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Comment by vegetablepotpie | Hacker News Reader

I think there needs to be a distinction in law between infrastructure providers (like COX) and application providers (like Facebook or Google).

Infrastructure providers have a monopoly or an oligarchy over a geographic area and do not know what specific activities users engage in online, aside from which websites are visited.

Application providers can build their monopolies based on network effects and potential competition is not constrained by an external limitation, like geography. They know what users do on their platforms.

DMCA treats them the same. Cutting off someone’s Internet access seems like a very early 00’s solution to piracy, when you could still conceivably walk into a business and fill out a paper job application. Legal concepts need to evolve with the Internet and we need finer grained distinctions.

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I'm not sure we need to draw distinctions between the two in this case.

I mean, I don't want Google searching through gmail for any time anyone has shared anything that might be subject to copyright, either.

I think I'd tend to agree with you.

I think more broadly, we don't need new law or even a reinterpretation of existing law in this case. We simply need to uphold due process. Punitive actions should not, and must not, be taken against individuals or corporations, even, on mere unproven allegations.

* Oligopoly, unless you're claiming that an infrastructure provider is one of the following:

Either:

1. A sole provider of a good or service

2. One of several ruling elites that form the primary basis of government.

Monopoly:Oligopoly :: Monarch:Oligarch.

In much of the US there is only one ISP that provides reasonable speeds. In my area, that's Spectrum. The only other options here are slow DSL and satellite.

And in many parts of the US, such as where my parents live, there is a single ISP that provides crappy DSL and nothing else.

The parent post by greggyb wasn’t arguing against the fact that many areas only have one Internet provider, but was specifically focused on the Grandparents, use of the word “oligarchy” instead of the more appropriate “oligopoly” to refer to situations where people have their choice of two or three ISPs.

Whoops! Misread that, too late to edit though.

Now let us scale a more 'confident' scenario, politcal desired digitisation and social scoring, needed to [get:reward] and to take a seat in RL (real life ^^ -sorry for this irony) you know, [for: "fill'in some forms"] to [get:reward], feeling way too drunk...to solve...

...let me tr... um... "Some ruse...so subtle, that can't wear its own status clientele, presumptuously questioned, but 'by-carryed' backed..." (-;

These are all words but I have no idea what any of it means.

Are you feeling okay?

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