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Spirited Exchange Over Net Neutrality
LukeCage sends us to The Register for a rabble-rousing account of a US Commerce Department official's talk at Supernova 2007. The article is headlined Bush official goes nuclear in New Neut row, and points out that the speaker, John Kneuer, is a former telecom lobbyist. To figure out what really went on in that session — whether it was a shouting match as El Reg reports — be sure to read Suw Charman's notes from the floor and Kevin Werbach's note (Werbach is the conference organizer).
One of the worst things about the last 7 years of US government has been the destruction of rational debate. Everything is now about opinion rather than about facts and its become perfectly okay to have a firm opinion, no matter how insane it is (Cheney and his "I'm not in the executive" for starters).
Its hard to see this changing in the next few years because it is actively supported by the media who much prefer a strong opinion to some dull and boring facts.
At least he didn't claim everyone against him was supporting terrorists......
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Wait. So you're telling us that the Register--that beacon of journalistic insight and integrity--is misrepresenting what happened at the event? Color me completely and utterly shocked. Why anyone bothers to read that piece-of-trash site is far beyond me...
This guy's the limit!
I appreciate the free market perspective on the net neutrality debate: the federal government has no Constitutionally-acceptable power to regulate the Internet. Net neutrality is just that: regulation where none is needed.
The biggest concern by geeks and techies is that the superpowers of the web will start restricting bandwidth for competitors' sites and promoting bandwidth for their own sites. Yet who are the superpowers we're worried about? They're the very companies that are subsidized or given monopoly powers by the State.
With a truly competitive marketplace, there should be almost zero concern over the net neutrality issue. Yet the FCC and the local State bodies are at fault for creating this fear for the marketplace -- they've created a mess of bureaucracy and redtape (and regulations and subsidies) that keeps competition out of the mix.
Sure, some techies will say that it is extremely expensive to enter the "last mile" market to provide services, but this is untrue -- if there is a profit to be made, companies will enter the market. In many towns, the last mile providers are given freedom from competition, and without competition, of course there is corruption.
Some techies fear the skies over their homes filled with cables and wires, but this too is a non-issue. In a town two cities over from mine (Libertyville, Illinois), there are 3 wireless providers who have leased tower space to provide very reasonable high speed access at a very low cost. All 3 of the companies battle one another because the village of Libertyville lets the compete -- and the pricing and services have both gotten better. Who complains about their services? Comcast, of course.
My town (Zion, Illinois) doesn't let anyone run a wireless service, let alone multiple providers. We have Comcast, and we have the phone company. Both offer unreasonable service at unreasonable pricing. I've looked into renting tower space, and the village has said NO 3 years in a row. They're concerned for what reason?
Let's stop the net neutrality debate, and bring up the proper debate: let's allow competition in a marketplace that has been "free" from competition for far too long. The cell phone companies are ready to roll out HSDPA as soon as the FCC allows them to (again, a mess of State intervention in a market that could be flourishing). The WiFi locally-owned providers want to roll it out, but the city States don't allow it. There are numerous ISPs who want to roll out very high speed DSL but can't because they're not allow to pull cable to the homes (and many local providers are more than willing to invest in this market).
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
Keeping the world safe from beancounters and gasp... users!
:fingers in ears:
didn't happen didn't happen lalalalalalalalalalalalala thereg is commie.
America needs an enema.
The past few months have seen heated debates over net neutrality in Israel. Corporations, the Knesset and the media giants have all taken sides on the issue. I covered the process in my blog.
they'd better check and see in a few weeks if they're still allowed to fly. :)
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
While I understand most of your concerns, somehow I don't think consolidating power to the federal government will improve any of the things you'd like to see fixed. What makes you think it would be easier to change the problems at a federal level, rather than at a state level? Even if you only fix it in one state, that's plenty of market for people interested in setting up wireless ISPs or pulling new cable.
It's also worth noting that, while many ISPs are chartered as telcos for various reasons (like the ability to install their own DSLAMs) and therefore subject to the regulation of state utility boards, simply becoming a wireless ISP does not require such regulation in places -- it's a matter between you, the FCC, and whatever body regulates radio towers in your area (usually the city).
Since the FTC doesn't think there's a problem.
I don't get it... why do we have to wait for the telecomm industry to screw us before we can do something? What happened to "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?"
Politicians (and the telecomm lobbyists who pay their bills) like to bloviate about the "free market"; can someone please point out what they're talking about? I've been looking for competition between broadband providers for a decade now, and the only thing I've come across is phone companies complaining that cable operators are horning in.
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
A Bush official would *never* go "nuclear"... they would go "nucular"! :D
Why take somebody else's word for it when you can watch the actual talk? Thanks to conference organizer Kevin Werbach:
k neuer-on-spectrum-policy-and-network-neutrality/
http://conversationhub.com/2007/06/27/video-john-
Summary: Kneuer makes a total idiot of himself, but remains generally calm. He is reciting Cheney-Rove talking points, not actually discussing the issue in any meaningful way. He declares American broadband policy to be a success. He also sets up a straw man argument, that any kind of network neutrality rule would be regulating the "rates, terms and conditions" of Internet access. And he simply assumes that regulating "rates, terms and conditions" (a phrase he repeats over and over) is Bad. This is to be taken on faith, and when the crowd doesn't get it his way (because they're not members of the Orthodox Chicago School of Economics Church of Untrammeled Monopoly Power), he just repeats himself.
He has to leave for the airport by the end of his talk. I wish the taxi had followed his model of deregulation. "Me and my boy Tiny here gotta inspect yer luggage. We have to take care of it, you know, so nothing happens between here and the airport. Hmmm, nice computer you have. You wouldn't want that to fall and have an accident. Let's see, that'll be $100. for safe passage. And gee, your plane leaves in an hour and a half. You do want to make that plane, right? That'll be a $50 fee for rapid delivery. And no, don't get off the taxi, because Tiny and I are going to Deliver this stuff, whether it's to you or not. We gotta pay for this nice taxi, you know. It ain't cheap maintaining a 1994 Plymouth on these streets." Yep, that's what he wants, the transport operator to take a cut of the goods. To (his term) "encourage investment".
the federal government has no Constitutionally-acceptable power to regulate the Internet.
Sure they do; the internet most certainly crosses state bounderies, and net neutrality is all about the telcos trying to make more money by throttling bandwidth for companies that don't pay. None of the major telcos are located entirely within a single state.
So while normally I agree that the interstate commerce clause is normally abused, this is pretty much interstate commerce and falls under the federal jurisdiction.
...being that actual rational debate happened prior to the current administration, let alone RARELY IF EVER in politics. Filibuster, anyone?
The rise in it lately is more a function of public behavior and attitudes in general than anything else. It is one part "ME generation", one part "Anti-Authority at all sane costs" (i.e. parents usurping schools, getting grades changed, coddling kids), one part "Anti-Knowledge", one part "there is no truth" (see the famous quote "it depends on how you define the word IS") one part a so well off state of public living that people must invent problems / take problems to the extreme / create extreme rhetoric to form an opinion on something they have no idea about just to make themselves feel better. All of which lead to uninformed, "you can't tell me anything", hyper-inflated-rhetoric nazi-comparison-filled arguments.
Well, the Federal government can (by statute) override local governments' ability to control their public property. Net neutrality and access to the last mile is something that local governments provide in exchange for the use of public rights of way by wired broadband providers. They (cable and telco companies) have lobbied quite sucessfully to force local governments to grant this access with no strings attached.
That doesn't sound right. Local governments have very little to say about the use of the airwaves. The FCC has repeatedly stepped in on the side of wireless system operators of many kinds, from cellular companies to ham radio operators and slapped down restrictions on antenna and transmitter installations. You could live in the most exclusive neighborhood just down the road from Bill Gates with the most restrictive architecture and construction covenants, and there's nothing they can do to stop you from putting up a 150' tower with a 20 meter Yagi. I know.
You can do whatever you want on your own property. But if you want to borrow a piece of mine (public r/o/w or airwaves) then I'm going to insist on negotioating some terms for my (the public's) benefit.
Really? How many do you think the city council should allow to plow up my street? 20? 30? That's about how many ISP's we have in our region. The city would rather have the existing cable and telcos wholesale their capacity to them than create such a circus. Particularly when the existing utilities have spent more money lobbying to keep newcommers (like cities themselves) out of the broadband biz rather than upgrading their own systems. And once these new ISPs pull their cable, the third will only have a theoretical 33% of the market. The 20th will only get 5%. For the same cost per mile, no sane investor wants to have an ever diminishing slice of the pie.
Have gnu, will travel.
Hurricanes? They provide opportunities for entrepreneurs to start up businesses rescuing flood victims for profit.
Local roads? Contract 'em out to private businesses. Let the incentive of tolls release entrepreneurial creativity. Hey, you could put an RFID chip in every car and charge a nickel every time drive down Main Street and a penny when you cruise down Mockingbird Lane.
Wars? Contract 'em out to Halliburton and Blackwater. (Oh, wait... we do, and look how well it works).
Because big, bureaucratic, oligopolistic, greedy megacorporations are always better at everything than big, bureaucratic, patronage-ridden government agencies. And the profit motive always automatically aligns itself perfectly with American moral values. As Engline Charlie Wilson said, "I always thought that what was good for our country was good for General Motors and vice versa."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I hate to break it to you, but the "noo-kyuh-ler" pronunciation appears in every dictionary on my shelf.
While you've got your dictionary out to verify, why not look up the word "metathesis" as well? Unless you walk around all day pronouncing "iron" as "i-ron", it's time to drop the whole "nuclear" issue.
Maybe Bush learned to say "noo-kyuh-ler" form former President Jimmy Carter?
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Was I the only one that got a headache trying to read Suw Charman's blog? I like to think I can deal with a fairly wide variety of styles when it comes to people just posting their thoughts, but good lord. I could read essays from third graders and see less sentence fragments. It seemed scatterbrained to me, and I just didn't walk away with anything other than a migraine after reading it.
Call me harsh or unreasonable, but it seems to me that if somebody is going to take the time to write about an issue - any issue - they should at least try to do so coherently.
Tell me about it. I like how people will sit and believe government officials over hardcore geeks who have witnessed the growth, decline, and rebirth of the telephone giants through the FCC and beyond. For fuck's sake, a series of tubes vs. people who spent the majority of their lives on usenet?
Christ almighty, at least let some of that time MEAN something! These people know what the fuck they're talking about! Net neutrality *protects* consumer choice!
+5, Truth
somehow I don't think consolidating power to the federal government will improve any of the things you'd like to see fixed.
He's an anarchocaptialist. He doesn't want power to the federal government, he wants no power at all and for everyone to do whatever they want.
There's still no explanation of how to convince rational beings to not select "backstab" when faced with the prisoner's dilemma "free market". Without some kind of oversight, selling poison-laced toothpaste is a rationally obvious way to make a killing.
The only way to assure net neutrality is to encrypt every packet and randomize the ports on all the new network protocols. This is true right now for some P2P and skype.
Given the current European policy on data retention, we should do it even for mail and instant messaging. Of course you should use sftp instead of ftp and ssh instead of telnet, and your SMTP sessions should go encrypted, but that is not enough. We should rewrite every protocol and make it look like IPSEC.
This way we would avoid the following problems without the need for regulation:
- Government censorship (the China firewall becomes less efficient)
- Traffic Shaping (ISPs shouldn't have the right to decide what protocols can you use).
- Multi tier pricing (the ISP could discriminate by IP, but not by service)
- Traffic analysis (for example the European Data Retention policy. If all packets look the same it becomes much more difficult)
A technical solution is always better than a political one.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
Net Neutrality is a bigger issue than just the Last Mile. You know of any plans to build a trans-continental or trans-oceanic wifi connection?
Eventually, your data will have to run through some middleman's wires. It's practically inevitable unless your data is going to someone with the same ISP in the same town. That middleman is going to sell his bandwidth to your ISP so they can send data to my ISP. I believe the term "common carrier" is what I'm looking for here.
If we let the free market forces do their magic, the middleman will sell the best service to the highest bidder. Where does that leave your locally owned providers? High and dry.
Imagine if all the bridges in the country were privately owned, and the owners were allowed to set prices based on auctions. Only those who could afford the premium price could use the bridge during rush hour, while everyone else would have to wait until the other traffic has died down. This becomes an even bigger problem if the guy that owns the bridge also offers their own freight and taxi services... ("Verizon vs. Vonage 2: QOS Boogaloo" anyone?)
You can say "well, with open competition, someone could build their own bridge and offer lower rates!" - until you realize that no matter what you do you will have to cross someone else's bridge eventually since not everyone uses the same ISP. The only solutions are for every provider to build their own global network or to enforce a reasonably level playing field through regulation.
You raise very good points, and I agree that once you get to the last mile it can work out much better - but that only addresses a tiny slice of the Net Neutrality problem. This assumes, of course, that such a thing as "a truly competitive marketplace" can actually exist in the first place.
=Smidge=
If FedEx could do what the existing broadband providers are asking for, they could get a contract to serve your neighborhood and then negotiate a back end deal with WalMart. You wanted a delivery from Nordstrom's. Sorry, that's going to cost you (or rather, Nordstrom's) extra. You didn't want to dress like a dork? Sorry, you should have moved into a town that has a provider with access to classier shops.
Have gnu, will travel.
Now honestly, do you think it would work, do you think it would be anything more than a catastrophic mess, much the same as what you are proposing with the communications networks, but hey, as an Australian, go for it, you will be self destructing access to your communications infrastructure and you will be giving every other country (apart from the third world ones) a massive technological competitive advantage ;).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Related to this is the annoying habit of the most zealous ideologues who post their opinions on web forums to end their unsupported, often ludicrous, assertions with FACT!
It's a fact that the word zealous and zealot are insulting terms used by astroturfers and PR flacks to smear people opposed to them. It's namecalling and people dip to it when the facts are not in their favor.
In this case, the Bush administration intentended to create a "marketplace" of two vendors. Each person is supposed to be able to chose between a cable company and a phone company for broadband and market pressures will make each behave. The most obvious flaw is that the policy has failed to provide even that level of competition. It's performance is poor, even by the FCC's convoluted "broadband" collection statistics, where everyone in a zip code has access to broadband if a single person there does. The second problem is that both parties all obviously collaborating with the powerful entertainment industry, where government "protection" has also led to a catastrophic lack of competition. Finally, the position is not even philosophically sound - if you believe in market forces you will open up the public servitude and spectrum to real competition. They can't have it both ways, you either regulate for the public good or you allow the public to mind it's own business. After a century of regulation, the former monopolies have a tremendous advantage that was built at everyone's expense, and should be as carefully watched as former Soviet companies until real competition emerges. What the impartial observer finds in Bush policy that it's designed to protect select private business, a private-public cooperation favoring few at the expense of all others. There are plenty of names for that kind of thing, Fascism, cronies, but the lables don't do it justice. The contraditions and poor performance are evident on their own, despite the Bush administration's best ability to eliminate facts from the picture. The contry that invented the internet should have the best public network in the world.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The chairman of the Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday recommended against additional regulation of high-speed Internet traffic.
n ternet_neutrality_ftc
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070628/ap_on_hi_te/i
Looks to me like the Federal Trade Commission is enforcing some lack of regulation in the name of economic competition. This may have influenced the fear shown in the Bush guy's rant. They may be right, economically-speaking, but from an information perspective it's a terrible loss if net neutrality goes.
technical writing / development
What I don't understand is why Americans accept this bullshit. If anything like this had taken place where I come from, the government and the PM would have been fired and a new one formed. It would have been head line news and the PM would have had to show up in the news studios and defend it and probably been humiliated to the nth degree.
Here in the US, people bend over and take it all the way for then to turn around and ask "Again, please?" When are you going to realize that the government is for the people by the people and not for the corporation and fuck you people!
If this government is not a 2nd amendment moment, then all the bullshit about 2nd amendment is just a bad excuse to own some shiny guns.
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
I'm not certain that the marketplace should be the driving instrument of decision making. I mean to say, that when the idea of a free market is actually allowed to do anything of it's own accord, it is usually horrendous.
If left to the wisdom of the market, the Internet would not exist. It was thankfully not left up to the economy to build it then, but to the military and academia who gave us the protocols and hardware. Telecommunications companies would have you believe that they built all of the infrastructure without any assistance... But if you'd stop to think for a moment... WE paid for that too with subsidies, taxes, delivery charges...
For the last 50+ years Americans have been targeted by this totally farcical idea by politicians that have almost uniformly come from the private sector and KNOW that the market, as it exists, could not function for 2 seconds without the protectionist state baby-sitting and insuring that every corporation is subsidized, tax-breaked, and downright spoon-fed and mollycoddled by a loving nanny-state. Between politicians and Telecom CEOs the US is going to be left in the dust by the "Free" world where people aren't charged triple duty every time they refresh the page while looking at
I agree with your assertion that if there was true competition, net neutrality would not be an issue. However, many companies rolling large amount of physical infrastructure would not make economic sense, and would probably result in grid-lock for years. The way this has been tackled in the UK and Europe is by regulation strangely enough. The incumbent have been forced to open their access networks by providing wholesale access products to other providers at a commercially realistic price. For example with DSL, the incumbant provides the infrastructure between the end user and an aggregated pipe connected to the smaller provider, who pays for the port and the aggregate bandwidth.
Where, precisely, did the GP suggest consolidating power to the federal government? If anything, he argued for removing power from government across the board. I believe 'State' in "...mess of State intervention..." was used in a more general sense, not to refer to the states in the US. It's any easy habit to slip into reading political materials, but it can be confusing for people in the US who aren't as interested in political theory.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
Ah, you should have been around back in the 1850's! You think THIS is acrimonious?!?! We had Congressmen carrying pistols and knives and beating each other nearly to death on the Senate floor back in those days. Compared to THAT, politics today is a Sunday School luncheon.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Yes, different cities in different states.
Hell, you could be bounced out of state and back just to get to an ip in the next city. Not likely, but possible.
Hell, the mom and pop shop down the road might have there web site hosted across the country, or even across the world.
So this does fall under Federal law.
As for your fed ex example: Yes the government could regulate it the way you have in your example. It would be political suicide, but they could. By that same toke, the feds can also rule the net neutrality must be maintained.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
*sigh*...
Probably because the vast majority don't even know what Net Neutrality is, let alone that this conference took place, let alone further that such words were spoken at it.
Second off, don't you think that hinting at an armed insurrection over a telecoms legal issue (or much of what flies out of DC these days for that matter to be honest) is a bit extreme?
Seriously - the schmucks who blew up the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City back in 1995 were riding the same vapors.
How about you and I ignore the hype-happy drama-hungry media/"news" broadcasts, find reliable even-handed sources for it, and use the hard info we gather to actually start, you know, talking to those who may not agree with us on a given issue, and especially those who may not know about it. Speak gently, but intelligently. Stick with logic and avoid fallacies. Ask when you don't know. Ask why they believe that they do. Explain your position in non-technical terms. Go into detail only when you have to. Be friendly about it. Refuse to shout. I'm not just speaking platitudes here... I live in Portland, Oregon (the bluest part of this here blue state), and I'm one of those Ozark-accented center-to-right-leaning nutjobs that people howl in rage about on the boards at DU (I have a blatantly pro-gun bumper sticker on the back of my vehicle, FFS). In spite of all that, I have yet to find anyone here in real life that shuns me for what I say on a given matter.
In this case? If the corps are all hungry to start hacking at network neutrality, then pick the most egregious corp and boycott them; explain to others (on and off-line) what you are doing and why they should follow. It is one of the reasons that Verizon will never get a dime of my money, in spite of FIOS in my neighborhood. If it is important enough to us all, they will likely listen, maybe even follow suit.
That's how change has happened in the past. Why not see if it can work this time too?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Sounds a lot like Slashdot, actually.
Actually it's not a second amendment moment, it's far more fundamental than that...
"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
Preamble of The Declaration of Independence (Nobody talks like that anymore)
Last 7 years? I'd say more like the last 30.
This statement is true, if all you've studied is the history of the U.S. for the past 30 years.
Political theater is as old as time and it's not worse now than at any time in the past. You'd do well to take a look at some of the political "cartoons" from elections around the beginning of the 19th century. Also take a look at some of the political deals that were being done.
With each new generation (in this case the post-gen-X crowd), people hit their late twenties (for some it's later) and become alarmed at what they see going on in capital hill. Why? Because they finally own houses, pay more taxes, have kids to worry about, etc. etc. They think their congress is the worst its ever been and SOMETHING MUST BE DONE! It was the same in the late 60's when the draft was on (as they say, all politics is local).
A cliffs notes version of the political history of the U.S. won't show you that it's always been the same - but a thorough study of the stuff will. Personally, the only productive consequence of this new-found political outrage I see from folks is that maybe, and I mean maybe, they'll haul their asses off to the ballot box next election rather than talking about how bad things are inside the beltway, and then changing the channel to whatever staged "reality show" they're following for the time being.
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
I think the roads would actually be better in a freemarket.
If a business was going to fix a half mile stretch of road, do you think they would hire the company with ten three managers for every worker, pays above market rate salaries, provides retirements acounts at a loss, and tells them it will take at least 6 months of construction to get it done?
I think they will give it to a company that can do it in two weeks for one quarter the costand they might spend the extra money providing non-metered parking spots and increased security so customers can use their business.
IOU one (1) signature
I don't buy that argument. The network traffic may travel interstate, but the facilities that carry it are pretty much stuck under (or hanging over) cities' streets.
And it goes from one city, to another, crosses onto AT&Ts network (for example) and eventually gets to its destination. Remember, its the AT&Ts that want to charge website operators. Do a trace route sometime, and see how much of your traffic goes over one of the major telcos lines.
I'm not really sure what the point of the rest of your post is, I only commented on whether or not the feds can have authority in this matter, I never said which side of the debate I was on.
I see two possibilities,
1) The US system gets messed up and nothing happens. (I don't believe you'll do that!)
2) As has happened more and more, geeks "fix the problem".
We have the technology to hook 100 homes together in a private net (wireless/lasers/cans and string), and then pool resource to buy access to some of Google's dark fiber. If you are paying 40 dollars a month each that's 4000 dollars a month pooled, and you become more interesting to a clever investor. (Did Google realise they don't need the last half mile to *everyone* when brain dead competitors would create a new solution...)
Of course it's gonna really mess up the tracking and tracing and bugging when millions of these little networks all without properly maintained logs are passing data back and forth...
&Deity bless the "Law of Unintended Consequences"!
Second off, don't you think that hinting at an armed insurrection over a telecoms legal issue (or much of what flies out of DC these days for that matter to be honest) is a bit extreme?
You do realize that 'taxtation without representation' was a major factor for the colonies to revolt, right?
There is no metathesis involved in pronouncing "tomato" as "tomahto" - it's just prononucing the vowel "a" wrong, not MANGLING the word like meathesis involves. Seriously, comfortable as "Cumftable"? That just makes you sound like an indred redneck and it has no place in any even semi-literary register.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
As I've always said -- if the State didn't subsidize the streets through hidden taxes and tariffs, we wouldn't be driving, we'd be flying. I have no doubt that streets would be better maintained privately (via turnpikes, toll roads, and business-paid advertising). At some level, I can understand the need for a government agency to pay for roads, but I don't think it should be the county or up.
You're fighting a losing battle here.
vegetable: vej-tuh-buhl OR vej-i-tuh-buhl
There's your multiple pronunciation through metathesis example. I only used "tomato" before because of the song.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Without some kind of oversight, selling poison-laced toothpaste is a rationally obvious way to make a killing.
That oversight is already provided for in a free market sense by all the various bodies within a given transaction. First, a consumer is "protected" from bad products by the point of sale reseller who carries the goods. Walgreens and CVS won't sell poisoned toothpaste, and if there ever was a toothpaste poisoning problem, you can believe that within 1 hour of the first reported deaths, private firms would start up a testing body to label products as safe. As we have it now, the FDA does a terrible job protecting citizens from faulty products -- government bureaucracies are easy to pay off and control by the wealthy few. Target won't sell lamps that aren't UL-listed and approved, and we didn't need any government intrusion into that testing standard.
Secondly, there is a great level of protection from the choices made of the masses. There is always some level of risk when trying a new product. In order to reduce the consumer's risk, suppliers and manufacturers have to take steps to protect their long term investment by making sure they've reduced that risk through trials and tests. Again, the government is not needed for these steps. If a newcomer enters a market with a product that is risky, there is a high barrier to entry for them to prove themselves. If a longtime company decides they want to lower safety standards, they do so at a huge risk to their investment and long term profit potential. Snake oil salesmen are not the norm in an unregulated market, they're a rarity.
Hmm...
"That to secure these rights, Upper Management is instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the Shareholders, that whenever any form of Upper Management becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the Shareholders to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Upper Management, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their profitability and sustainability."
Dictionaries document the language. They do not define it. Regardless, I'm sure we're all quite familiar with dialects and their sometimes interesting formations (such as the horror-movie-inspired kids who constantly run around axing people).
It should be perfectly cular that it was a cheap joke, only slightly above puns and limmericks. There was no need to go all loopy over it.
This huge beast the FBI has tracking your convos? Useless.
The entire world of child porn laws? Nil.
15+ years of progress in eliminating underground threats? haHA!
+5, Truth
The Interstate commerce clause is to prevent states from legislating themselves trade advantages and taking advantage of other US states-- sort of a "We're all in this together" idea. The Internet and neutrality falls perfectly well under interstate commerce's umbrella. There's the possibility (high probability, even) that one state's ISP would end up interfering with another state's servers*, and being as it's a transaction across state lines, any legislation to condone or prohibit such behavior would have to be done on a super-state level.
* (meaning ISPs and servers IN a state, not specifically RUN BY the state)
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
Hell, you could be bounced out of state and back just to get to an ip in the next city. Not likely, but possible.
;-). One of the very real worries is that the telcos will find a way to lock out the "parasites" (actual word from a local public discussion) such as speakeasy and force us to go through their monopoly service. Hereabouts, it's Verizon that owns most of the phone lines. It's quite possible that, if net neutrality is eliminated, Verizon could destroy speakeasy's business in New England by simply delaying packets to/from speakeasy addresses to the point of unusability.
That happens in our house, in a western suburb of Boston. We have DLS service via speakeasy, and traceroute shows that packets from here to mit.edu (11 miles away by road) go via er1.nyc1.speakeasy.net and vlan51.csw1.newyork1.level3.net.
Funny thing is that the ping time (typically 20-25 ms) is about 3 times faster than the "local" service that the two cable companies (Comcast, RCN) provide. Ping times to other parts of the country are also usually faster than with our neighbors' cable service.
Now, speakeasy is known to be a well-run, professional service (whose support people are happy to hear that we're running a linux firewall
(And no, I don't know what speakeasy's merger with Best Buy portends, either. Lots of people around here are sorta worried that we'll lose our only good ISP.)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Do a trace route sometime, and see how much of your traffic goes over one of the major telcos lines.
So how do you get that from traceroute? What I get is the names and addresses of the routers. In a traceroute that I just did (10 hops, three states), there's no recognizable telco name. It's probably because the telcos may own the wires, but at present they don't usually own most of the routers. But if you own the wires, you can easily insert an invisible bridge that "shapes" the traffic on its wires.
How do you get this information from traceroute? Or is there some other tool that will do it? I don't offhand know of any information in any IP packets that can tell you who owns the underlying physical transport layer.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
The whole Internet thing is and was really just a farce - it never existed...
.doc and .xls are standards, while in fact they are completely closed is another Free Market aberration. The lock-in they represent prevents consumers from choosing the best word processor or spreadsheet, rather without significant expertise and effort they have to choose the brand where they first put their data. Come to think of it, Microsoft's (and Intel's) licensing agreements are another example of restricted information. In general, people have no idea whatsoever what the costs of OS or CPUs are, because those details are hidden from them.
That's because the US has a Free Market, and the Free Market does everything RIGHT!!
So things were just hunky-dory with computer data communications before the Government-infested Internet came along and upset the apple cart. There were plenty of competitive services like The Source, Compu$erve, AOL, GEnie, Prodigy, and the like. Oh, I almost forgot about MSN and Advantis. They all interoperated just fine, and exchanged data with no difficulties whatsoever. Telecommunications lines were ubiquitous and cable penetration was increasing, so every household had all the bandwidth and access it needed, and many had carrier choice.
Let's get this straight. The ONLY reason the Internet succeeded and the rest of those names are dust (or completely changed) is because it was NEUTRAL!
One of those unappreciated facts is the the Free Market also only works with free flow of information. In order to be a proper customer, you have to know sufficient information about the suppliers' products. So you have to go back to the first piece of sarcasm in this post, "the US has a Free Market" and realize that it all went off into left field, right there. THE US DOES NOT HAVE A FREE MARKET. Nor is the first problem preventing Free Market with government regulations of the limiting nature. Rather it's because US suppliers almost always act to restrict the flow of information.
Again, US suppliers almost always act to restrict the flow of information. Talk about a few mechanisms... First there are gag orders on lawsuits, so we can't really know liability issues of some of their products. Next, there is refusal to communicate and interoperate. The line about AOL, Compu$erve, et al was obvious sarcasm, because NONE of them exchanged information until they did it through the Internet. For that matter, Microsoft's pretending
So reading as I write, I'll have to assert that the Free Market simply CANNOT exist without regulations, in practice.
First, it's in the suppliers' self interest to restrict information as much as possible, first off permitting only "good" information out, and second using information to lock-in their customers.
Second, in the short-term, short-term self-interest will always win out over long-term self interest. Besides that, if short-term self interest garners sufficient benefits in the short-term, it's entirely possible to destroy the competitor who takes long-term self interests into account. In this situation there is no long-term, merely one short-term after another. (IMHO that's what we're locked into, today)
So IMHO if Net Neutrality is cast aside, at least in the US the Internet will turn into the Balkanized pile of crap that was AOL, Compu$erve, et al so many years ago. Furthermore having surrendered what the Internet was really about when it started, the US will accelerate its competitive decline in the world marketplace and communities.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
(IANAL)
If there were a button I could push that would bring that about instantly I'd push it in a heartbeat. I'm confident that socialism has wreaked havoc on our road system, just as it does on education, healthcare, and everything else it touches.
Although since the property the roads were built on was obtained by theft, I don't think the government truly has the right to auction them off, so a better approach might be to attempt to turn over anything to previous owners of the property rights, and abandonment of the rest (allowing new people to claim it as property by taking over maintenance).
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
It's worth mentioning that if such an agency is required, the free market can create it without any force, coercion, or theft (taxation as we know it) involved.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Awesome idea! Hey, they should privatize the fire department and police force too! All this could be done cheaper by for profit companies because they can externalize cost in the form of letting people die. You are a fucking genius!
Case in point: stevia is not approved for use as a sweetener in the U.S., in violation of established standards of accepting products with a long history of use as "Generally Recognized As Safe" (GRAS). But then Coca-Cola decides they want to market a version of it, and suddenly the product is fast-tracked for approval.
In other words, the federal government protected Coca-Cola and other large companies from competition by startups interested in stevia, long enough for the larger, slower companies to take their time and finally decide to take the stevia market for themselves.
And along the way, the also protected the American consumer from the benefits of such competition.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Hear, hear. That said, it is also about the consumer's lack of choice in the last mile. Satellite isn't practical, and statistically speaking, in an area of average population density, it turns out not to be profitable to have two cable companies or two telephone companies. Many communities try it, and it always ends with either the incumbent buying out the newcomer, the newcomer decimating the incumbent and driving them out of business, or both companies getting so far in the hole that the government has to bail them out to avoid not having any cable or telephone service at all.
Take, for example, an average road in a suburban setting. One home every 150 feet on average. That means your average cost per household served is a booster amp every two households or so (due to distance limits)... maybe $50... plus half of the cost of the 300 feet of heavy duty RG-11 coax to run on poles or underground ($135) to the next cable tower, plus probably another hundred feet (average across two houses served by one tower) of underground RG-6 coax to run to the house ($66). You've spend about $250---the better part of a year worth of total cable revenue from that customer, and you haven't build a tower, hired employees, paid for people to actually run this cable, paid for the power cost of the distribution amps, etc., and this assumes that you have 100% market penetration on day one. Otherwise, you still have the same costs, but they are recovered from a smaller number of people....
Telephone is even worse than cable because you have to run either an individual twisted pair or a fiber all the way from the CO to the individual customer's premises. With cable, you're sharing a line for most of that distance, which results in much cheaper cost of providing service. You might break even after a decade.
Basically, the costs are so huge that it is completely impractical for new competitors to enter the market, and there's no real incentive for the existing handful of players to enter each others' markets and compete because it would take so many years to break even.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
"Political theater is as old as time and it's not worse now than at any time in the past."
Not only theater, but actual debate as theatre...filibuster, Obstructionism, quorum-busting, "slow walking", etc...
"They think their congress is the worst its ever been and SOMETHING MUST BE DONE!"
Very true. However, the "SOMETHING MUST BE DONE" is worse when lawmakers, congress start using it.
The only thing worse than "something must be done" is when they say a solution must be "comprehensive".
Can't even get a simple bill / problem solved without all the crap attached to it, let alone something that is "comprehensive".
"...I mean maybe, they'll haul their asses off to the ballot box next election"
What if there are no good candidates?
If 99% are scum, what does the 1% matter?
Why arent these corporations lobbying for net neutrality with heapload of cash they have earned from the denizens of "internet nation" ?
We made them, and its now their turn to protect what we, including themselves, have on the internet - a free community that is above and over nations.
this is time for their giving back to community. they should set up lobbying power and start lobbying in full force asap.
i know google is doing some, but it is not enough. all needs to move in and get on the same bandwagon. google and microsoft and others might be competitors in many things, but net neutrality is something that we all are on the same bandwagon.
do what you must.
Read radical news here
Wait, you think the business would bother spending money on fixing the road?
*laugh*
If they did, it would just be an excuse to raise tolls.
Normally, I don't really take sides on political issues, but this issue with Net Neutrality seems to be laissez-faire gone amuck.
Net Neutrality really means to the Bush administration:
-The government stays in neutral with regards to doing anything
-The telecoms neuter consumers' rights to choose
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
If enough popular idiots pronounce a word wrong, it becomes an acceptable pronounciation. From Wiktionary:
Clearly, it is not a pronunciation consistent with the word's etymology, as nuclear is derived from the word nucleus about which there is no debate regarding pronunciation. It is therefore logical to conclude that the latter pronunciation came about through common usage in culture as a variation on the original pronunciation dictated by etymology.
It has been conjectured that the reason for the nu-ky&-l&r variation to be so common is that the English language contains no other vowel clusters pronounced like the ea in nukl, whereas the words "particular" and "spectacular", for example, are examples of the fairly common pronunciation of the "cular" syllables found in the latter pronunciation for nuclear. See bartleby.com
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Do reverse DNS on the IPs of those hops. (Or use the switch that does that in the trace command)
You can also look up their allocations at ICANN.
Case closed, he is executive. That he has the tie breaking vote and serves as pres of the Senate no more makes him a member of the Legislative branch than the veto pen make the Pres one. It's part of this whole "checks and balances" thing that nobody in the executive these days seems to understand.
But the website operator I'm contacting might not have a direct connection to AT&T. So they have no business relationship and no means of charging the website operator for the use of their (AT&Ts) system. The website operator's ISP may have an interface with AT&T's network and have some billing agreement for bandwidth, volume and perhaps quality of service. Likewise, I have no direct connection with AT&T. My ISP might eventually route packets through their system, but that should only be subject to the same sorts of bandwidth/volume/QOS charges. If I happen to be doing business with a competitor of AT&T, they have no right to inspect the packets in order to assess such a charge against either the website I'm contacting or myself. That, in my opinion, is the essence of network neutrality.
Interesting problem (for AT&T): They might be able to convince the US Congress that they do indeed have the ability to impose just such a network charging structure and to do the packet inspection necessary to implement it. But tonight, I happen to be posting from a country where such inspection is considered electronic espionage. The next time AT&T executives travel outside the borders of the USA, they may find themselves served with arrest warrants. The same would be true if I were sitting at my home in the USA and contacting a website over here.
Does your plan fit into this quarter or next quarter's profits?
There is no nice word for people like dedazo. The phrase used by Orwell was "professional liar".
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
He must have been referring to you. Otherwise why would you consistently fail to reply to challenges to your imaginative lies, fantasies and fabrications?
On the other hand, if you'd like to point out where I "lied", I'd be happy to make amends or clarify.
BTW, that comment you link to is not as good as the one you used to use, where someone modded you troll. That one was much funnier.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
You do realize that 'taxtation without representation' was a major factor for the colonies to revolt, right?
No, it was one of many, many factors (and the taxes were proportionally far more crushing than anything today). The Declaration of Independence was a formal statement, but not an all-encompassing one. A look through the Bill of Rights will show you the major reasons why enough folks got miffed enough to take up arms in the late 18th century.
Also, what on Earth does Internet Tiering (or whatever euphemism they want to call it these days) by private companies on their own gear have to do with a rapacious and cash-starved government taxing commodities on second-class citizens (e.g. Colonists)?
Seriously - do you think it's worth taking human life over this issue?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Sure, some techies will say that it is extremely expensive to enter the "last mile" market to provide services, but this is untrue -- if there is a profit to be made, companies will enter the market. In many towns, the last mile providers are given freedom from competition, and without competition, of course there is corruption.
Sorry, but I just don't get this argument. Please explain further.
Now, you could use it for the sewerage system. Allow full access for all sewerage companies to homes, and you can have 12 sewer pipes running to every house. Nice free market.
However, this makes no sense, because:
- It's not gonna happen because it's too fucking expensive to build the pipes.
- People don't want the HASSLE of changing their sewerage provider every week.
- It's a complete waste of space and resources when you can just have 1 freaking pipe!
This is an infrastructure where there being ONE pipe makes sense. The same goes for internet/telephony connections. You want to see 12 separate lines going to people's houses? It aint gonna happen! Are you that naive? What WILL happen is what happens now, roughly. A handful of big companies will have near-monopolies, and might even eventually merge, causing a 100% monopoly. And that's even if ALL regulation is removed.
It's more likely that only 1 line will be going to each house, it makes VASTLY more sense to regulate that line than tell 10 other companies to rebuild the same goddamn infrastructe 10 times! Can't you SEE that?!
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Sure, some techies will say that it is extremely expensive to enter the "last mile" market to provide services, but this is untrue -- if there is a profit to be made, companies will enter the market. In many towns, the last mile providers are given freedom from competition, and without competition, of course there is corruption.
You should really take an Econ 101 course and pay attention to the part about natural monopolies. You can make valid arguments as to whether or not the last mile is a natural monopoly, but you have to concede that there is such a thing as a natural monopoly. And if a particular market is one that, given the supply and demand curves, tends towards natural monopoly, other companies will not enter the market, because there is no profit to be made, regardless of how much profit the incumbent company is raking in. Whatever company develops a leading market share will be able to undercut any new entrants (and still turn a profit while doing so).
I think a decent argument can be made that for basic internet service (and even for broadband in the 1-5 Mb/s range) the last mile is not a natural monopoly due to emerging wireless services. However, for fast connections (20+ Mb/s) we will probably be stuck with a monopoly or duopoly for the foreseeable future. If people come to prefer those fast connections (which seems likely), we're going to continue to need regulation in this area for a long time to come.
Wait, you think the business would bother spending money on fixing the road?
*laugh*
If they did, it would just be an excuse to raise tolls.
Let's look at relatively unregulated markets (sure, there are some regulations, but not as many as telcom).
Blockbuster video. For years when they were the only real source, they were expensive, and had outrageous fees. Over time, competition forced them to charge just $1.95 for a new release, and less for an old one.
Wendy's. Even with rampant government inflation causing beef prices to rise, they still manage to sell a $0.99 menu. Competition keeps them inexpensive, with fairly high quality meals presented at that price -- you couldn't make it yourself for that price.
Target. Quality clothing that is stylish, with prices that actually tend to fall over time rather than go up. Great return policy.
These are markets without much regulation -- and they flourish. I know the same would be true in telecom. If it wasn't true, you wouldn't have so much lobbying money spent trying to keep monopolies standing. Monopolies only exist when the State enforces them into existence.
In this case the government has a natural affinity with an unregulated Internet which allows for preferential treatment for certain content providers. Currently, television media is a useful tool for perpetuating news which has a bias towards the interests of certain large corporations, often these mirror the interests of government officials themselves. 90% of the media in the United States is owned by nine media conglomerates. They won't cover news stories that too much upset their collective interests. This is not some top-down conspiracy but rather the interaction of market forces for mutual benefit. Lack of Net Neutrality will provide for the option of "pricing out dissent." If the Internet is becoming more like television in it's utility for perception management, government and corporations will not seek out methods to hamper their ability to tilt the marketplace of ideas in their favor.
Blockbuster Video - never really the only source even in the 80's mom and pop stores abounded. The prices were mainly due to the outrageous prices that the MPAA charged for tapes.
Wendy's - Your first sentence seems that you think having mad-cow burgers would be a good thing. I would also like to call into question your definition of high quality. Wedny's, like all other fastfood places, make up the loses in other areas.
Target - now retail, how is this related to telecoms? It's a single place in a single location, now if there was a target or retail booth in everyhouse or a larger portion of houses, it might have ANY baring on the topic...
it's because most of us americans have been brainwashed by nearly everything that surrounds us(especially our families) into believing that the government can do no wrong. i used to have that problem with my father( and still do sometimes) though now he has finally stopped and looked around. another fact is that in america it's cool to be ignorant. the media, companies, and even our peers feed us crap and rather than checking it for ourselves we just accept it.
this was probably worded badly, and needs to be longer...but it's to early and my mind just crapped out.
Add to that of course they will continually raise road tolls, provide bill boards down every road, flash advertisements at all intersections (even if there are no cars coming they will make you wait ten minutes to watch the adds), there will be massive fines for any traffic infringements unless of course you are a part of management or their friends, some smart arse will figure out it is better to buy just the intersections and charge tolls on those rather than pay for miles upon miles of roads, and to cap the whole lot off you will have to pay multiple registration fees to all the different road holders whether you use their roads or not.
The truth is that all those government services that have been privatised are being done cheaper (as a result reduced quality, depth of services and even completely absent services) but we always end up paying far more (the greedy ass wipes and their demand for ever greater profits). How many times do you think the same lies can be told, after history has ample proved the opposite to be true, will be accepted by a gullible public. Name just one public service that has been privatised where the 'general public' paid less for better services.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/M/William.L.Megginson- 1/prvsvpapJLE.pdf
Basically unless there is a natural monopoly like with water and electricity systems are run more efficiently because there is competition and incentive to acheive better service at lower prices.
Look at what privatization has done to the price of broadband in europe.
IOU one (1) signature
The only thing you can truly say about first world privatisations are they are masters of deceit, and have became truly skilled at junk reports, junk statistics, junk politicians, junk journalism, perhaps just like investing in junk bonds, it is time to put that rubbish behind us. Just ask the retail customers whether they are paying more for less after a few years of privatisation.
Seriously save the B$ reports for the board meetings.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen