Hacker News Reader

Comment by baddox | Hacker News Reader

I don't believe I have enough information to conclude that classifying broadband as a Title II utility will be a good thing. My general impression is that more and stricter regulations in an industry is usually (though not always) a bad thing for consumers in that industry, so while I'm not vehemently against this NN bill, I certainly am not excited or optimistic.

I consider my views reasonable, although I guess an unreasonable person would consider their own unreasonable views to be reasonable. I'm definitely not astro-turfing, although if I get a check from the Ministry of Truth I will refrain from cashing it and let you know.

View on HN

> My general impression is that more and stricter regulations in an industry is usually (though not always) a bad thing for consumers in that industry, so while I'm not vehemently against this NN bill, I certainly am not excited or optimistic.

I would say that's more strongly the case in competitive industries where there's some consumer choice in play to keep bad companies in check. But there are very few people who choose Comcast from between multiple broadband providers. And then they shot themselves in the foot in the public discourse with their constant stream of customer abuse and terrible support stories.

I'd say I'm cautiously optimistic about this, but I should read up more on what parts of Title II are being applied to what parts of the network here.

In particular, does this have any effect on Comcast saying "Netflix needs to pay us or we won't install sufficient peering to meet our customers' demand for Netflix connections"?

Having a second ISP choice where Netflix works properly would fix that pretty quickly, but I'm not clear on whether Title II does. But the FCC also just overruled state laws blocking municipal broadband networks, so that's going to be another option to keep an eye on.

> I don't believe I have enough information to conclude that classifying broadband as a Title II utility will be a good thing.

It seems like we don't have enough information to say it's a bad thing either, but that's not stopping these < 1 hour old accounts from saying it.

To be fair, I can identify with the desire to place the burden of proof on the supporters of new regulations.

> My general impression is that more and stricter regulations in an industry is usually (though not always) a bad thing for consumers in that industry

In cable internet the average consumer has only one or two potential providers. On top of that, companies who try to break into the industry face significant political and regulatory challenges when they lay fiber.

I don't understand how you can think this kind of industry should be unregulated. There are few market forces keeping providers in line, and we see the results of that in the industry's attempts to extort internet companies with throttling.

The industry is already highly regulated, and there's a difference between thinking an industry should be unregulated and thinking that not all conceivable regulations are good for an industry.

Lets scrap the USDA safety measures. We will eat so much better.

Yes, we should kill the USDA safety measures, as well as the USDA itself.

These rules should be issued at the state level, where we the people can keep a closer eye on it, rather than the federal government.

By the way, how do you like that the USDA is arming itself? Do you thing it's a good thing? Did you even know about this?

http://www.naturalnews.com/045141_USDA_submachine_guns_param...

State level issue is great. If US citizens never cross state borders. Just think of the joys is we have different standards for sterilization across the board.

On the contrary, one reason state level regulations are preferable is that US citizens can and do cross state borders much more easily and often than national borders.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com