Re:Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a...
by notatoad on Tuesday June 08, 2021 @04:49PM
(#27440600)
when people talk about the "the internet" being a public utility, they mean internet access. which is "a thing", and is a single discrete idea.
public utility status for the internet means that every packet delivered over internet protocol (aka "IP", which again, is a thing) must be delivered by the carrier/ISP without discrimination.
Re:Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a...
by Buttons840 on Tuesday June 08, 2021 @05:24PM
(#27441051)
Yes. If my service was declared a common carrier I'd experiment with creating my own ISP and banning people at the ISP level, which also happens to be the only ISP hosting my service.
This is why this doesn't make sense. Some internet companies can arbitrarily block you and others can't?
Re:Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a...
by notatoad on Tuesday June 08, 2021 @05:46PM
(#27441340)
It doesn't make sense if your goal is to create a fair internet for everybody, or to build a consistent set of rules based on reasonable principles.
it makes perfect sense if you are a politician looking to hop on the anti-google bandwagon enough to make it look like you're doing something without actually doing anything.
The internet isn't a thing. It's not a single entity (or even a single idea).
It was different in the days of Ma Bell, when there was one entity for the entire U.S. with phone service (could we define that in today's age? is VOIP phone service? mobile? Whatsapp?), and it was even different later, when the baby bells blanketed the U.S. without overlapping areas.
What makes this more challenging is that by regulating "ISPs" (if someone could please define that, or even what the Internet is, in a legal sense), we might then be strangling new and interesting startups that might not conform to the definition of an ISP from a decade prior.