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Comment by vkou | Hacker News Reader

But they aren't determining international commerce policy. The coal companies are free to ship it out through Texas, or Wyoming, or wherever will have them.

There's a difference between "I don't want guns in my house" and "I want guns to be banned in my country."

It's not Oakland's responsibility to ensure that the coal industry can make money in Oakland.

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Such reasoning is detrimental to a free society. It's not a house, it's a port. And a major one at that.

Should ISPs be free to discriminate and ban anything they don't like too?

The government does regulate what ISPs can host. In this case, the local government is trying to regulate what the port can host.

Should cities where fiber cables land be able to regulate what packets pass through them?

Your original statement was that ISPs should not get to ban. I noted that ISPs might not get to ban, but governments do get to ban. You are now asking me if governments should get to ban. I believe I already said that they do get to ban.

If your point is that you believe specifically cities should not be able to ban, then maybe that should be the case. I'd like to hear your argument, though.

You're actually replying to a different person.

But in any case, giving local government the power to arbitrarily deny access to national infrastructure is a terrible idea, and it would allow local government to override any national foreign trade strategies, amongst other things. There's lots of major exchange points on the west coast, should the cities where they're located have a say on what packets they handle? Do you think your requests should be dropped if the City of San Jose doesn't want to serve them for you? Because that's no different than this.

Oakland owns this “national infrastructure” so it doesn’t seem at all like San Jose dropping my requests, unless they own the network.

This point is entirely contrived. California owns all of the interstates within it's borders, are they also "national infrastructure"? Do you think California should be able to dictate what goods can and cannot be transported on them? Numerous private companies own the fiber cables and exchanges that deliver internet across the country, are they "national infrastructure" too? In this case a local council is trying to control what goods can and cannot be imported out of America, something which it does not and should not have the power to do.

Edit: in case it’s not clear, your “unless they own the network” remark is an assertion that Net Neitrality should not exist in any form.

“Edit: in case it’s not clear, your “unless they own the network” remark is an assertion that Net Neitrality should not exist in any form.”

Excuse me? I was describing what would be needed for your comparison to make sense. There’s no sensible path from that to “Net Neutrality should not exist in any form.”

Lots of different parties own the internet infrastructure, same as the roads, ports, utilities... Should any of those parties have the right to dictate what packets can traverse their networks, and what cannot. Should a state or municipality decide what good can be transported on the roads they 'own'? The comparison is perfectly sound. You simply don't want to address it, or respond to your ludicrous implication that international ports are not part of our national infrastructure.

You seem determined to read way more into my comments than I actually wrote, so I’ll leave you to it.

The only thing you have offered in response to any of my comments is deflection.

I just thought your analogy was bad due to differences in ownership. Principles for regulating things owned by others are different from principles for regulating things owned by the regulating entity. That’s not deflection, that’s my entire and sole point here.

Governments already do dictate what goods can not be carried on their roads. At the very least we have load limits, size limits, speed limits. Then there is dangerous goods regulation meaning you aren't allowed to transport fuel in buckets on an open trailer, and you aren't allowed to transport sand in uncovered trailers either.

All of those regulations are for public safety, and regulate how goods are transported, not what goods are transported. If Oakland could provide some evidence that exporting coal via it's port posed a public safety risk to the people of Oakland, then they'd have had a case. The truth is simply that they don't want anybody exporting coal from the US, and they are trying to majorly overstep the limits of their power.

Or maybe the truth is that coal handling ports produce a lot of particulate pollution in excess of existing regulations which Oakland is sick and tired of policing only to have offenders return to their polluting ways.

The goal of these organisations is to end US coal exports, and that they will abuse the court system with any vexatious lawsuit they can dream up. They had the opportunity to present evidence to support their claim that shipping coal through the city posed any health risk to the community, and they failed to produce any evidence to that effect.

They did produce documentstion to that effect, but Tagami claimed thst using these brand new whizzo coal car covers, no dust would escape (despite having no evidence to support that claim).

The judge basically ruled thst since the report didn't perform a comparison to other sources of pollution, that it was not relevant.

Which I guess is fine if you regard deaths from lung cancer as a statistical measure rather than preventable losses.

The only reason we need regulations to stop ISPs from banning things is because there isn’t enough competition to make it happen naturally. This is not the case with ports.

If we're going to use invalid analogies, there's also a big difference between "I declare murder to be legal in the home that I own!" and "I think murder should be legalized!"

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