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Lessig On Net Neutrality

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the tubes dept.

nanojath writes "Lessig delivers the final word on net neutrality. Read it 5 times to absorb the densest, most content-rich pronouncement that Wired will deliver in 2007." From the article: "Those who oppose network-neutrality regulation should also oppose... regulation of [municipal broadband,] last-mile broadband's most important competitor. Municipal competition won't kill commercial broadband any more than Linux has killed Windows. Yet it could change the business model of last-mile broadband, just as Linux has changed the business model of Microsoft. If there's going to be a Linux-like miracle to counteract innovation-threatening broadband business models, then, at a minimum, miracles must not be a crime."

5 of 101 comments (clear)

  1. Standard Oil by Erioll · · Score: 3, Informative

    Standard Oil was the reason for the introduction of Antitrust laws in the USA, not AT&T (Bell, whatever). Yes they got hammered by them, but they were not the first, nor the ones that prompted their creation in the first place. What, you thought "Esso" was just a funny-sounding name? Ess-O. SO. Standard Oil.

    1. Re:Standard Oil by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      Actually, it was the railroad industry that spurred the Sherman Act, not the oil companies. They just got hit with that hammer. The federal suit didn't start until 16 years after the Sherman Act was passed (1890).

  2. Re:Microsoft? by Simon80 · · Score: 2, Informative

    You're the one who's grasping at straws here (for an example of needless MS bashing), not him. Did you miss the fact that Lawrence Lessig was part of the group of regulators that decided what to do about Microsoft's monopoly abuse? This wasn't needless MS bashing, it was a comparison between that regulation situation and the current regulation issue with broadband telecoms.

  3. Re:i'm worried by SP33doh · · Score: 3, Informative

    wait, I thought fiber prevented constipation.

  4. Re:Net neutrality is SMART by mc6809e · · Score: 2, Informative
    The argument that competition can somehow spring forth out of the last mile is based upon the fallacy that someone will string a whole new set of lines to homes.


    In the early years of telephone, there were literally hundreds of telephone companies competing against each other. You might have 10 different companies sharing space on a telephone pole.

    The federal government then came along and decided to "bring order" to the telephone system in 1918 by nationalizing the entire telecommunications industry, with national security as the stated intent. AT&T become a government protect monopoly.

    Of course later on they changed their minds and decided to break up AT&T, which created a huge amount of competition for national telephone services and drove doen prices.

    The trouble was that the local monopolies were never deregulated and broken up, so have near zero competition now.