent law. Maybe some of the politicians were scared of doing anything too dramatic maybe?

I think it's just the equivalent of "you can't stab someone unless they give you express prior permission to do so". It may technically be less restrictive, but in practice noone is ever going to opt-in to that without coersion. Of course, in actual practice, we'll probably see a dozen different loopholes inside a year, but I'm willing to give them credit for at least pretending to fix this particular part of the problem; it's just matter of keeping up the pressure and momentum.

You are opted-out of them sharing by default. It allows you to opt-in to share

According to the bill text someone else linked (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20062182) it’s out-in, requiring “express, affirmative consent” which should also rule out burying it in a footnote of the fine print.

From the article:

The bill prohibits a provider from refusing to serve a customer, ... if the customer does or does not consent to the use, disclosure, sale or access.

So if they do as you say, they will be in violation of the law.

I agree. I also see this as protecting the ISPs from any future litigation from consumers since now the consumer has no choice but to give consent.

> the consumer has no choice but to give consent.

The law makes that illegal as well

> the proposed Maine law also would prohibit any internet service provider from making the sale of customer data part of its mandatory terms of service. It also could not charge higher fees to customers who refuse to opt in, or penalize them in any way.

https://www.pressherald.com/2019/05/29/maine-on-track-to-pas...

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