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Comment by paol | Hacker News Reader

From the arguments I've read against this, I think not enough emphasis is being placed on the strongest one:

In the modern world online access is as necessary as water, power and phone service. No one would suggest forcing the power company to cut service to a customer over trivial civil law matters (which is what copyright is) that are completely unrelated to the company or the service it provides. No one should suggest cutting internet access either.

I guess ISPs in the US don't want to use that argument due to the regulatory implications (the common carrier classification thing)? But someone should be making that argument to the court.

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I do not think that is the strongest argument.

The strongest argument comes from Viacom v Youtube. If Viacom itself is unable to identify which videos are infringement or not how is a Youtube supposed to be able to?

Or to put into different terms. If a copyright holder historically has asked an ISP (Google eventually become one) to un-takedown content as it wasn't actually infringing; why should the ISP be liable for not-proven-in-court activity by customers?

Yep, internet is a utility, like a toll road (most highways in many countries).

If you shoplift, should you lose your highway sticker?

Somehow the intrnet is this 'magical place' where real world analogies don't work for many people,... surveillance related stuff being the worst offender.

Driving licence is a bad argument because there is public transportation service. If you're reckless or have other issues the licence is revoked.

Not driving licence, the toll-road sticker. Vignette in many countries. It's usually tied to the vehicle, and it indicates that the yearly highway toll has been paid, and you're allowed to use the paid-highways.

If you personally did something, then you personally are responsible for that something that you did. Not your families car.

The only thing similar I’ve heard of in the US is vehicle registration fees and stickers (that usually go on the license plate), but these vary state by state and are not tied to any toll road or the like.

Every toll road I’ve ever been on in the US you have to pay each time you use it. These days most states use the same transponder system where your vehicle is detected by that device when you enter the toll road or by license plate readers.

I’ve never heard of a general “yearly highway toll” anywhere in the US.

Over here (central europe), many countries have yearly (monthly, weekly) tolls. You used to get a sticker to put on the windshield (now it's mostly digital, tied to the licence plate), and you can drive on any highway within the country for a week/month/year. No slowing down or stopping to pay, on the other hand, you either have to buy it in advance or stop at the border or the first gas station in the country and buy it there.

We had a huge reducation in traffic deaths due to that (because people use the highway more than before, even for just "one exit", since you don't have to stop and wait in line to pay anymore).

Unfortunately this is largely not the case in North America, there is no reliable public transit outside of urban areas.

Of course public transportation in some parts of the US is so bad a car is almost necessary, despite being a privilege. I’m not saying it shouldn’t remain a privilege, but for many losing their license or not having a functional vehicle would mean almost certain financial ruin.

One, they didn’t say DL.

Two, DL is a bad example because in America driving is legally a privilege, not a right.

In your specific context, the following doesn't directly apply, but the statement that driving is a privilege is frequently made here, often as a whole truth and not merely legal truism. It is a prevarication at best, to argue this beyond a purely legal premise, however.

To think that the entire nation would immediately collapse irreparably if this trivial "privilege" were removed, kinda suggests a problem with this factoid as a general view.

I am aware that for some individuals driving is entirely unnecessary. Some individuals don't have homes. I hope that for however anti-automobile one might rightfully be, the reality of this is still clear.

Sure. But we do forfeit licenses. We don’t do that punitively for water or electricity.

Keep in mind that you can still drive with a revoked license.

Trivially, there's the you can just do it illegally. But also pretty much every state allows you to get a "Hardship" license [1] which basically means you're not responsible enough to drive but also you can't live without driving so we're letting you drive to work/store.

I do love how NH calls it a “Cinderella license”.

[1]: https://www.intoxalock.com/knowledge-center/difference-betwe...

There might be a First Amendment argument for internet access. Congress shouldn’t have the power to force or coerce an ISP to disconnect someone from the internet. (Doesn’t take too much imagination to come up with a partisan copyright troll.)

Yeah, was thinking that. Do we cut off power to a home if it’s repeatedly used for growing weed? If no, then we definitely shouldn’t cut off internet over something even more trivial.

Don't give them ideas!

> online access is as necessary as water We have paper money and also can work and buy stuff offline.

I would say online access is as necessary as a car. Possible without but less flexible.

It's becoming less and less possible to live without every year. More and more government services over here can only be accessed online. And the private industry has been happily gutting offline or in-person services for a long time. If you still want access to everything, you better be ready to pay huge premiums just to be able to do things the old-fashioned way of having humans perform tasks for you. So if you're poor, you basically have no choice but to be online.

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