The Great Permacrises

If Peleton doesn’t pivot then they’re very very silly.

The wholesale cost should have gone down by then, I would think, if Germany approves Nord Stream

I think at this point it’s a big if!

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True, and actually I don’t think they should approve it, but I feel like they will somehow. We’ll see

Isn’t this already the case in Scotland? Mine’s part of the council tax bill I think. Wouldn’t oppose the same happening to electricity in all honesty, given how essential they are to modern life.

The internet should never be nationalised though. That’s one utility that’s better off not having state control.

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“Should” :sweat_smile:

They should be reflective of the trading prices but I can’t seeing them dropping it back as quick as reality.

In the same way the petrol pumps are still trying to sell near £1.50 litre.

Germany might approve the Nord Stream 2 but at the moment they have rejected it.

Why though? :thinking: just out of interest?

Because it grants them much greater control of the flow of information. An ability to censor and control it in ways that just don’t exist in its current form.

The scope for using that level of control abusively is just far too vast and powerful that I’m not comfortable with governments having that power.

There are a myriad of other reasons beyond this. Aspects of broadband service and quality I’d want to choose myself. Can you imagine a nationalised network dealing with faults, admitting there’s a fault, and getting stuff fixed. Caring about latency, contention, throughout and like.

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But, legally speaking, right now an ambulance driver in the U.K. can request all of your ISP records and with no oversight and no warrant and be granted access. The government are already working with at least one ISP to implement a full on monitoring scheme - and we don’t know which ones. With a cursory court judgement they can surveil several thousand people. I’m not sure exactly what privatisation is protecting us from that isn’t already an issue?

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Right now on this front, from quite a lot. An ambulance sure can request them. My ISP can’t provide them, because they don’t have them, and there’s currently no legal obligation for them to collect and keep them.

Also, I’m pretty sure this is has yet to be passed into law. I know the MD of my ISP has argued against it, and provided evidence to the committee. Who will cover the costs of building the systems to collect the information, the cost of storing it, and safeguarding it? privatisation can push back against proposed regulations, and they’ve done so successfully in the past.

Another is a matter of censorship. I have an unfettered and uncensored access to the internet. The benefit of being with a small ISP. The big guys are all compelled by law to censor your access to the internet in some way, with perhaps Plusnet being the only exception, though I’m not sure how they slip under the radar.

Electricity and water is the same regardless of who you pay for it. For electricity, sure you can choose a company that use your money to source only renewables to put into the grid, but that’s something everyone needs to be moving towards anyway, so would happen with a nationalised system as well.

The internet is far more complex, with varying degrees of service quality, speed, latency, throughout, contention, congestion, a myriad of things that can go wrong. All of which different ISPs treat with varying degrees of importance. So I can pay more for an ISP who provides a higher quality of service.

These variables don’t really exist with the likes of other utilities.

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Snoopers charter was passed in 2016 unfortunately. That bill gives the government power to insist on an ISP collecting and storing ISP records. Whether they’ve done that or not we don’t know because the law also ensures any such orders will be secret. There’s more legislation coming, but what’s passed is already pretty bad.

I mean, I agree we need to be careful and maybe private ISPs help act as a barrier, but not much of one really. If the government wants to monitor everything and people keep voting for that government then nationalised or private, they are going to succeed

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Ah yes! I remember now. And the subsequent ECJ ruling the year later. Not sure what happened with that though, not that it matters anymore.

The power to compel certainly exists, but it hasn’t been utilised beyond of the two unnamed beta testers AFAIK.

They still don’t clearly define what an internet connection record is though, so I’m not sure what they’re expecting ISPs to collect.

This is a great explanation of the issues regarding an internet connection record.

There’s no scope for enforcing control of protocols to make collecting easier, and preventing the use of encryption and VPNs (though they did try). So there’s still some protection in that regard.

I suppose in a way I view private ISPs as something of a firewall between myself and the possibility of the government becoming a threat actor.

If the government were my ISP, and the only ISP I was allowed to have, they wouldn’t* need laws to get some of this stuff through.

*assumption, because I’m not a lawyer, assuming what they do isn’t breaking any other laws, there’s nothing stopping a theoretical Peppa Pig branded ISP from restricting the use of TOR, VPN, Proxies, and encrypted protocols from being utilised within their network.

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Because we don’t want to turn into China (and others) where the Government decides what we can and can’t access.

Water is water. Electricity is electricity.

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That’s really more to do with their legal framework and, importantly, the Great Firewall which is a different thing to ISPs. Not to advocate nationalising ISPs, but really just to point out that’s a different thing

It is the same net result though.

No, it isn’t, to censor all traffic would require a) the construction of something like the great firewall and b) a legal framework that allowed it.

It can be achieved with it without nationalising ISPs, and the government is already working quite hard on b). It’s folly to think privatised ISPs are anything but a small barrier to that system.

The problem with your thinking is that they would not build a great firewall. As is so often the case with Government short-termism, they would try and add on modules to all existing ISPs. Just like when old banks try and embrace new technology instead of building from scratch. They just try and patch modules together from different eras. The end result of Government supplied broadband would be poor for the consumer, more restrictive for the consumer, less choice for the consumer, and, you guessed it, the consumer pays for these new perks too. Choice is good for this industry.

What I am saying is that a government owned ISP and a government controlled internet are two different things and you can achieve one without the other.

They are already building monitoring tech with two ISPs (we don’t know which ones, it’s being done in secret). And the taxpayer is paying (snoopers charter made funds for this stuff possible).

I can’t trust the Government to make a cheese toastie.

They should be as far as way as possible from any internet decisions.

Water and Electricity yep you can’t really get that wrong to a certain extent. There’s a big difference in those utilities and becoming an ISP and controlling what the UK people should have access to or what’s pushed in front of their eyes.

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Taking that crypto thread.

FCA doesn’t like Binance > Gov goes ok we’ll block access to Binance.com

Whichever side of fence you stand on with crypto you can see the abuse with holding the cards.