Democrats revive the fight for net neutrality | Hacker News Reader

Democrats revive the fight for net neutrality

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49 pointsawoodbeck21 comments

Not to sound like a pessimist, but I don't take anything like this seriously. "Political Party resumes fight for popular thing" really means "political party knows how to quickly get some good PR"

You can't take what politicians publicly support at face value unless they are proposing a law that will be passed because they hold the numbers to pass it.

Its easy to pick up some popular thing and parade it around when you will never have to put your money where your mouth is.

The actual bill: https://www.markey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/net_neutrality_a...

Is essential service the same as a utility? With only having one or two provides in many areas, what happens if you end up taking the provider to court for service issues and they kick you off your platform and you have no other options, or the other option is a small fraction of the speed?

I think one of the best things Democrats could do would be to eliminate the enforcement of arbitration clauses and jury waivers from ISPs. If it is an essential service, there is no reason you should be forced to sign an arbitration agreement in order to get service.

What's wrong with arbitration?

Private arbitration almost always finds in favor of whomever is footing the bill -- the large companies.

You typically split the bill in arbitration.

The only reason arbitration clauses exist is because corporations know they can get a more favorable outcome from a private arbiter of their choosing than they will from the public court system.

Arbitration exists because it is a much faster and cheaper process. Corporations don't get to pick the arbitrator - they mutually chosen.

False.

This is false. The pro se legal system exists and even filing a federal claim for approx $400 is cheaper than most arbitration agreements. When I explored arbitration, the costs alone to file were around $2500. Companies have a lot of control of arbitration providers as well.

Were you seeking arbitration as a consumer? It should have only been like a couple hundred dollars.

Yes I was. They set the arbitration provider and those were the costs. Lest not forget that district and superior court cases are usually around $100, and small claims in the range of $30 to $60.

If arbitration wasn't so lopsided then corporations wouldn't have to contractually force it on people.

There is no good reason we should let companies take choice and power away from consumers like this. They only do it because it benefits them.

ISPs should straight up be declared common carrier utilities, just like telephone companies.

What I really don't understand are the politicians who insist that websites should be declared common carriers but not ISPs.

I've learned to tune out any headline that includes "Democrat" or "Republican" as it's typically useless PR or an otherwise biased piece.

Bias in the current political paradigm holds a very different meaning. It’s akin to calling a news article about victims of murder biased in favor of the victims.

One aspect of net neutrality that doesn't make sense to me is the ban to throttle traffic. It's bandwidth over some time period and higher peak loads does cost more.

A simple example is how on airplanes, WiFi doesn't support streaming video, etc. but allows text messaging. So would this bill make that illegal? If so, that wouldn't make video streaming on planes come sooner, just make plane WiFi more expensive.

Isn't the speed just capped low for everyone, so that video streaming is unpleasant?

NN has never aimed to ban throttling traffic. I see this repeated often enough I assume it can from some opposition talking point.

NN aims to ban paid prioritization, and specifically allows for throttling for network management purposes. That means providers can throttle when links are busy, but not give certain services a priory lane.

net neutrality was repealed a while ago. what effects do we see today? because all of the predictions of internet plans that only included google and Facebook, with access to more sites for more money, seems to have not happened.

Translation: "Democrats are seeking attention ahead of the midterms, this time using the fig leaf of net neutrality."

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