Comment by unclebucknasty | Hacker News Reader

Comment by unclebucknasty | Hacker News Reader

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That's a fairly narrow and presumptious definition of the possible consequences resulting from a lack of Net Neutrality. There is no real limitation on how the ISPs can wield their power AFAIK. For instance, why wouldn't they offer HuffingtonPost (essentially a blog) the opportunity to buy faster access for their readers?

But, even if we were to take your assumptions at face value, I'm not sure how you gloss over other details (such as their ability to price competitors like Netflix out of the market or essentially hold their users for ransom to the highest bidder).

Given that they are quasi-monopolies in most cases, these are certainly issues that deal with consumer choice on one end and access to opportunity on the other (i.e. for content providers, startups, etc.). In other words, these are issues of fairness. How can something be both made willfully unfair, yet be ethical? Would you not agree that fairness as a principle is morally right? That is the definition of ethical.

You made the argument in another comment that it's no more a matter of ethics than is raising taxes. But, certainly you can envision a scenario under which taxes can be raised in a manner and/or at the behest of certain groups which would make it unethical?

If none of this makes sense to you, then therein lies the divergence. It's one regarding the basic definition of ethical.

All I argued that it isn't an ethical issue. Because it isn't.

>How can something be both made willfully unfair, yet be ethical?

Is it unethical that Yankees spend twice the league average on their ball-club because it is most certainly unfair. After all, not every team gets to be based in New York.

And I'd be careful with words like 'fairness'. A socialist and a libertarian will have vastly different definitions of what is 'fair' and what is 'unfair'. To you it's unfair that Netflix may get priced out by a Telecom, but then again, Netflix didn't spend billions building and maintaining the infrastructure, as well as acquiring all those customers. Telecoms got subsidies to build their infrastructure, but they never agreed to Net Neutrality. Is that fair?

Yes, they are quasi-monopolies, and they are regulated as such. There are things they can do, and there are things they can't do. The things they can't do aren't things that are necessarily unethical. They are just regulations passed by democratically elected representatives.

So why is it so wrong in treating Net Neutrality as just a legislative issue, as opposed to a violation of a non-existent human right?

>But, certainly you can envision a scenario under which taxes can be raised in a manner and/or at the behest of certain groups which would make it unethical

Yes, I can envision such a scenario but low or high tax policy still isn't intrinsically an ethical issue. All you've argued is that it may be unethical to cheat the system in order to pass your pet tax policy. So yes, measures which are used to pass pro or anti net neutrality laws may be unethical.

> Netflix didn't spend billions building and maintaining the infrastructure, as well as acquiring all those customers.

Neither did the telecoms spend billions in developing movie streaming software, yet they benefited from all the content consumption.

> Telecoms got subsidies to build their infrastructure, but they never agreed to Net Neutrality. Is that fair?

Neither did they explicitly assert that they will be net-biased.

Yeah, the parent seems to be advocating that the ISPs should have a right to double-dip, else it would be unfair to them.

You know many countries are working on giving the internet natural right status.

If the net wasnt neutral there would be no google we'd all be stuck using yahooor dogpile. The net and all its services would look a lot more like cable was begining to. I find it hard to take anyone seriously when they are defending companies that would have you pay in the blood of your first born if they could get away with it. You think the net would have gone mainstream? You think that facebook would exist? Amazon?

The world has changed with open unfiltered acess to the internet, anything trying to lock it down and monopolise the network transmissions at a base level is incredibly unethical and an attack on so many parts if your life now.

Its too much of a burden on carriers to be regulated like they should be? Fuck me man, its too much of a burden on the world at large not to.

The fcc needs to call them carriers, be done with it, fix the pricing, fix the dodgy dealing and if need be deregulate the issues that seem to be getting isps in such a huf.

I am not arguing that everything that is unfair is unethical, so your Yankees analogy doesn't apply.

We have heavily subsidized these companies. It's a bit of a rouse to say that they never agreed to Net Neutrality so shouldn't be beholden to it. The need for Net Neutrality arose because they wanted to go beyond their purview and accrete more power unto themselves. They are supposed to be serving customers, not holding access to them for ransom. Yes, they have invested in their infrastructures, and their reward is that they get to charge customers to access it, which they do handsomely.

BTW, your question implying some unfairness to the ISPs goes beyond a question of ethics (on which we'll agree to disagree) to an argument against Net Neutrality. Maybe that's where your real disagreement lies and the question of whether it's an ethical issue really isn't "all you're arguing".

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