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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
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).
A Bush official would *never* go "nuclear"... they would go "nucular"! :D
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
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.