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by Flenser 5026 days ago
Flow is not the same as supply. Noonespecial is talking about blocking things at source not by an intermediary.
1 comments

Flow is not the same as supply

Its like a synthetic variation, not a logically novel form of argument. The flow is cutoff when the supply is witheld. The supply is withheld when the flow is cutoff. Etc.

Cutting off flow is not the same as withholding supply.
Functional equivalents, and often the Law will see through such transparency. Are you going to withould supply from [an ethnic group, or a protected class] for example?
I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing.

I was trying to say that noonespecial's suggestion for "technology companies everywhere to boycott a certain district in East Texas" isn't about net neutrality as schmichael objected because net neutrality is about intermediaries blocking or throttling access to services, whereas as the boycott noonespecial suggested would be by the providers of the service.

No, i do understand; but you are missing the point of the comment that you replied too -- which is that the purpose (public policy) of net neutrality is to prevent the collusion of private actors from acting against the common good. This type of collusion has issues associated with it that are far broader than what you are thinking of. And there are other laws/policy ideas beyond net neutrality to consider. This consideration isn't optional or arbitrary. [And this isn't an adversarial or snarky comment its just how the world works.]
But those private actors that the policy applies to must be middle men or acting on middle men in a network. Net neutrality as I understand it is about placing restrictions on network operators and regulators can do so that they cannot restrict access to content. So Wikipedia blocking access to it's own website would not be a network neutrality issue, but an ISP blocking access to it would.

And there are other laws/policy ideas beyond net neutrality to consider.

I was responding to a comment about network neutrality to say that it didn't apply. I wasn't discounting the possibility there could be other issues, although if Wikipedia decided to block access in Texas for a day (perhaps only allowing access to pages about patents, prior art etc.) I think that would be for the public good.