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Why The Net Should Stay Neutral
Dino wrote to mention a BBC opinion piece on why tiered Internet setups are a bad idea. From the article: "What is being proposed is more like building two roads into every town and up to every house, one smooth and well-maintained tarmac and the other a dirt track, and then letting Tesco and Waitrose bid for the right to use the good road. This issue just the latest round of a long-running debate about how much government - of whatever type, in whatever country - should be involved in the growth and development of the internet."
Here in the Washington, DC area, they are considering a tied road system where you would have the option of paying more to travel in lanes with less traffic. The more traffic on the roads, the more you pay, and the less traffic, the less you pay. Sounds a lot like what the ISPs want to do.
non-US countries?
I have heard for years about the "Digital Divide" that separates those with computer/internet access and those without. To offer multi level internet access would actually physically impose such a divide and make the internet a place for wealthy elitists. The low end internet would get worse and worse as companies wouldn't want to advertise to the people that don't have enough cash to get the higher level internet in the first place, thus you would get less content.
Yes, that damned WIFI being shoved down our throats. It's nearly as intrusive as those damned telephone cables. Yes, it's true the telephone cables are owned by companies, but there is also a telephone tax to make sure telephone services can be used in parts of the country where there are less people. So it's nearly the same thing. Do they have a *right*, to use your term, for telephone service?
I think we can all agree that telephones are essential to modern day living. If we want all our citizens to be in a level playing field (i.e. such that it's not the case only rich people get the benifits), then it's a good service to provide. Additionally, it can *help* make money for the municipalities as a whole. It makes people actually go outside more, and more likely to spend money. Finally, it's not something that companies will ever do -- in NYC Verizon does have WIFI hubs in all of their payphones, but then you have to use Verizon's services, which I completely, and utterly, refuse to do. Why? Well, to get back to the original subject of this story, it's because they are the type of company to do tiered payments.
It's an unnecessary evil. It doesn't cost them anymore, they aren't partcularly hurting for money, so the only reason for them to do so is to make even more money. I understand that's what companies do. But it doesn't mean I should be happy with it, or help feed their addiction. I will do everything in my power, as an informed consumer, to pay what I actually value the service for. But it's difficult to do with near monopolies like Verizon and SBC.
So, is it a right? Well, if the US is a capalist country, then the free market is supposed to help decide what we 'have a right to'. But, unfortunately, with the FCC relaxing it's definition of monopolies, it's not exactly a free market anymore.
The problem with arguments like that is that they are almost always made after an infrastructure is created using government funding in one way or another and using government powers to create monopolies in that infrastructure.
Then the "owners" of that infrastructure start yelling, "It's mine, mine, all mine. I'm a greedy little miser."
If you don't want the government meddling in your infrastructure, don't rely on it to create it in the first place, particularly if you live under a government of, by and for the people who have paid money and sacrificed rights for the supposed benefit that infrastructure will create for them.
KFG
I seem to remember back when Napster was hitting its stride really well, analyst were saying that ISPs were going to reap the rewards because Napster was that golden application that was going to magically get everyone to sign up for high-speed Internet. Well, people did sign up in droves to use Napster, but as it turns out, ISPs wanted customers...but NOT the customers that actually used what they paid for. Yes, taking their cue from the insurance industry, ISPs want to sell every single person on the face of the earth an Internet connection, but they don't want everyone to actually use it, just pay for it.
And now they want the customer's to not only not use it, but they want the content providers to pay them as well!
It must be nice to have a business where everyone pays you, but you don't let them actually use your service! Now wait a minute, what exactly are we paying them for?
I work at a small WISP and it's brought up constantly to filter out traffic. I always say, we sold this person high-speed internet...and this is what they want to do with it, why should we filter it?
Usurper_ii
Ron Paul
... to me, anyway.
There's a conflict here between private companies, who should be allowed to structure their pricing and services any way they like, and the public good, which seems best served by undifferentiated transport. The author of the article believes that regulation is the right approach, that the government should tell ISPs how they can and cannot structure their business. I'm not so libertarian as to deny that government regulation is sometimes necessary, but I prefer to see it as a solution of last resort.
In this case, I don't think it's necessary at all. It seems to me that we already have this notion of a "common carrier", which is a carrier of information who is not responsible for the nature of the information transported. If we simply establish the rule that ISPs that attempt to favor one sort of traffic over another lose their common carrier status and become liable for the content that flows across their networks, I really doubt that many will want to take that route. Non-common carrier ISPs will be a target for copyright lawsuits, defamation lawsuits, criminal charges for child pornography, etc. Any ISP that wants to provide preferential access to specific content had better carefully control *all* the content.
Problem solved, IMO.
If only the world were that simple...
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