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Comment by wildmusings | Hacker News Reader

John Oliver, College Humor, and some comedian are featured heavily. You're going to need to do more than give liberal millennials something to feel smug about, if you actually want to win this political battle.

I don't know where I stand on net neutrality, but this is certainly not going to convince me.

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Allow private companies to impose regulations on internet traffic and you don't have a free and open internet.

Block private companies from imposing regulations on internet traffic and you don't have a free market for ISPs.

You're losing one free market or the other. Which is worth more to you?

This is a gross simplification and neither are ever going to be free markets, but you get the idea. There is no avenue that doesn't involve some institution imposing their will on a marketplace.

I hear good arguments on both sides. The worst-case scenario of different levels of internet service for access to different sites is troubling. And if you could convince me that it's likely to happen without the FCC's regulation, I'd oppose repealing it, at least without a replacement. But it does seem unlikely, especially in a market like the US where there is the demand and willingness to pay for unrestricted access, and where political pressure could always stir regulatory agencies back into action. But I agree that it is a bad end result that should be avoided.

Here's my big question: weren't things fine before Tom Wheeler's net neutrality regulation? So why not go back to that? Am I forgetting something about that state of affairs?

Why not just let the government run its own neutral ISP like they run the postal service? It could be independently funded by its users, since obviously being an ISP is profitable (especially so when you don't have to deal with obtaining access to public land and poles). Then we wouldn't have to regulate these other ISPs because it wouldn't matter. They'd always have at least one competitor offering (likely subpar) internet access.

> (especially so when you don't have to deal with obtaining access to public land and poles)

Why wouldn't a public ISP have to bid for pole access? Is the implication here that a public ISP should have extra privileges that a private ISP doesn't?

Yes.

No way. Once you have a public ISP like that, it's one "minor reform" away from running parts of its operation at a loss, for the "public good". And before you know it, it's controlling the market, distorting prices, and holding back innovation.

Genuine question: do people believe that public utilities hold back innovation?

Yes, privatization of utilities has been a very successful policy and was implemented across the world over the last few decades.

The case for internet service being private is very strong. Do you really think a government bureaucracy would have developed the internet to its current state if they had taken it over in the mid 90s? Competition and the profit motive is what has gotten us this far.

the government actually privatized what was at the time a public infrastructure connecting govt agencies and universities in the early 90s.

i agree with you that the internet would not be what it is today if it had remained in govt hands

i also think that if it had evolved soley from the private sector, the kind of balkanization and complicated service contracts that people are concerned about today would have been baked in from the start.

So I would have no problem I don't think with a certain mandatory minimum amount of guaranteed bandwidth unlimited free (as in beer as well as bird) data being provided subsidized I suppose by people who want to stream 3DHD entertainment (say half/third the highest speed the ISP offers). A free and open internet guaranteed and the ability for ISPs to offer VIP services to paying customers/businesses. Everyone is happy or am I just a smug liberal looney left millenial whatever that other guy said... or merely mistaken somehow?

Why should it be free? Internet access is very affordable.

Can't somebody explain why I am dead wrong here? I have a gut feeling it doesn't stack up. But to answer your question: Free because cost is a barrier to the other free - free speech. And yes it is very affordable - especially to ISPs, should not be a problem at all for them to provide completely gratis universal access. This way people who cannot afford it - and there are currently people who cannot afford it - get access to the internet and therefore education, so they can get better jobs thereby alleviating poverty so in the end they can afford those sweet high bandwidth charges. The American Dream. (the nice one where you work hard and become successful - not the one where your dad leaves you billions and then when you lose it all you get the enemy to hack you rich and powerful again)

>And yes it is very affordable - especially to ISPs, should not be a problem at all for them to provide completely gratis universal access.

The ISPs wouldn't be so well off once you make their main product free. Investment in network infrastructure would go to zero in this system. They would all go bankrupt pretty quickly actually. The only way to keep the internet running with a mandate to offer it free would be to nationalize it. And once it's nationalized, forget about improvements to the network or new generations of mobile internet tech.

Internet costs <$50 a month. You want to effectively nationalize an entire industry because that's too expensive in your opinion.

This single image is really all you need:

http://www.wordstream.com/images/what-is-net-neutrality-isp-...

That image has existed for years now. But even without government Net Neutrality regulation... it hasn't happened!

We do have Net Neutrality regulation, but it's under threat of repeal. That's what this article and the gray bar at the top of Hacker News are about.

In Germany (no net neutrality) you can pay some ISPs extra to get unlimited mobile data to WhatsApp or Spotify.

Humans see censorship, paywalls, etc as damage, and route around. Why wouldn't we just mix-up the domain names and IP addresses for a while? If it costs extra to goto Reddit.com, then Reddit can add another domain (e.g. Greendit.com) and continue operating with no embargo. This paradigm served the warez/anime/torrent community for decades.

But that isn't what is proposed, the ISPs can't regulate which services you get to just how fast they serve? If youtube wanted to paywall they could easily.

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