Slashdot Mirror
Lessig On Net Neutrality
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."
I'll give up on regulation banning network neutrality when the telcos and cablecos would give up on their regulations and contracts that ban other people from competing against their monopoly.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
net-neutrality will only lead to a network that never gets better
And a non-neutral network will? How exactly will (indirectly) forcing me to pay more for Vonage or Skype over the cable/telephone company's VoIP get these networks upgraded?
However if true innovation is encouraged, we will see a system that uses very few wires and increasingly uses wireless broadband.
And maybe someday, someone will innovate low-latency wireless. Until then, it's not a replacement for wired connections.
it's also not a replacement for capacity. Seems to me that over the new several years the core will move more into fiber and the edges will move to wireless...
Its easy to bulldoze a consumer. But they might think twice when taking on a municipality who has its own staff of lawyers.
So the telcos will be competing against an opponent who isn't motivated by maximizing profit. This means the telcos will have to compete on features, and choking the internet chicken just isn't one of those features that will make consumers switch.
Save the Music; Save the World at http://www.TuneTriever.com (Our latest Android game)
I think it's interesting that you are using power lines as you example, but I'll stick with it. To extend your analogy, without network neutrality the power company can charge your appliance manufacturer a surcharge for use, and if they decide not to pay it then your refrigerator and washer/dryer gets a tiny trickle of electricity and is reduced to near-worthlessness.
You clearly don't understand the situation, like most people who come out against network neutrality. The companies who are pushing this did not create the internet, did not create it's standards, and do not own the land that they are using to bring the internet to you. The internet is a "common area", not a market. There is no "free market" here unless you want to make it truly free, in which case I will charge Verizon $400 for the FIOS line they just ran under my property, payable immediately and monthly. Also Charter, you owe me another $400, pay up. Then these two companies can then negotiate with every single other homeowner in the city as well. But wait, we don't allow that (and rightly so) because it would ensure that no one ever gets broadband and stifle innovation. Instead, we grant Verizon a local monopoly and allow them to use our easements; in return they are supposed to stay away from doing exactly what they are proposing, which is using their power to bone us out of features because we have no choice (hey it's them or the cable company, that's hardly a free market).
Also, power lines are a bad example because they work just fine for their intended purpose and are regulated.
I would rather see the government force the carriers towards network neutrality. They were awarded a monopoly by the government, and can't complain about regulation. I am usually a free market person, but in this case, I would like to see the government enforce the status quo. Once Wi-Max is mature enough to give people options, then maybe the carriers can have some freedom.
http://bgcommonsense.blogspot.com
Linux was able to succeed as a collaborative effort because of cheap, commodity PCs (whose performance increased constantly), the Internet, a common desire for a freely available operating system, and remarkably good project management. None of this required capital beyond what was readily available to any one player.
With broadband, the network neutrality issue comes back to the idea of common carrier status. This is important, because the companies delivering this traffic have been granted a monopoly on service explicitly. What the large ISPs are trying to do is to eliminate common carrier status while retaining the monopoly. Allowing that would be a disastrous mistake for the public.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Your argument might be true, except for one problem. At the moment, there isn't private competition.
As far as I can see, last-mile information providers want it both ways. They want the subsidies and safety of a power company, and they want the profits of a hi-tech. So far, they're getting it, too.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
State run monopolies always have two advantages over any private corporation. State run monopolies can easier push through legislation to make it harder to compete with them, and state run monopolies can always make up for inefficiency, poor planning, and higher operational costs with tax money.
And yet, there are in fact government or civic programs that die, or never grow large enough to persist. Markets have their mechanisms for obsolescence, but they're not the only mechanisms.
I am not against rules to help poke and prod competition forward, but setting up state run and tax subsidized networks is not the answer.
There's a developer's mantra -- "right tool for the right job" -- that really ought to see more use in discussion of politics and policy. "Privatization is always the right way to go" is about like saying "Java is always the right choice."
When a service that provides a huge amount of utility to society has trouble developing into a commodity, sometimes we do in fact set up state-run enterprises, and sometimes, it works rather well as a platform for further social and economic development. And the truth is, having left things in a private state of affairs for the last two decades doesn't seem to have produced any real competition when it comes to basic network services -- not to mention advancement of those services has been exceptionally limited. There was various legislation to encourage monopolies to open their networks to others who wanted to sell services. The privately owned networks reacted defensively and made it difficult. This is where the "open network" philosophy that's driving many of the municipal network initiatives comes from. The private approach hasn't worked. The private sector is far more interested in rent-seeking and clamping down access than innovation. The only apparent alternatives are public subsidization for companies building new infrastructure (which we also tried, giving millions to telcos to lay fiber and new networks) in hopes that having several different infrastructures might produce competition -- or public networks, on top of which private providers can truly compete.
It's not that different from the idea of having a public road system, over which many private operators can offer shipping or transportation services and compete absent of the kind of fear and complications that having a competitor own the roads would produce. Frankly, I'd like to see more of our utility networks move this way, but AFAIK, packet-switched natural gas isn't in the picture.
Tweet, tweet.
I might be misguided but frankly I don't trust the telcos. Verizon's CEO has said many times that the pipes belong to him and has indicated he's pissed off because everyone's making money off the Internet except him. I can see his point. Afer all, he's the one that owns the pipes.
I wouldn't be so opposed to a non-net-neut world if I could be convinced the telcos weren't running a gnarly scheme to make my ISP bill look like my cell phone bill.
The net has been so succesful perhaps because it was designed and developed in large part, not by private companies, but by scientists and engineers in an academic environment who were mostly employed by the government. Profit was not their goal.
But if my cell phone company had developed the net, my ISP bill would probably list every site I went to that month and I'd be charged extra for things like email, SMS, MMS, streaming audio, etc., These would all be separately billable services. Voice would be charged per minute, data would be per megabyte, and I'd be nickel and dimmed for everything.
DARPA was not a business. They were not out to make money. The designed a system for maximum efficiency and easy growth.
Look at how the telcos have handled communications. For example, phone systems don't even have, nor have they ever had any intention of having, something as simple as DNS. If the telcos had had control over how the Internet evolved you'd be typing in Internet IP addresses simply so they could sell you access to a white pages directory.
Maybe I have it all wrong but when I look at their history I really don't have much faith in telcos. What worries me the most is that we're giving these companies a large hand in determining, not how the Internet will look in a few years, but ultimately we're going to be giving them a lot of power in influencing how it's developed later on down the road. I say we tread carefully.
Lessig sounds like the typical poster here. When looking for an example, bash MS.
Reading comprehension, dammit. He said:
1) he was someone who was only "reluctantly" on the side of the regulators;
2) Apple and IBM would have done the same thing if they could;
3) OS's inherently drive toward monopolization for standardization; and
4) it's natural for any company in their spot to protect their monopoly.
He then uses this example to suggest that competition from atypical sources (ie, Linux or Muni broadband in his examples) works better than regulation.
If anything, he's a MS *apologist* and monopolist coddler.
When corporations provide essential services, the possiblity for great evil exists. If government doesn't step in to protect the public interest, those corporations will take every opportunity to collect an ever increasing fee from their captive customers.
This is why things like the Sherman Act exist - to provide a counter-balance against unrestrained corporate greed. Unfortunately, our government seems to be unable or unwilling to exercise these tools to promote the public interest.
In the meantime, if you simply assume that every corporation is out to make every possible dollar in any way they can - you'll be right.
Freedom of speech is great as long as nobody's listening.
/Steps off soap box.
--Luthor ruling the USA via holographic president in The Dark Knight Strikes Again.--
The point being made is people hear what is said but noone really does anything about it. The machine just rolls along while we here on slashdot and digg and various blogs talk about all this and do nothing about it. The awareness factor is limited only to the tech savvy crowd (many on here) who on allot of levels control information. I have seen very few instances where people are actually posting petitions or doing anything to show the dissatisfaction. Blogs go up but there really is no one united effort to focus the voice of the people toward the Govt to address our grievances. Just a bunch of divided voices and individuals voicing opinions who will often get outed as crazy. Larger numbers make a larger difference.
If we take our voice into one central place and focus it at the Government they WILL listen. We out number them. They want our vote. As long as the 2 of the 3 branches of Govt are reminded that they have the axe of constituency voters hanging over their head they will listen. At this point they are paying lip service and doing under the table deals. We just need show that they have more to fear from us in terms of our voice and the resulting action that just posting on social sites. I am working on a number of petitions that deal with Government issues and laws important to constituencies all over the nation. Once they are finalized and written I will post links up. But I am hoping we can all rally behind that and show the Government we are serious about changes in the things we are seeing now. Corporate influence on Govt in general is no different than what religion was in the dark ages to the Govts of the time. The only difference is the lack of brutality.
To offer tiered service is just an excuse for the corporations to limit what we can see on the premise that the content provider must pay for bandwidth. We just need to fight that tooth and nail with our voice. Make sure the public in general (non techies) are very aware of what that is and HOW it affects them. If they are aware of how bad it will be for them then more people will start to react. Preaching to the choir never gets it done. Preaching to the people who have no clue or don't see the danger has a much better chance of getting the message across and will spread. This is one method of creating a united front.
Exactly!
The only problem that needs solving is the last mile. It's the only place where a natural monopoly can exist. Net neutrality attempts to address some hypothetical problem with the backbones (that will never materialize), and doesn't address the last mile very much.
I'm a libertarian and even I advocate municipal ownership of the last mile. It should be licensed to carriers on a non-descriminatory basis.
There's no problem on the backbones. If Verizon or one of these companies tried funny business there, they would be dropped like a hot potato. It's not very useful to have an internet infrastructure if every other company refuses to carry your traffic. It would be suicide.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.