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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

I'm a liberal Democrat and I'm queasy about enforced net neutrality; these are rules that govern what companies can do with their own infrastructure, and rules that could unintentionally retard progress instead of protecting it.

Further, Congress has a legitimate gripe here. We don't elect FCC commissioners. They're appointed. We should be particularly concerned about them overstepping their bounds. Which a reasonable case can be made for here.

I'm not sure I see what your comment adds to the discussion, other than "the duly elected Republican congress is doing something I disagree with!".

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I think we're at a point where Internet access needs to be classified as a utility, like electricity and water.

We are indeed in a situation where many companies have invested in their own infrastructure and maybe that requires consideration. I'm absolutely certain that jimktrains2 has a point: the U.S. taxpayers coughed up tremendous amounts of money to invest in infrastructure which makes those lines ours. (Sure, 'legally' AT&T et al own title and deed, but you and I still provided the money.)

Ultimately the point is that it's time to classify access to the Internet as a utility and regulate it as such: separating ownership from operation, mandatory line sharing, various and sundry other mechanisms to make sure the consumer has choice amongst competitors. Then we can say net neutrality is not needed.

There is no company I have to deal with on a regular basis that is worse than the electrical company.

This Internet stuff is not really a voting issue for me (health care and education are the big things that make me a Dem and not a Lib), but the candidate that tells me he wants to turn AT&T into Commonwealth Edison has secured a donation from me to his opponent.

Be careful what you wish for.

If they would've built the entire infrastructure without public money sure, but that's not the case. Also, when dealing with limited resources, like spectrum, regulation is necessary. We put in money to build the infrastructure, we should have a saying in how it's utilized. And, by the way, I wish dealing with most companies would be as smooth as the power company -- ymmv.

There is no company I have to deal with on a regular basis that is worse than the electrical company.

Care to elaborate? Regarding electric co. service, mine has been reliable (far more than my cable internet service). Regarding customer service and price, can't really complain about these either and I've had a fair amount of experience on both a commercial and personal level.

Full Disclosure: Personally, I'm an advocate of regulations that would treat the net more like a utility. By diminishing the profit motive for maintaining the infrastructure, I believe that we can better ensure equal access and adequate service quality (e.g. South Korea: http://articles.cnn.com/2010-03-31/tech/broadband.south.kore...).

At least power companies don't try and tell me what to do with the energy I buy from them - they don't tell me I have to pay more to use / can't use brands of toasters unless the manufacturer paid them money.

I think the ideal solution would be an act specifically about net neutrality - but where existing laws allow net neutrality to be regulated, I think that using those measures in the interim is not necessarily a bad thing.

Prosecuting companies that aren't using net neutrality in the interim might be more of an FTC role than an FCC role in terms of current US government structures - especially if they can get a court to agree that non-net neutrality violates one of the anti-trust or consumer protection laws.

While I agree that Congress has a legitimate gripe with overstepping unelected officials, I really think that's a separate issue that should be treated independently.

Regarding rules that could unintentionally retard progress - that's not necessarily a bad thing. In the same sense, the FDA retards progress of the pharmaceutical industry. We should be able to decide that some things are harmful enough to individuals and their rights that companies shouldn't be allowed to compete on them, at least beyond a certain level. At the very least, they should be required to make those things as visible to consumers as price, because consumers can only vote with their wallets on things they're aware of.

All this is reasonable. Having said that, on an issue where reasonable people can so clearly have reasonable disagreements, and where so much is at stake, it is simply not unreasonable for Congress to demand that rulemaking occur the legislative process.

The EFF is right about this. Whether you like net neutrality or not, you should hope the GOP wins this one. I don't want to imagine what stupid shit President Romney could come up with for the FCC to do to the Internet.

As far as slowing down progress, there is a danger of this happening without net neutrality as well.

Consider the current state in Australia: you have ISPs that charge you based on GB of bandwidth used per month. For example, lets say your ISP signs a deal with Hulu so that traffic from them is free for you. Most people would probably not give any consideration to competing services because they will have to pay for bandwidth while using them. This is a huge advantage to already established online tv services that have resources to make these kinds of offers with ISPs. Meanwhile, new services that can't afford them get ignored by users despite perhaps having better feature sets.

Wasn't that infrastructure paid for by taxes?

No? Not really? Pretty sure AT&T and Comcast spend way way more of their own money forklifting in CRS1's and terminating circuits? From where do you get the idea that the major carriers are heavily subsidized? I'm sure they get breaks, but no, I don't think your taxes fund AT&T, Comcast, L3, &c.

Land and subsidies to lay fiber?

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