Reddit incredulity at Net Neutrality support by Americans | Hacker News Reader

Reddit incredulity at Net Neutrality support by Americans

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7 pointsclp169 comments

I think Net Neutrality is a complicated debate and this depresses me because it's obvious the pro-net neutrality side is avoiding the counter argument by assuming the other side is just stupid.

Just to state it outright that counter argument is: The FCC regulates TV and Radio to keep it from "harming" the consumer. The FCC would be doing the same with net neutrality. But once you establish a precedent of "the FCC can regulate internet providers to prevent what they perceive as harm to the consumer" you open the floodgates.

We saw this just recently with Wikileaks. The only difference was the Federal Government went after hosts because they couldn't legally demand ISP's block the traffic. But the government clearly felt Wikileaks was harmful to the nation (many senators said that outright).

Once you establish the FCC as the arbiter of "harm" on the Internet they are free to block whatever they need to. Wikileaks, Porn, whatever.

Now of course there is a valid counter argument that almost everyone on HN knows. The above theory revolves around the free market being able to regulate itself and that's hard to do when there's very little competition. How can the free market regulate itself with competition if the only competition is a phone monopoly and a cable monopoly?.

But the debate is weighing the ineffectiveness of competition vs the danger of regulation and that's not a no-brainer question. The lack of support for net neutrality in that poll is, IMHO, a direct result of those in favor of it assuming people who don't immediately agree with them are stupid and not bothering to make the case to them.

It seems to me that this particular counter-argument fails, because the floodgates are already open. We've seen this with recent federal action to shut down various domains, without a warrant, and certainly without any kind of due process.

If the gov't is going to nuke domains on a whim anyway, I don't think that some general fantasy about preventing general gov't interference with the net is a good reason to oppose net neutrality. At all.

Nor do I find the argument about "free markets" compelling. In this case, I suspect the free market is likely to find ways to take more money from consumers, rather than protecting consumers by maintaining the net the way it's been for the last couple decades.

Two points here.

= On the floodgates already being opened I'd ask this question: Did the Senate Succeed in blocking Wikileaks? Yes they played bully with a few private companies but in the end they failed because they didn't have the tools to chase Wikileaks to another country.

Give the government control over the ISPs and they'll have the tools to block anything on the Internet without having to leave the U.S. to do it.

= On the case of Free Markets you have to understand Free Markets never try to protect consumers. That's not the point. The point is to make money. But there's always some corporation that's behind in the market. So companies motivated by greed act in a way that protects consumers in spite of their intentions.

Take Net Neutrality. Say AT&T is so dominant in California that they decide to put a surcharge on iTunes purchases. Time Warner who is not dominant then sees an opportunity. By not putting the same surcharge they make MORE MONEY because they'll get an influx of customers from AT&T. Then AT&T has to either ditch the surcharge or lose most of their iTunes buying customers.

The FCC regulates radio and TV because the airwaves are public property. The public airwaves are auctioned off by the FCC to various companies, and the companies have to live by the FCC's rules or go home.

In other words, CBS might own a lot of equipment privately, but they don't get to broadcast their programming through my airspace without my say-so. Since negotiating with millions of individuals to avoid interference is not feasible, the people gave the FCC the power to negotiate on their behalf. So the FCC is mandated to protect the interests of the people.

The internet is different, since anyone can make their content available without causing interference, and also a lot more of it is privately owned. The FCC doesn't have a mandate (or even, maybe, the authority) to regulate the internet.

Net neutrality debates always seem like epic battles of slippery slopes to me.

You think it's a slippery slope that if net providers are allowed to selectively charge more for certain kinds of traffic, they with then proceed to find more ways to implement such charges in order to make more profit?

If so, I would say you might want to read up more on the recent history of corporate America.

Headline should perhaps read:

"Reddit incredulity at LACK of Net Neutrality support by Americans"

(Given that only 1 in 5 Americans do support it, according to the linked page.)

I don't see much incredulity here. The first and second comments explain it well : "Well the question they asked was "Should the Federal Communications Commission regulate the Internet like it does radio and television?" I think it more has to do with a tricky question and voters being less aware about the issue."

If you ask the question, "Should the Federal Communications Commission regulate the Internet like it does radio and television?"

then the public's answer is "no".

If you ask the question, "Should the government stop my phone and cable companies from screwing me?"

then the public's answer is "yes".

It's all in the framing of the question.

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