from Hacker News

FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

by adidash on 12/5/17, 2:56 PM with 196 comments

• by grokas on 12/5/17, 3:03 PM

  After reading about Pai, it seems like he was hand selected to be the figure head with which the ISPs would finally take down Net Neutrality.

  This whole situation sucks, and no matter how much noise we make and activism we take part in, if Pai has the legal footing to ruin the internet, he will.

• by imgabe on 12/5/17, 3:50 PM

  If ISPs are going to gut net neutrality, we need a way to introduce real competition into the market. I wouldn't care if Comcast wanted to sell me access to 5 websites for $99 or whatever crap they're trying to pull if I had the option to switch to a better deal somewhere else.

  Strong state and local laws protecting the right to form municipal ISPs would be a good start. Those seem to scare Comcast & friends the most. If corporate ISPs become significantly restrictive, I think we'd see a big upsurge in interest for municipal broadband.

• by falcolas on 12/5/17, 3:18 PM

  Well, he's not wrong. We are desperate - desperate to keep our internet free from corporate greed.

• by shmerl on 12/5/17, 3:16 PM

  His smug attitude of showing how he doesn't care about the public he is supposed to serve, will be his downfall in court.

• by peterwwillis on 12/5/17, 3:36 PM

  Does anyone remember when Jack Valenti was widely mocked for his being instrumental in abusing the rights of consumers? There were huge campaigns against the MPAA and Valenti.

  Where's the PR push back from the techno-intelligentsia? Why aren't we pointing out Pai's attacks on the rights of American citizens? Why aren't we pointing out to regular people why this is clearly an attack on one of the few freedoms they have left? Where are the "Put this in your Pai hole" t-shirts and bumper stickers?

• by TYPE_FASTER on 12/5/17, 4:03 PM

  What are our alternatives for wireless and wired ISPs? I'm done with the incumbents.

  I'm familiar with Republic Wireless and Google Fi, but I'm a long-time iPhone user who doesn't really want to switch. Are there any similar carriers who fully support iOS?

  Given the control wired home ISPs have, what are the alternatives? Is there a good, reasonably affordable wireless alternative?

• by dgritsko on 12/5/17, 4:15 PM

  So, suppose everyone's worst nightmares come true - the FCC proceeds down the path it's currently on and ISPs begin to implement arbitrary throttling/blocking of content. How will something like SpaceX's planned "mesh network" of thousands of internet-providing satellites affect the landscape?

• by jordigh on 12/5/17, 4:47 PM

  "Chairman Pai's plan to restore Internet freedom"

  This phrase bugs me so much. I can't believe they're calling the end of net neutrality "internet freedom".

• by artursapek on 12/5/17, 3:56 PM

  Honest question, what changes can we expect as ISP consumers if this happens?

  A follow up, if all it is is them charging customers more for using more bandwidth, how is that any different from any other fundamental resource like water, electricity, etc? Why should I pay as much money for my SSH and Hacker News as the guy down the street streaming Netflix all day?

• by tempodox on 12/5/17, 3:47 PM

  On the verge of being sold out by a corporate shill? You can bet we are desperate.

• by thrillgore on 12/5/17, 3:20 PM

  I feel more helpless now than I did on November 9th, 2016.

• by kstrauser on 12/5/17, 4:01 PM

  Yes, we are desperate for a representative government. May we have one please?

• by cmurf on 12/6/17, 1:42 AM

  It's really unlikely anyone is going to convince a Republican to vote for a Democrat, or vice versa. It's not like politics in other countries were people are willing to switch parties when it's obvious the representation isn't working to their interests. The U.S. is stuck in tribalism for the foreseeable future, if anything it probably gets worse before it gets better.

  The motivation though, should be on the ~55% of eligible voters who don't vote. If nothing else I think we'd get a better signal to noise ratio in the actual election results, which is exactly why Republicans make up lies about voter fraud, in order to make it harder for citizens to vote. Notice how they aren't running to secure old voting systems and make them auditable. No they go directly to voter suppression and gerrymandering. And it makes complete sense, because if they stop doing that, they lose.

• by PhrosTT on 12/5/17, 4:12 PM

  Are there any tools we should download before half the internet is blocked?

  (Can't believe I had to just write that).

• by Blaiz0r on 12/5/17, 4:17 PM

  Is there really no alternative to using an ISP for a connection?

  Is it possible to build a decentralised and encrypted network on our mobile phones? I guess we still have to run traffic through mobile service providers...

• by YouAreGreat on 12/5/17, 5:34 PM

  Well. Maybe it's really just about allowing ISPs to run the same exploitative business models as Google's intimate personal information empire, Google/Apple's 30% tax app stores with far from neutral content policy, etc.

  But how about giving them some credit? Maybe the plan is to temporarily allow ISPs to suck on some of Google/Youtube monopoly rents (weakening their defenses) while regulators look into regulating the whole pile of internet monopoly garbage?

  It's possible. And it would be so good.