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BitTorrent's Bram Cohen against Network Neutrality
wigwamus writes "BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen warns on potential 'absurdity' of Network Neutrality laws and concedes that his hook-up with Cachelogic is creating a system that might contravene Network Neutrality. He suggests there'd be no difference between big media footing the bill for their own upload costs of their offerings and subsidizing the consumer's download costs of the same."
I worry that if a law is passed to solve bandwidth problems today it will take 20 years to repeal it when there is no problem. Could Net Neutrality work out the same as the Spanish-American War Excise Tax?
From TFA: "One reason, perhaps, is because if toll roads are to be allowed on the internet, then someone has to build them, and that means jobs for the hardware boys."
Possibly the biggest problem with the 'net neutrality' debate is a mass lack of understanding of how prioritized services would be implemented. It has little to do with hardware. One can forgive mere journalists for such a network faux paus.
The thing about prioritized traffic is that the last mile makes the biggest difference. So, if come big media company pays its ISP to prioritize its video traffic, it won't amount to very much unless each and every last-mile provider on the Internet everywhere configures their equipment to treat that traffic with the same priority.
In fact, even on the backbone, its the same story. As soon as a packet crosses onto another provider's network, it may no longer be routed with any priority at all.
The only thing that can be know for sure about the effect of prioritizing IP traffic is that other traffic will slow down. Like VOIP 911 calls, for example.
The most, and possibly only, practical way to improve the performance would be for the telcos to make good on promises made 10 years ago to run high capacity to every home. Promises used to get lots of money from the government, which they never delivered on.
Perhaps the best thing would be to support "fail fast" for telcos. Never bail them out - the sooner a telco goes under, the better. Artificially keeping them in business supports investment in outmoded technology and outdated business models and managment structures. The 'dumber' a network is, the better it works. By allowing telcos to go under, investment in newer, faster technology is naturally encouraged.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
This guys a fuckin' nut!
He makes dark deals with the movie and music monopolies and now claims he can circumvent Net Neutrality.
Just let him bob and weave in his dark corner with his soiled money and let the rest of us move on to the real world please!
this is about the podcasters, bloggers, and startups...if you make them pay twice, then you are taking away the nets key advantage to old media -- easy access to all, anyone can create, not just consume...dont let the Bells take that away, dont let a few billionairs control out thoughts, news and entertainment, we broke that mold, DONT RE-BUILD IT!
Long story short: he is wrong. He didn't take into account what would happen to smaller websites if Network Neutrality was no longer the norm. I don't really want to go into why Network Neutrality would be a good law because this is Slashdot, and I assume most of you already know. Bram Cohen is a smart guy, but he does not properly capitalize on his ideas. His statement regarding Network Neutrality just further proves that seeing the world in $$$ is not his forte.
Last time I heard from this guy, he was begging for loose change in a fucking popup window. Therefore his opinion on anything other begging for money while looking like a greasy nerd is irrelevant.
The dude had one good idea and now he's struggling to monetize it. He's hardly impartial. Network neutrality isn't about not having to pay for the bill for your uploads, it's about having to pay the rest of the net too. Without peering, the internet will turn into a content delivery network much like cable television, and I guarantee that I won't subscribe to that. That'll be the day when I rent an excavator and start burying fiber myself and peer to other folks like me.
Since he cashed in, like Shawn Fanning. Why should his biased opinion on this count for anything, when he's mostly interested in $$$$$? Might as well hear the spiel straight from the CacheLogic CEO. Besides, CacheLogic sounds like an Akamai wannabe.
...but, with all due respect, when organizations as diverse as Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, moveon.org, the NRA, the Christian Coaliation and the EFF all actually agree on Net Neutrality, you must be barking up the wrong tree.
Sure, laws on this subject need to very carefully crafted to avoid unintended consequences. And the American Lawmakers have a long record of messing up in that respect. But I believe -- with all the above-mentioned organizations, that Net Neutrality has to be respected.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
"when you're talking about large file transfers going to very large numbers of people there frequently are significant costs involved"
While it would be terrible for an ISP to block Google or Amazon, it probably won't happen because neither service puts a strain on their resources. But there are internet uses which do put a strain on an ISPs resources. For example, while this isn't true today, it is quite possible that we will download DVDs which, even compressed using XVID or something, will still be a couple gigs a piece (maybe as low as 1GB). Imagine a Netflix/Napster-like subscription service for video downloads!
Currently, ISPs oversell their capacity because most of the time, we use very little of it. Like while I'm writing this comment, I'm using 0kbps and when I submit it, my connection will burst up to give me a fast experience. But if I was using a lot of this connection a lot of the time, my ISP would have a problem - and I don't think it's too hard for us to imagine IPTV or the like for the future which would present such a problem.
Personally, I would prefer usage charges (charges per GB levied against the user) than charges to the content provider. I'd rather pay for it myself than just get the content that a company will pay for, but it seems like Bram has realized that, with high-bandwidth services becoming more and more prevalent, there will be a point at which ISPs need to do something about that extra used capacity - whether that means charging the users sucking all that capacity or charging the content providers enabling the users to suck all that capacity.
You have plenty of time for varied careers. I saw this on Highland: The Series, and he really did quite a few things over the past four centuries.
I wonder if the internet is something that should not be left to capitolism, to media companies...because of things like this. Aside from the obvious privacy issues of a government issued internet (something we could probably get around...but hey, its not like they don't already see everything), I think a govNET could have some very nice benefits. I am of belief that government exists to do for the people only the things they cannot do for themselves, or things which there is little incentive to consider (pollution). The government doesn't always screw things up. They manage, for the most part, to get our mail where it belongs in a reasonable time for a reasonable cost. They keep our highways and our roads in decent shape for the most part. And they train and are capable of effectively (more so than other countries can) deploying troops in the event of a crisis.
I don't see how a govNET would be very much a different decision than the highway situation was...get the government to lay out tons of fibre optic cable to every home, and then the only upgrades you have to make are to the infrastructure. What a campaign advantage it would be to boast of pushing for fibre optic to every home, school, and office, for a REASONABLE cost. Considering the benefit we all get out of our highways, we don't pay that much tax to keep them useable. I think the same could go for the internet.
I know there are more important issues at stake than fast music downloads.
The internet has proven to be wonderful tool for people to communicate. TV and radio were supposed to fulfill these promises but big business has subverted them.
We have seen that bloggers can actually force big media to carrry there stories, that the internet is an invaluable research tool, and that it gives voice to the voiceless, from Iranian dissedients to disgruntled corporate employees.
The free music is a nice side beneift, but let's not lose track of our priorities.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
This is not about improving service. This is about businesses degrading service, that is, making certain companies slower than they are now unless the businesses get more money. The highway analogy is as follows: We already have the highway. Everybody pays a quarter to get on. But now some people want to set up additional roadblocks to charge people who have used certain on-ramps and off-ramps more money. This doesn't make the highway any faster; while there may be occasional congestion, the businesses aren't going to build more lanes, just charge more money, or slow you down.
It's not about improving service. Its about improving profits while at the same time degrading service. Since there is often little choice but to take a particular route, these companies are effectively monopolies. Remember, there are still large regions of the country where there is only cable or dial-up. While there are plenty of urban and suburban areas where consumers have a choice between cable and DSL, both of which may have "fast enough" bandwidth, there are very, very few places where people have a choice between two cable companies or two physical sets of phone lines. The owners of the lines coming to a person's house are the ones who really control your network. For most of us, there's no choice in which lines we hook up to, so effectively these companies are monopolies. There is no competition to keep these monopolies in check, there is only legislation.
I read TFA, and I find it to be very naive.
If there would be no Network Neutrality anymore, the following could (and probably will) happen:
- Netcache has to pay to the user's provider as well as for it's own upload costs it already has.
- The user still pays the same amount of money he does now.
- There is no incentive anymore to upgrade those main pipes, the company's that want good network performance to the end-user will just have to pay up extra.
- PROFIT (For big providers like AOL).
In the end, there will be no (speed) advantage to anyone. Everything will just get more expensive! This is what history should have taught us by now.
Network neutrality should be guarded!
I think Bram Cohen is just making a BIG mistake here! (Or he is simple misquoted)
If the services that Cachelogic offers violate net neutrality at some level, then the internet hasn't had net neutrality since the mid 1990s. Akamai and Squid Proxy do very similar things with data (replicating it in multiple locations for faster downloads). Cachelogic and Akamai still have to pay the backbone providers, just like everybody else. What violates neutrality is the backbone providers setting aside a certain amount of bandwidth (or setting up a second network) to make transfer speeds from some sites faster than others.
If the ISPs want to create a second network of their own to push their own media services at much higher speeds, let them. I equate it to getting your internet access from your cable company. Your TV and your net access come down the same wire, and TV is a media service, so that's really nothing new. If you don't agree with that, then you can think of it as whatever the ISP wants to provide being on a faster LAN (since it originates "locally"), whereas the rest of the internet is still on a WAN.
That said, the article's analogy to toll roads was an excellent choice, as anyone in the Northern Virginia area can tell you. When they first open, the toll roads are significantly faster but cost a fortune to use, with the promise that the prices will go down once it's paid for. But then it fills up to the point where it's only a tiny bit faster than the equivalent free roads, and the prices go up even more to cover the costs of expansion. After a few years, your choices are completely clogged free roads where you go 15mph, or a $3/each way 15 mile road where you go 35mph after the fourth or fifth mile.
The conclusion that it doesn't matter if the media company buys more bandwidth the old fashioned way or pays the ISPs for the use of a secondary faster network is spot on. However, the customer will end up paying the same amount either way, which means there is no advantage for the customer by switching to the new tiered network model.
This article seems to completely miss the point.
Bram points out, rightly, that one must be very careful with legislating network neutrality, to keep from forcing ISPs to deliver all traffic (DDoS, spam, etc.). He acknowledges that with a sufficiently broad definition, the Cachelogic scheme could violate network neutrality.
Of course, so would Akamai, in this case. The article gets the entire topic wrong. What they're discussing is not a QoS tier at the network level, but a single company's caching architecture that makes their clients' data go faster.
And the company isn't even a network provider.
Close, but no cigar.
While it would be terrible for an ISP to block Google or Amazon, it probably won't happen because neither service puts a strain on their resources. But there are internet uses which do put a strain on an ISPs resources. For example, while this isn't true today, it is quite possible that we will download DVDs which, even compressed using XVID or something, will still be a couple gigs a piece (maybe as low as 1GB). Imagine a Netflix/Napster-like subscription service for video downloads!
Last night, I saw a service like this advertised on TV, vongo.com. I wonder how much bandwidth that service requires. ABC currently allows you to watch full episodes of a handful of their shows also.
How can things like IPTV come into being if companies like Verizon are barred from building up and reserving the capacity to provide them? Why should Google, Microsoft, etc. be allowed access to that bandwidth since it's not impeding their ability to provide their services? Not allowing the telecoms and other large ISPs to do this would akin to not allowing Google to invest in dark fibre for its own purposes. Hmmm is that the smell of hypocrisy among the slashdot crowd once again?
Both sides are being dishonest here. The content companies have no right to the entire network, and the ISPs don't want to provide the full service that they sell. There is supposed to be an implicit gentleman's agreement that if someone buys a leased line, they won't face arbitrary tolls. That's the point that a lot of talking heads can't seem to understand. They think that the content companies want to be free-riders when all they want is to be able to deliver their content at full f$%^ing speed to their customers. The "toll" is more like a warlord in Africa charging a "toll" to let legitimate businesses use the government-built roads. The customers on both ends paid for the bandwidth. If there is a problem with not making enough money, then the ISPs need to go back and rethink the wisdom of charging only $15 for broadband.
"Perhaps the best thing would be to support "fail fast" [netparadox.com] for telcos. Never bail them out - the sooner a telco goes under, the better. Artificially keeping them in business supports investment in outmoded technology and outdated business models and managment structures. The 'dumber' a network is, the better it works. By allowing telcos to go under, investment in newer, faster technology is naturally encouraged."
While your faith in evolution is admirable. Evolution doesn't guarantee a best solution, or even a good enough solution. There are a lot of solutions that are terrible, and yes they die out, but that sometimes takes a good while. Plus of course we're talking about a creation of humanity. Not anything natural. So assuming the best solution will come about "naturally" is naive at best.
I call this a PR blurb, what he's talking about is basicly "Akamai for P2P". There's nothing in net neurality that prevents you from doing that - or most anything else you do today. Want to put the VoIP port in a priority queue? Want to traffic shape it? Want to block it? Knock yourself out - as long as you do it regardless of destination.
Want to put a cache server closer to the customer, so you're only competing for the local link and not the long haul links? Fine, as long as you put it in line with your other equipment, and don't make a special priority network in parallel. Basicly "Priority with cables" instead of an actual priority queue, obviously that'd defeat net neurality.
If you have a line or three going from A to B, you can't pay the ISP to a) get put first in line or b) get put on an unclogged line, while the other traffic must go the clogged line. That's exactly how it is supposed to work, isn't it? I really don't see his point.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Actually, the iTunes data centre is in Luxembourg (at least for serving European customers).
That's not to dismiss having the government run something -- that can work very acceptably with infrastructure. But it really is all or nothing.
He suggests there'd be no difference between big media footing the bill for their own upload costs of their offerings and subsidizing the consumer's download costs of the same."
Subsidize? Subsidize?! I have to wonder what Cohen is thinking. If he thinks that the telco's plans will result in cheaper internet access for consumers, then he's an amazingly naive optimist. Only competition will force prices down and quality up, and its just not happening. My choices here are roadrunner, which goes out for days at a time versus SBC dsl, which for about $40/mo tops out at about 2.5Mbit at my range from the CO. Meanwhile I can only look on in envy at my friends in verizon markets who are on FIOS, while SBC/ATT continue to pledge lightspeed for my city "real soon now".
"when you're talking about large file transfers going to very large numbers of people there frequently are significant costs involved"
The whole issue, and indeed the business is based on an assumption of scarcity. We are talking about bandwidth here.
The beauty of the internet is it provides a virtually free transfer of vast amount of information. If bandwidth was reduced to its real commodity cost there would be no business that worked. Think about it, with all the dark fiber and wireless cells
When comments like the quote above are bandied about, talking about costs we frequently take them on face
value. Hmm, large files, hmm, large numbers of people, hmmm therefore merely "significant" costs seems reasonable. Wouldn't they be "large" costs? In answer to the above quote there are VIRTUALLY NO COSTS AT ALL.
Well speaking practically anyway. How many files do you suppose are transferred across the internet daily? A hundred million, a hundred billion? A trillion? How much electricity, labor for cable maintainance, admin staff and so on, do you suppose, as a dollar value it then costs to distribute a typical file to a few hundred or a few tens of thousands of people? Go on work it out. I DARE YOU. If it comes in at anywhere more that $0.0001 I'll eat my own foot.
Now, don't start giving me that old pseudo capitalist crap about getting a return on an investment. You know those investments were paid of in spades more than a decade ago, the telcos are in pure big profit baby. And how many new startups in the telecommunications buisseness can you name that need to get back the massive investment they put into laying miles of cables? None, that's how many. Because there aren't any. We laid all the cables we'll ever need in the 19990s, there is a GLUT of bandwidth.
The fact is that the telcos are in a position of privilage becuase they once ran the phone sytem and had property rights on their cables. Nothing more. If we levelled the playing field on bandwidth provision and let cummunities build their own the telcos would be out of business overnight. It makes me sick to hear people talking about the "costs" of transferring information. Complete propaganda.
Just Google for "$200 Billion Broadband Scandal" by Bruce Kushnick. It's not exactly a secret.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Ultimately, I - as the user - pays for it all. Transfering fees into hidden middle men masks the real cost. I want to have the power to pressure my ISP into handling things as I see fit.
ID: the nose did not occur naturally, how would we wear glasses otherwise? (apologies to Voltaire)
Did you even read the blurb?
"[Cohen] concedes that his hook-up with Cachelogic is creating a system that might contravene Network Neutrality"
Only an idiot would want legislation to pass that would make his current business project fail.
...or raving bigots!
...to the phone company charging you extra to phone Walmart to order something?
Note that all of those organizations stand to profit from network neutrality. The technical companies are big guys who would have to pay more to deliver content in the absence of network neutrality. The action groups seem to have gotten into this from AOL's email tax, where people who send out lots of fundraising email (like the NRA and moveon.org) would have to pay more.
In other words, the list isn't quite as diverse as it appears to be. They fall into two categories with different financial motiviations. Opposing forces unite because their cause is both on one side with respect to the (greedy) ISPs.
I'm not saying they're wrong. I'm just saying that they're not necessarily answering from the best technical level. Brahm Cohen's also answering from his profit motive, but if profit motive is what it comes down to, it's a lot easier for MoveOn and Microsoft to have their voices heard than for small inventors trying to develop new ideas that might one day become big ideas.
So ultimately there may be good reasons for network neutrality, but I'm not going to let the heft of those companies decide for me.
get the sickening feeling that there aren't enough of us people who understand why net neutrality is the way to go? The average joe doesn't even know how to send an email.
Life is rarely fair. Cherish the moments when there is a right answer.
I'm not going to debate the issue. But as it stands now, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Ebay, Christian Coalition, Associated Press, Gun Owners of America, MoveOn, the Christian Coalition, financial groups such as National Association of Federal Credit Unions, America's Community Bankers, American Bankers Association and Independent Community Bankers of America, and the typical EFF and ACLU, and yes, even Moby and Michael Stipe all support this. And ya know, i gotta support what Moby does.. ;)
Seriously though, this issue is pulling together people who would never side with one another. From the land of geekdom, to financial sectors, hollywood, online content providers, religious groups, conservative and liberal groups, the press and financial firms. If congress doesn't listen to this loud voice rising up.. I'll give up hope for this nation because rarely do you see people come together like this. Rarely do you see this many organizations agree over such an issue.
As much as I respect Bram, I'm not going to include his voice as being relevant for the net neutrality discussion.
Anybody with a vested interest cannot add anything other than personal slant to the discussion.
I'd be willing to wager that something like Bittorrent, which seems to have a habit of choking/flooding a connection, would be prioritized flat at the bottom of the list unless otherwise paid for.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
My ISP charges me 14$ a month for an unlimited 128kpbs connection. I've been downloading about 45-50 GB a month with no problem. Obviously the 14$ a month covers the cost of the maximum bandwidth that can be consumed by a 128 kbps connection in a month. If my ISP can do it, any ISP can. Balls to those Greedy Telcos.
I'm the original poster and I just want to make it clear I have nothing against niggers or faggots. Actually some of my best friends are niggers and faggots, some are both a nigger and a faggot. However I treat jews like the plague. I think it is of no coincidence that rats carried the plague just like jews carry Judaism. Then again I'm not against all jews... just the ones that look like rats. Which is most of them execept maybe Woody Allen.
you repeal the law of humanness. A totally free market would result in MEGABIGCO Inc. owning the world and everyone being some sort of electronic plantation worker for them, never quite making enough "money" to ever get out of debt to them. You will inevitably go from lot of companies to cartels to a monopoly, because that makes more money for the monopoly owners, and because humanness means that they will continue to impose their will on governmental processes. We already went through this crap and debate in our semi recent human past. it's been tried and found severely lacking. A "free" market means zero environmental regulations, what is in it for them? They don't care if their factory pollutes the water table over someplace, the bosses and owners will just live where that doesn't happen and buy up all the land around them to give them a clean environment, and stuff like that. It means no minimum wage,back to child labor, no safe working conditions, etc, because that is their historically proven over and over again humans as bosses track record back before these regs existed. This is *precisely* because companies are run by humans and megalomaniacs and greedsters strive for top dog positions all the time,and they get there, "by hook or CROOK", hence why those sorts of bad news policies flow downstream in the "giving orders" chain of commands structure, in government or business.
The "free" market is one of those things that it is easy to say and might sound sort of good in theory, but it won't ever fly or work as advertised without tremendous negative effects. For an example of an area with more or less "anything goes free markets", look at the horn of africa.
So let ISPs start giving priority on bandwidth for some things, and maybe limit bandwidth for others. Over time, let people yell and scream, and companies figure out ways to provide premium services without irking their customers too much, and ten years from now when everyone has 25-megabit connections no one will care because even "low tier" bandwidth will be enough for a couple of high-quality video streams simultaneously.
This falls into the same category that anything Linus says does for me. Just because you've had one good idea, doesn't mean we should listen to you about anything else. Bram doesn't sound like he knows what he's talking about, and he's using the position he gained by inventing something lots of people use to push his opinion. Linus tries that all the time, and I usually don't give him the time of day either.
-|BlackErtai|-
He suggests there'd be no difference between big media footing the bill for their own upload costs of their offerings and subsidizing the consumer's download costs of the same.
Umm - yes there would be.
Because they'd be paying for their own upload costs plus the consumer's download costs. This increases their costs, which in turn would increase our costs.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
A big problem with western society today is this: We have seen how corrupt and untrustworthy people can be, and we attempt to codify what we want in our laws such that the reading of them is infallible enough to keep these corrupt and untrustworthy people from doing harm.
It doesn't work.
No law can be rigid enough to be interpreted flawlessly by everyone and yet be flexible enough to catch the exceptions that eventually crop up.
It requires human judgement to really tell if something contravenes the spirit of the law, and yet we tie the judges' hands with specific, rigid definitions of how to judge the case. We attempt to remove human judgement from the equation because we do not trust it. This is utterly stupid.
The only way to get Net Neutrality to work is to establish an ideal scenario of how the Internet should work, and giving judges the leeway to decide whether certain cases that crop up go against those established ideals. Yes, this also means selective enforcement, which is only a bad thing if you have bad people making the enforcement decisions.
If people would stop electing corrupt and otherwise untrustworthy invidviduals to positions of power, we would not have to worry so much about these things. It is the responsibility of the people to weed out the political landscape and leave only the trustworthy. Obviously we have been slack.
Judgement calls in cases like Net Neutrality are necessary, and if made by trustworthy and integrous people, will solve a lot of these bickering problems we have trying in vain to construct a law so perfectly worded that it can bend both ways backwards at the same time.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
It seems to me there are three basic levels of net use:
Admittedly, it can be difficult to differentiate between #2 and #3 (e.g. differentiate between a user browsing a site and a spider indexing a site).
If network neutrality were maintained within those levels of service that might work. But why should there be a first come first serve mentality when dealing with VOIP versus email? That just doesn't make sense to me.
I thought all of your type died in Nuremberg.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
For those of us who build telco networks, this discussion of network neutrality is all just plain silly.
There are many ways to get internet data from source to desitinantion. If a company wants to buy into a faster or better connected network, that is the choice they make. That has always been the choice the content providers make. The customer does not have any implicit rights to the best path unless the content provider has made the choice to be on the best path.
As for building a fast lane, that is just a bunch of BS the telcos are pumping so that they can build a new internet which they control . . . for the sake of cheaper video transport and more effective cost recovery. Yep . . . it is all about money.
It is all just a big distraction. Network Neutrality is just a hand wave to keep your attention while the other hand is busy.
Telcos cannot transport cable TV (IPTV - iow non-reg content) on their broadband networks for free. So, they want to prioritize bandwidth at different qualities and different prices. They in turn will take advantage of the new price structure to keep their own video transport costs low. At the same time, they can sell it to the rest of the world as a diffentiated service offering for content providers.
This also acts as a way to protect their own IPTV offerings from internet based IPTV offerings.
This is sneaky on so many levels. And, if someone manages to enact legislation to protect the rights of the consumer, I cannot imagine how they would enforce it.
Leave the internet alone!!! You don't want it to be any more complicated than it already is. If half of the SlashDot readers actually understood what it takes to build/operate/support/maintain the physical internet, this thread would be completely different.
on video but not voice.
It's the paradox of the net.
The point isn't that those are the only companies that are for network neutrality. The point is that they are just the loudest voices pointing out the more important fact: There are only two kinds of companies _against_ network neutrality: ISPs and the hardware vendors that supply them.
Without network neutrality, everyone else on the planet, and I mean absolutely everyone, individual, corporate, or whatever, will all be paying more for everything that they find, see, do, buy, and sell online. Everything. Everyone.
Except those ISPs and hardware vendors, of course, who will be rolling in the money they've collected from everyone else at gunpoint.
You must be new here.
The extended audio of the interview (just over 4 minutes long) is on the Newsnight 26th May podcast, buried 26 mins 30 seconds in. On itunes at: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/ viewPodcast?id=136697142&s=143444&i=5973421
They're talking about a service that won't even tolerate as much overbooking as airline seats. Come home, sit down, get your bandwidth now.
They won't selling "HD video to your PC, except for the times when there's something really interesting available, that the provider is paying to send, and everybody wants".
So to do business on this Internet they propose to build, they have to have the bandwidth available for essentially 100% usage. Which means if you're not using it for the stuff they demand the right to also charge other people for, it's sitting idle.
Which means that, even though they say they're demanding the right to charge for priority access — delaying other, lower priority traffic — to their customers, what they're really demanding is the "right" to charge anybody they want to use bandwidth you've already paid for and will otherwise sit idle. And they say they need this "right" because if they don't get it, they can't make a profit.
They claim that unless they can charge you to access, over the Internet, TV that other people are paying to send you, they'll be losing money. But that is not all: they claim that, if you use that bandwidth to access anything but that paid content, they'll be losing money. And even that is not all. No. They claim that if you don't use that Internet bandwidth to access anything at all, they'll be losing money.
They claim that if the people paying to watch the paid content don't subsidise the ones paying but not watching paid content, they lose money.
They'll be advertising and selling a service they claim they'll be losing money on.
Internet service.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
surely with a tiered internet you're giving the few richest companies control of content on the internet as their ability to provide the fastest content impedes the ability of smaller companies to compete therefore reinforcing the dominence of the richest and forces the rest out of the market. As I see it, what might seem to be initially a good idea for new content technology could very well end up resticting the diversity of content.
Don't let the promise of more golden eggs tempt you to kill the golden goose.
We NEED net neutrality more than we need VoIP people! QoS can wait.
Example:
Free Speech.
Specific loop holes and ignored violations have been added during "maintenance" as they were "needed", some were rolled back, but the base policy is still there on paper.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Why don't you get back to me again in a few decades when everyone uses high resolution video conferencing and downloads high definition TV shows and movies on demand (free, pirated, pay-per-play, and/or DRM'ed with built-in commercials... one way or another, it'll happen.) With 4+ people in a household sharing a connection, a 25-megabit pipe would bottleneck pretty damn quick, and that's without giving any consideration at all to future yet-to-be-invented high bandwidth applications. Just because YOU can't see any use for extremely fat pipes doesn't mean that such uses do not exist; and those people who intend to fully utilize their ungodly connections of the future will feel the pinch if ISPs decide to start selling their bandwidth twice.
My idea on net neutrality is the following.
A consumer should be able to mark his packets as high/low priority, and the ISP should treat them as such. If a consumer marks too much of his traffic as high priority, it should automatically get downgraded to low priority.
Which packets that should be prioritized or not should be completly up to the consumer and his programs. The ISP deciding which network traffic gets low and which gets high priority is a big no-no.
If someone wants to use his priority bandwidth to transfer bittorrent files that is his buisness. He just won't be able to use it for VOIP.
The current TCP/IP protocol already provides the bulk flag. 10 years ago it wasn't used because it was expensive for the hardware, but with todays more intelligent routers that already do packet prioritizing, it doesn't seem that hardware is the issue any more.
The biggest polluter in the country is the US government, by the way.
It's not that I don't believe you, but you wouldn't happen to have a reference for that lying around, would you?
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
"Net Neutrality"
Digital Discrimination or Regulatory
Gamesmanship in Cyberspace?
The regulatory regime envisioned by Net neutrality mandates would also open the door to a great deal of potential "gaming" of the regulatory system and allow firms to use the regulatory system to hobble competitors. Worse yet, it would encourage more FCC regulation of the Internet and broadband markets in general.
The Internet is the success it is today because the FCC did not regulate it. Let's not screw that up.
Thats all well and good except that the barrier to market entry and not government created. They are fundamental to capitalism. Since it costs initial capital to enter a market, a company can not enter the market and be competitive immediately. There is a reason you or I couldn't start making cars that ran on butter tomorrow.
"Monopolies ONLY occur due to government licensing."
Ridiculous beyond comprehension. Learn about economics and its history. See: John D Rockefeller and Standard Oil. In an unregulated system, the natural equilibrium is monopoly.
"Not true. A provider of a product or service will provide what the consumer wants, including making sure that they abide by whatever environmental restrictions the market demands. Pollution is better covered by trespass and realistic tort laws than by regulation -- regulations of the environment today just move polluters around. The biggest polluter in the country is the US government, by the way."
First of all, a dichotomy between "tort laws" and "regulation" is patently false and intellectually shallow. Furthermore, pollution is not well-suited for tort law. Not only are harms that occur due to pollution often societal, but they are difficult to trace to individuals or companies as the cumulative effect brings about such negative consequences. Tort law focuses on private property and pollution harms the common good, public property and society in general.
"No, child labor has occured during the beginning of markets because the older workers were not able to adapt to the new markets. In most situations, children will be less productive if the government stops restricting how it pays employees. Minimum wage laws create unemployment because they rob uneducated non-productive people from finding jobs that won't pay them what they're worth until they prove their worth as employees. Many foreigners come into the country to work illegally for less than minimum wage, but quickly start earning much more than minimum wage once they've proven their worth."
Factually wrong. Its that simple. Child labor did not occur because older workers were not able to adapt. Its insulting that anyone would actually post such tripe. Children are not working in South East Asia for three generations because the older people couldn't adapt. Children didn't work in Western Europe and the United States from the start of the Industrial Revolution until nearly WWII because their parent's couldn't adapt. The children of children who were forced to work were also forced to work, are still forced to work at the same jobs.
"Go read Mises, Rothbard, Hayek and Goethe. You'll drop your Keynesian theories right quick."
Ah it all becomes clear. How about this - don't try and drape ideology as economics. The Austrian School is all about how economics 'should' be. Its horrible at predicting how things are. Its also fundamentally anti-labor (relying solely on the marginal utility to produce value has no fundamental origin of the system). There's a reason the Austrian school has been a fringe theory of economics in every society (except ironically under the National Socialists).
If the cretins that run the telco's had built the proper infrastructure in the first place, instead of selling the pig in a poke we ended up with, there would not be any need to allocate bandwidth. I hope the day comes that somebody pulls out all of the agreements that were made over the years and the telco's have to account for every one. It's all part of the congressional record, doesn't anybody read in Washington anymore?
" subsidizing the consumer's download costs of the same."
Pardon me, but isn't the subscription fee for the DSL/Cable Modem/T1/Microwave connection supposed to cover bandwidth costs?
Yes, you say?
Ah, thought so. In that case, net neutrality is the only thing that makes sense. What the providers can do is, hmm, let me think. . . oh wait, I know! How about offering tiered connection speeds? E.g., 768 Kbps/128 Kbps for a small monthly fee, 3 Mbps/768 Kbps for a slightly higher monthly fee, and 7.1mbps/1.5mbps or faster for a higher fee?
What, providers already offer tiered services, you say? Oh my fucking GOD, they already HAVE their solution in place! Here's a hint Verizon/comcast/TW/Adelphia/Cox/Rogers/Etc: how about realizing you offer tiered services (or if you don't already, OFFER them) then you have your solution. Don't pile on yet more fees. If your subscription prices don't cover the costs of your infrastructure, then you need to revisit your pricing structures to begin with.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
regulations, which brings us back to it won't work without them. And "insurance" for what? If there's no regulations, there wouldn't be any penalties of note for them to break in the first place, so not much need for insurance other than fire insurance. And as to public versus private land, again, historically, a lot of examples where private concerns who "owned the land" just dumped willy nilly. And none of that addresses child labor laws, workplace safety, etc.
It does no good if all or most (really, I am forced to speak *most* generally on this topic) the business ignore any workplace safety, you can take your labor down the street and almostbigco inc has the same lack of caring.
I realise in the real world there are exceptions, there are some voluntarily concerned and well meaning businesses, but taken as a general topic and to an endgame, I can't see how you will stop the giant greedsters from taking over, short of periodic violent uprisings and heads on pikes. You either have some thought out regs or you don't. If you go the route of regs, you will never have this theoretical "free" market. How about the stock market? With no regs, how would you ever hope to beat the corporate insiders trading? It would destroy confidence in the market (already low) virtually overnight.
Myself, I prefer "fair" market concept, some minimum but very well enforced market regulations and business regs. I think it could be greatly fixed/enhanced by disallowing the concept of a career full time politician or governmental worker inside the bureaucracy, but that is another subject entirely.
You won't be able to eliminate human weaknesses or vices, so all you can do realistically is remove as many ways as possible for them to be realised on the "potential victim" population.
Capitolism is the problem here. If those fools at the capitol would just leave these decisions to capitalists we'd all be a lot better off. Capitalists can admit their mistakes and try new things as quickly as consumers can walk away from their bad ideas. But with legislators and legislation it doesn't work that way.
All that infrastructure that you generously give to AT&T as "theirs" was built with subsidies from the tax-payers. So yes, the telco monopolies don't get to do whatever they want, but it is because it is not really their network alone.
Infrastructure needs to be either inherently socialist, or it needs to be so completely deregulated that anyone can set up their own set of phone lines, and start competing. It's the half-assed middle-ground that makes competition impossible and cements the monopolies.
I think ther WILL be new net without this QoS if things go bad. I would start such net myself and would try very hard to connect it with similar nets made in vicinity.
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
Lets not leave our internet to the filthy bastards :
1 - People/parties, who are seeking ways to make profit on expense of people, freedom in an unjust manner, try to put forth restrictions and laws that are beneficial to their particular interest can not just outright come and declare martial law, feudalism, monopoly and such. They would be fried on spot.
2 - Instead, they find politicians who are willing to deliver what they need.
3 - The politician gets funding and support from the interest party, spends this money (or uses the support) to get publicity for votes, and wins the election.
4 - The politician is in now power. Now it is time to pay back.
5 - As the politician cant just come outright and declare that s/he is going to pay back 'the fellas' for supporting him in a direct fashion, s/he prepares filthy laws, practices that are in fact harmful to the nation than it is beneficial for the interest group.
6 - The law, practice is disguised in other veils that are more welcome and positively looked-upon by the society - variations of security, nationalism, 'betterment' of such 'industry' to provide more jobs and etc.
7 - The law passes and now practiced nationwide. The result, naturally, comes up so that the interest party in step 1 is making more money, and as a result getting more influence.
8 - It so happens that after a time, nothing goes contrary to the interest party's wishes, as they gain exponentially bigger influence in that recursive spiral.
So. WHAT IF, the internet, the people, the 'lore' holding corporations that helped build the internet as we know it, WE came forth and injected ourselves to this equation in step 2 ?
What if, google, microsoft, ebay, paypal, linux crowd, open source crowd, poured money to put forth representatives in the house ?
What if we manage to get enough influence to set things right, in a fashion that they have made the internet possible - freedom, easy accessibility, being open to anyone and everyone, being equal to the extent that nothing have been more equal in world history, and over and above all local, regional interest groups, hamperings and politics ?
Read radical news here
There are none so blind as those who cannot see...
Why do you think the christian Coalition supports this stuff?
most of you seem blinded by the rhetoric in exactly the same way as everyone was about the war in iraq, global warming becoming "climate change," etc. When the governments want to TAKE AWAY FREEDOMS they don't do it by saying "we're taking away your freedom" - they do it by saying "we're going to free you."
That is exactly what is happening now. Right now I have a 70 dollar DSL modem, and with that modem I can choose whatever the hell ISP I want. If I don't want to run windows and play by Bellsouth's rules, I don't have to - I can go with the ISP I have chosen who DOESN'T filter my packets, censor my usenet access, and basically try to protect me from my own selfish interests.
"Network neutrality" is the first step to "network neutering." Once you have set the precedent - once the bills are passed that congress can set the rules for the internet, what is to stop them from taking the next step? They are free to attack anything the press can rally public support around - they can "protect the children" by making sure "public nuisance" sites like MYSPACE or the PORN sites or anything else they don't like get low priority, and they can do it through force of legislation.
Then I WON'T have the freedom to choose an ISP that ignores those QOS header strings and gives me whatever the hell I want - because they're bound BY LAW to restrict my access along with everyone else's.
"Network neutrality" isn't about freedom. What we have right now is freedom. Network "neutrality" means "we're going to legislate for you in the public's interest." You think they'll stop at defending the turf of the giant megacorps with plenty of money for lobbyists? Hell no... they won't stop until they've built the great new firewall of Amerikkka.
You must be an idiot to think I would click on a GNAA link.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Suppose instead of being able to call anyone in world for a fixed fee on you cell phone becuase fo carrier agreements to help each other, you had to pay an additional toll each time you crossed a carrier or your call was downgraded at each juntion. Cross enough carrier boundries and you might not recevie an adequae connection to converse. As it stands today, when you call Aunt Martha in Sarasota FL from Bellvue WA, you cross many networks but you never see fees added and service down-graded nor does Aunt Martha. But on the 'net', unlike telephone connection guarantees, there is no guarantee you'll even be able to connect--the bandwidth to the lowest tiers might be so limited that most connections simply time out and fail! After all, not only is bandwidth apportioned, but I get this bad feeling it will eventually lead to connectivity being effectively apportioned as well sicne each connection consumes a portion of that scarce bandwidth. More than two HTTP GETs at the same time might result in a being 'slahdotted'. We'll be back to the old dark days of AOL, when AOL users couldn't access the whole net. Big conglomerate content providers restricting access to content and media channels? It is a successful model for the RIAA and MPAA, so expect it to propagate to the net.
Dear Bram,
Good job on BitTorrent, but as far as I'm concerned that was almost nothing more than you being in the right place at the right time. If I'd been unemployed, idle and particularly inspired, there's no reason I couldn't have written something like that before you did.
And it also doesn't mean that your opinion is any better formed than Joe Random Slashdotter. In fact, since you're the *creator* and not merely a *user*, you're going to experience the disconnect that artists have between their audience - you'll never truly know the experience users have when they use your software. It's like Bill Gates commenting on the price of Microsoft software when he's never had to figure out how to work the cost of an Office upgrade into his monthly budget.
The wisdom of the crowd, the several-million people who actually *use* your software every day, says that net-neutrality isn't bad, and that a tiered internet can only make things worse for everyone. The last thing internauts need is another coalition of large companies screwing over their customers without remorse.
I guess it's not your fault that journalists think that you (or pretty much any "celebrity" that they interview) think you're an authority.
...as being part of the pro-net-neutrality coalition. See:
http://www.savetheinternet.com/=members
Yet a number of posts have claimed they are. Can anyone provide a reference about these orgs' official positions?
(Note: "EFF-Austin" is not the same as the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation.)
FWIW, I'm with Bram on this issue.
Government regulatory involvement will only increase the chance of either censorship or value-destroying inflexible rules down the road. We got this far without government restrictions on the shape of bandwidth and quality-of-service commercial arrangements -- and there are as yet no actual (as opposed to theoretical-in-some-darkly-imagined-future) victims of non-neutral network practices. So the "we must regulate now to save the internet!" position looks like irrational histrionics to me.
free market equals unfettered exchange of goods or services across all borders with zero regulation or tax on the transfer, and zero regulation on what exactly the product or service is.
I understand it, I just don't think it is all that wise a move, based on what I have written elsewhere in the thread. I want some minimum consumer guarantees and warranties, I want some rather good environmental general protections codified into law so that companies don't get to "choose" whether ot not to grossly pollute or sell hazarzdous or defective or posionous products based on this quarters profits figures, and I am a nationalist so I want my neighbor and myself to have our elected government to do what is in our best interest, especially as it revoles what is commonly called "the middle classes", and to not to fixate on what is some transnational corporations best interest or some foreign nation's best interest.
I know the latter can be construed differently as to what is "best" based on opinion and tastes, that's why I think we need *some* regs and we can hassle the details out as we go along and do different things. To me it is about some fair compromises and some natural order of reality concepts, otherwise known as common sense and taking the generational "long view" of things, which is what I do personally in my outlooks and opinions usually. for example, I am a conservationist and environmentalist, but not to an extreme point of view that we should just cease all human activity so that the slugs and cute bunnies can thrive at our expense. I am a human, I get ot exist *too*. It is inevitable we as humans will have an impact on the planet-so do all other species. I think it is fair that we recognize that and try to always do better, not to de-evolve and do worse or even maintain some nebulous status quo of crapping in our own nests.
It is beyond the scope of a single post to come up with all the little nuances there, so I will leave that part alone.
What we have now is competition. Where do you live? I live in the VERY rural south where we JUST GOT DSL and have never had cable (and probably never will). And yet I am now free to choose between Bellsouth (which requires me to use windows or a mac and their special software) or I can choose dixie-net (whose name servers and routers "protect" their users from many sites the local christian groups don't like) or I can choose from the ISP I have now (which does none of that) or I can choose another local provider (who I liked for sometime, but whose service has gone downhill) - the list goes on. I suspect I have at least a dozen different ISPs I could choose from even here in the middle fo nowhere - all accessed via the same cheap dsl modem I purchased with my own money.
Making users pay for usage means users pay more - there's already plans like that: I like ahving a fasst pipe so I pay more for 3MBps service instead of the much cheaper 384k connection. But "net neutrality" removes incentive from one side of the equation: those who offer high bandwidth services and have large customer bases and lots of free cash. If Google doesn't want to pony up for Bellsouth's tarriffs they have plenty of mo9ney to spend on building THEIR OWN NETWORK to operate in parallel with the other major backbones and peer at local points - they can offer this peering to ANYONE (except Bellsouth and the others who would charge them if they could) and so have even more INCENTIVE TO COMPETE with those old school telecoms!
Why do you think teh fucking CHRISTIAN COALITION wants congress to get involved with routing the packets on the internet? It's another way for them to make sure THEIR BRAINWASHING MESSAGE gets through whilew providing an avenue for their lobbyists to shut down all that "bad stuff" they don't like!
All "net neutrality" does is open the door for congress to decide what gets routed where. There would inevitably be "special exceptions" in any such bill so ISPs could filter out spam and all that other "wasteful" or even potentially "offensive or dangerous" content, which means they would then have one more tool to use against sites like MYSPACE or amateur teen kingdom, or any other site "they don't like" - and of course they do it in the name of "proteecting the children" and "supporting community standards." Only with "net neutrality" there's LESS CHOICE in the world - because my local ISP who now DOESN'T filter my packets and "protect me" would have no choice - I'd have to live wiht the same NEUTERED and "safe" and "innoffensive" internet as all the other sheeple.
Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater...
"natural backlash against your proposed MEGABIGCO"..
that's why I mentioned the "heads on pikes" deal, it is what we have seen so far that happens once big gov/big business etc get overly huge and powerful and once they become "the same thing", then that's it, it happens, a big collapse usually preceeded by some heinous tyranny, you then get a violent backlash,the heads on pikes scenario, then we build the same system again.
We've been going through this cycle for a long time now and I don't see it changing anytime soon because we are more or less the same humans we were thousands of years ago, we just have higher tech now. And we go through the cycles because people who want it all, all the money, all the power, etc, enter business and politics and work their way up.
All we can do is try and keep it regulated a little and watch it doesn't get out of hand. I am in favor of a semi free market, comonly termed today a "fair market", I am not much of an anarchist at all, I don't think it can work with so many predators out there. It would be nice if it could though!
The only thing that is absurd are the statements that people like MR B.C. make once they sell out completely. It is amazing the contortions we put our reasoning through (and truely believe) when there is financial gain involved.
why doesn't that apply to the federal government?
I remember when the internet wasn't so large and easy to access. We all got along fine... who cares about all this? if they make using the 'net cost prohibitive then people will just find better and cheaper ways to link their computers. I don't need some big telco to wipe my ass for me
--we can make our own backbones.
P.S. the telcos and carriers have no leverage because if they deny google access to their networks then all their customers will drop them.
It really is funny reading all these comments in favour of government regulation. You all sound like socialists. What happened to the talk of "the internet can route around bottlenecks?"
I really find it amusing that as most techy types tend to be all for venture capital startups, and business ideas etc, but now are actually asking for regulation. It will come back to burn you I guarantee.
Instead you should be arguing for more open telecommunitcations and cable industry and removing regulation.
-- Cheer, Cheer, The Red and the White.
If you post a story that is contrary to he status quo, it never reaches the front page. If you post a comment you are then modded down. Are there any sites where minority opinions are actually allowed ?
Let's make a little scenario of different points of view :
The ISP/Network wants :
a) more customer attracted to their networks , which they obtained by lowering broadband cost.
b) more customers equals more revenue streams, significantly reduced risks, better looking company
Yet at the same time they claim they are paying the price of bandwidth intensive users (who were invited by them btw) They don't want to scare them away with per-giga , but don't want to raise the broadband flat monthly price either.
They also are bothered by the prospect of people sharing, but so as long as they pay for the line it's not really troublesome.
The Content provider wants:
a) total control over revenue from the service/virtual goods they sell
b) as many customers as possible
Yet they indirectly and signficantly benefit by the relatively low cost-of-broadband, because this helps customer jump on the inet bus. Network operators know and they want to tap into this benefit directly, bypassing the content industry by charging the line customer directly.
One better remember that they BOTH want to reduce consumer surplus ; the internet you are enjoying now is TOO GOOD according to many, even if it is technically and economically possible to run it the way you know it ; production cost of bandwidth is going to -decrease- in the future, compression technology will make more content avaiable for less bandwidth, caching technology and efficient realtime mirroring (bittorrent et similar) are going to make the net experience even better , but not more intolerably expensive for networks. Also charging customers more for their broadband will become possible once a big customer base is installed.
We shouldn't summarily discard the true and tested method of having the investor pay for advertising, which is the model that made terrestrial TV possible before cable and satellite ; consider also that some satellite radio are still using advertising (even if reduced when compared to "free" tv/radio) and will continue to because it's a good revenue stream.
It's not about making internet possible or sustainable, it's about exploiting it and its users even more, that's the real target of network and content companies. Bathing in DOM is not only nice, some thinks, it's an imperative to some people.
"I most definitely do not want the internet to become like television where there's actual censorship... however it is very difficult to actually create network neutrality laws which don't result in an absurdity like making it so that ISPs can't drop spam or stop... (hacker) attacks.
BBC:And would he feel comfortable if a media company using BitTorrent did start seeking network priority for its data?
"It depends really on the nature of the whole thing... I'm against net censorship. However when you're talking about large file transfers going to very large numbers of people there frequently are significant costs involved... (the media companies) are frequently bearing a lot of costs already today. They make some stuff available and pay for bandwidth on it so it's just a question of the download costs as well as the upload costs.
The rest is mostly Adam Livingstone's opinion. Included are the notion that bit torrent is mostly used by "pirates" as if only big media is capable of producing content worth sharing.
Saying Cohen is in favor of tiered internet is a stretch at best. Twice Cohen told the reporter he does not like "censorship" which could be defined as slowing others down at the expense of packets for those who pay the tolls. Moreover, it contradicts most of the kinds of things he's said in the past. Looking quickly at his blog, we find nothing quickly. Too bad. Looking at his wikipedia entry, we find:
Regardless, he is outspoken in his belief that the current media business was doomed to being outmoded despite the RIAA and MPAA's legal or technical tactics, such as digital rights management. ... In late 2005 Cohen made a deal with the MPAA to remove all links to illegal content on the official BitTorrent website. The deal was with the seven largest studios in America. The agreement means the site will comply with procedures outlined in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Sounds to me like he wants nothing to do with the MPAA dummies and would not like the Cachelogic deal if all other P2P is shut down or even slowed. His concern is with stopping all the spam and DDoS flooding from Windoze computers not keeping you and me from trading free files. That's censorship.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Are there any sites where minority opinions are actually allowed ?
Not when the task of moderation is assigned to the majority. :) Welcome to democracy.
What you have to look out for is companies that are not being run honestly
I'm sorry, but history has proven time and again that the shortest path to the top is "bending the rules" because it's easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission...
There is no honesty in business. None.. It's business not religion or a morality play.
Taking the easy shortcut is natural human behavior.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Sounds like mob rule to me. I guess I prefer capitalism.
Thanks, dada21, for trying to rationally and logically detail a more honest and clear view of Free Markets and the Austrian / Agorist / Anarcho-Capitalist models.
The worst part was the criticism that the Austrian model has consistently failed to make accurate predictions, yet its deductive logic with regards to the Business Cycle and centralized authoritarian mandated interest rates / fiat currency have consistently proven true.
The basic human flaw behind socialism is the megalomania of wanting to "make things right" on a grander scale than any one individual has knowledge or pretense to fashion. Everyone wants to play God, rather than learning how to steward themselves and their private property first.
FREEDOM! FOREVER!
Not only do we know of Bram Cohen's sad case of assperger's, but know he's also proven that he's a 'tard.
Good on you, motherfucker.
Read The Myth of RF Interference by David Reed (yes, that David Reed).
Basically, we use spread-spectrum software defined radio (ala GNUradio) to connect with multiple nodes in a truly P2P wireless mesh-network.
But there are. There's the email delivery problem, as well as providers which block ports essentially for their convenience, with no oversight (not just SMTP ports but also e.g. web ports). While that would be fine if there were a free market, and you could just pick a competing provider, that's usually not the case when it comes to a high-bandwidth connection. Providing high bandwidth connections to homes requires regulation for various practical reasons, which results in semi-monopolies. What those semi-monopolies are allowed to do with their control over household and business connections needs to be regulated. The only question is exactly how.
Something similar applies as you go further upstream, into the Internet cloud itself: Tier 1 providers are an oligopoly which also benefit from regulation that allows them to do what they do. Once again, the question isn't whether there should be regulation, the question is what the regulation should be, and what rights and protections customers should have.
While I share the trepidation at what new legislation might bring, simply leaving it to the market isn't going work, because the market isn't even close to being "free". The reason this is coming up now is because big corporations are actively looking to consolidate their competitive positions now that the Internet has become so central to the economy, as well as looking for ways to replace profit centers that were undercut by the Internet. Sitting back and hoping that they won't do anything nasty and won't abuse the power that they've been granted by existing laws is hardly rational, either.
I don't know about you, but I don't want to pay some premium to have a packet sent over an express link only to have it dropped by some other router.
You must be an idiot to reply to the trolls in the first place.
The simplest example of this is the escalator problem: economists had a hard time figuring out why anybody would walk on an escalator - their cost-benefit analysis didn't work out.
This comment intrigued me... I tried searching it down, and the only relevant hits were references to this Slate article about the economics of walking on stairs vs escalators. Steven Landsburg is an interesting guy, and has some nice articles on the pricing of coffee, popcorn and free internet... I'm surprised I hadn't come across this "Everyday Economics" secion before... Thanks for getting me onto them.
A side point, though; this article doesn't seem to be what you're mentioning, or at least, it seems to arrive at the opposite conclusion - that people do use a standard cost-benefit model, only with different benefits... Is there another reference which you were thinking of?
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
This is an important issue. Our natural tendency is to form hierarchical societies, with a few thought-and-action leaders, and large flocks of mostly compliant followers. Television is a technology whose 1-n broadcast architecture is perfectly suited to being a top-down control communications medium for such a hierarchy. "Iraq bombed the towers".
Need I say more on that?
A neutral, peer-to-peer internet has the potential to allow a human future where the power of hierarchies can be mitigated by free and open competition for our attention from competing compelling individuals and groups. Yes, if their rise was unchecked, these individuals and groups would themselves become rigid hierarchies over time, but the point is that an architecturally-flat, n-to-n, neutral internet provides a fair tournament field where "may the most effective, focussed, supported hierarchy (on a given jurisdictional or economic topic) win." The hierarchies that prevailed in such a game would be appropriate and responsive, and generally constrained to civilized behaviour. The governing or prevailing hierarchies would be the product of the "free will" of constituents possessing unbiased knowledge.
Allowing the internet to become a 1-to-n broadcast architecture like television, is like letting the currently prevailing hierarchy control and tilt the playing field. Control-directed communications and directed mass opinion formation are the PRIMARY TOOL for the perpetuation and expansion of hierarchical organizations. Allowing any small group of such organizations to control the medium of communication grants them permanence and corrupting levels of power.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
how is that sloppy journalism? was he supposed to extend his example to "...or buying music from iTunes in California, or buying music from iTunes in Luxembourg if you're in the EU, or buying music from iTunes in Toronto if you're in Canada, etc."?
what a retarded criticism.
Look no farther than Japanese cell phone net service to see what you would lose when you lose neutrality.
There is a new site called R25.JP heavily advertised in Japanese subways now. I think they have a free magazine for finding jobs.. anyway the site says you get free news, free ring tone downloads, free horoscopes etc. etc.
But you are still paying your packet fee which is not cheap. At least not if you have the most popular provider, NTT DoCoMo. The free ring tones and other services require you to register your unique ID built into your phone so they can track you. The news all sucks, it's tabloid stuff with stock quotes inserted. Put another way, I built a little program so I could read books that are past their copyright terms, on my phone while on the train (you can't browse from the memory stick, doh). Everything is great but it is costing me $30 to read a free book. Maybe more. Everything has a price but the things you usually get are still free, though they suck and ruin your privacy, while your fair uses cost tons of money, and you are constantly being drawn to for-pay services. Like last time I tried to look up the time of the last train and how to get home.. I really wanted to know and figured the freely posted schedules must be online but no, you get drawn into signing up for one of a number of monthly billed services which I don't want! What is this crap. I have over $200 per month bill for a single mobile phone and I don't do shit with it.
Thank you! You're right on target in saying that many people approach economics based on what they would like to believe rather than trying to measure what is there in reality and try to understand it. This is perhaps worst in people whose political ideology is centered upon economics, be it "anarcho-capitalists" like the ones you're responding to, socialists, libertarians, or others. At best, these people may try to cherry pick a few examples or indicators out of all of economics that seem, superficially, to support their viewpoint, rather than skeptically examining whether the idea can consistently explain most or all of the data available. I suppose one could apply a slight modification of the old saying about statistics, these people rely on the data only for support, not illumination.
As a scientist, this approach seems completely backward and misguided to me. Economics is something that happens in the physical world about which objective, quantitative measurements can be made. Thus, it seems reasonable to follow something like the scientific method, letting systematic, empirical analysis of real data guide your understanding of reality rather than a priori philosophical musings. Of course, doing it correctly the scientific way is hard, complicated, and limits what you can say with confidence, so it's probably not very good for pushing simplistic political ideologies or making quips on slashdot.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
There's a reason the Austrian school has been a fringe theory of economics in every society (except ironically under the National Socialists).
That is a dirty lie. Ludwig von Mises was targetted by the Nazis. His apartment was raided by the Gestapo and he barely escaped to Switzerland
Where are my mod points when I need them?
Sig erased via substitution of an identical one.