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Net Neutrality Bill in Congress
hip2b2 writes "The US Congress is finally doing something to prevent large bandwidth providers and network operators from charging (or putting restrictions on) competing web and other Internet media content providers. According to this NetworkWorld article, the new bill sponsored by Democratic Representatives Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Jay Inslee of Washington state, Anna Eshoo of California and Rick Boucher of Virginia in the House and Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon in the Senate. I am not a big fan of legislation, but, I hope this bill keeps the Internet a freer place." Here is our coverage of the first round.
I really wish slashdot would wait until a bill reaches the floor of the House and/or Senate before posting its presence. Every year, thousands of bills are proposed. Only a few percent (I think its less than that) reach the floor of House and/or Senate. Most of the bills that do make it to the floor are voted down.
Wasn't there a senator who tried to slip the broadcast flag into this bill or something?
You're spot on. Without regulations, a market is impossible. Particularly in matters concerning infrastructure, information flow, etc. But I agree the majority of Congressfolks are pretty clueless about technology, so I always cringe when I see bills relating to technology, fearing the worst.
One reason to be hopeful, though: Rick Boucher, one of this bill's sponsors, strikes me as a person who "gets" tech and the "public-good" benefits of online culture more than most. I sat in on some of the DMCA subcommittee hearings, and he was the sole member of the House subcommittee at that time who actually understood the issues (and as a result opposed most of the DMCA, ultimately unsuccessfully). He's also one who has been behind several efforts to blunt the harshest provisions of the DMCA.
See, for example, http://news.com.com/2010-1071-825335.html.
So let's not write off his efforts and those of his cosponsors out of hand, just because we "don't like legislation." Let's take a look at the specifics.
Ted Stevens of Alaska introduced the Broadcast Flag into it. Check http://ipaction.org/blog/ for more info.
For those of you who don't know what this is, please review: Broadcast Flag Article at Wikipedia
Someone stop this man. The bridge to nowhere apparently keeps leading to the stupid &#$@* Broadcast Flag. DO NOT WANT...!!!! (Contact your Reps and Senators)Nonsense. If a private company providing a service in a market where many other companies are doing the same wants to offer special pricing or performance options to customers that want to pay for such, they are (or should be) free to do so. It's no "distortion" of the market to change your offering to suit your own business objectives. You, as a customer, can just "distort" it right back by taking your business to another provider that suits your tastes.
Quite to the contrary: many business practices (including various pricing, contractual, and distribution strategies) have the goal of establishing monopolies. In order to keep the market free and efficient, those practices need to be regulated.
Now, the term "free market" is used by some to refer to a market "free from government control", but that's a misleading use of the term, because the same people still incorrectly suggest (and often believe) that that's the kind of market people like Adam Smith were talking about. But for Adam Smith's invisible hand to function, markets need a specific structure; within that structure, there are certain freedoms, primarily the freedom to set prices, but not others, like the freedom to monopolize. A market that is supposed to operate efficiently needs government regulation, all that libertarian hot air notwithstanding.
And the more you stick the government in the middle of transactions between private parties, especially where evolving technology is concerned, the more mistakes happen.
When you leave government out of those transactions, you get monopolies that are even worse. Leaving aside Microsoft for the moment, just look at what happened with monopolization in the railroad, oil, and telephone industries in the past--those were all excesses of unregulate markets involving new technologies, and consumer outrage finally brought them under government control.
Government sucks and makes many mistakes, but lack of government sucks even more.
Found that link! Here it is
That may work in the big cities where you have multiple companies with independent network connections.
But in small towns and rural areas, there may be multiple ISPs, but their internet connections all run through the same connection, usually owned by the telephone company. There is no route around the telephone company in such cases.
Most people really have the phone company and/or the cable company to provide broadband access. Personally, I can only use Comcast for broadband. The phone company DSL service stops a block away. No one else can provide copper wire or coax to me for other options.
All this talk agains this kind of regulation is well and good if people had choices for broadband providers, but the reality is that most people have few to no choices.