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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?
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!
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)
The Supreme Court ruled on this some time ago - common carrier status doesn't apply to internet service providers offerings because their offerings are considered to be "information services" rather than "telecommunications services" under the Telecommunications Act of 1996. That's not to say I don't think they *should* be considered common carriers, but under current law they're not.
The Court's opinion can be found here. (PDF file)
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
they can afford a 10% drop in their profits
Great. So google shells out 10% of their profits to help comcast. Then they shell out 10% of their profits to help ATT. Then they shell out 10% of their profits to help AOL... When does it stop?
When did capitalism become so communist? If comcast needs more money then it should charge its customers more, not demand companies who have no connection to comcast's network at all to pay them more money.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
In fact, the same can be said about everybody who has been "against" network neutrality. Cisco has the most to gain because they make routers and... guess what... all those QoS things that the telcos propose will require them to buy new routers.
Thus far, everyone against net neutrality legislation has had a profit motive. Most of the people against it do not, though some (like Google) have a "we don't want to bleed red" motive. Most folks want net neutrality because a lack of net neutrality allows big telcos like AT&T who have lots of end users to strong-arm smaller companies like hosting providers and similar for what amounts to protection money to avoid having the performance of their customers' access to those end users artificially degraded. The result will be less availability of services, and a gradual compartmentalization of the Internet by ISP, and eventually a complete breakdown of the power of the Internet to serve the consumer.
Net neutrality should be mandated. As for future technologies, the LAST thing we ever want in the future is a technology that would regress us back towards a pay-per-bandwidth system. As a consumer, I won't do it (which is why I don't have a data plan on my cell phone). I want to see MORE swing away from pay-per-[insert unit of measurement here] and towards flat rate services. Flat rates are good for the consumer because they encourage people to try new technologies that otherwise would not be affordable.
Would the iTMS be here if we had to pay our ISP per kilobyte for those downloads? Doubt it. Would we have things like Google Video/YouTube? Nope. In fact, I would say that all of the companies that are actually innovating in the technology space (as opposed to leaches like Cisco and AT&T that do pretty much the same thing year after year, only faster) benefit greatly from net neutrality.) When those companies benefit, innovation increases, and the consumers ultimately get cool new technologies that simply would not exist if companies like AT&T had their way.
Of course, flat rate services are the last thing AT&T and friends want. They'd like to sell those downloads themselves. They'd like to be the only ones who can afford to do so just like with their cell phones. Too bad for them. They can take my net neutrality when they pry my DSL modem from my cold, dead hands.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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.
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).