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FTC Says 'Slow Down' on Net Neutrality
Bushido Hacks writes "The Washington Post reports that the Federal Trade Commission has fumbled the Network Neutrality Act, again, as of this past week. However, the FTC defended its actions saying that their decision was not a give-in to the big telecom and cable companies. Instead, the FTC report urges caution on Network Neutrality Regulation. While this news is disappointing, the FTC's decision appears to be thought out and a message to remind people to not let the subject of Net Neutrality be abandoned by the general public so corporations could undermine the interest of consumers. We discussed the row this created, but with constant stalling tactics being employed here how long will it be before net neutrality opponents craft their own legislation?"
Your idea of the market players regulating each other seems sound enough.
My interest lies elsewhere, though. We have an election coming and numerous candidates have already declared intent, raised millions of dollars, and started building their platforms.
Will one of them have the foresight to make this more than a John-McCain-style-uninformed-soundbyte type issue?
If so, I am ready to start thinking about actually voting in this election. No one candidate can reverse the course of the war in Iraq, no one candidate can fix healthcare/welfare/the educational system. One candidate can, however, help America understand how high the stakes are for this particular issue.
Believe me... I would much rather see some sort of movement by all candidates to drop the party lines and attempt to fix the war and all the other issues I detailed above. Failing that, I guess I will consider voting for any candidate that shows an understanding of this issue because the impact on our future can be so incredibly far reaching.
The candidates now have some added time to weigh in on this issue. I'll be watching.
Regards.
I for one welcome this move. Many many problems have been caused by quick to act not very well thought out actions on the part of our government. The FTC said slow down lets make sure we don't fuck this up, that doesn't happen very often these days and should be welcomed with open arms. As a member of the US military I can say I am being directly effected by one of these rushes to judgment, maybe if the morons in the Hill had thought about shit first and made the intelligent rational choice instead of the "patriotic" one we wouldn't be in this mess. Just for the record I'm net neutral by leaning but I understand why they corporations want what they do. Here's the catch though they're very often regional monopolies. I've lived and live in a place where there are one or if you're lucky two broadband providers. If backbone and distribution access was free and open then we wouldn't be having this issue. Time Warner and Verizon etc.. would have already tried this and failed when many of their subscribers moved onto providers that didn't restrict their access.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
I completely agree with urging caution when it comes to regulation. However, the fact that they urge caution with network neutrality, but pretty much nothing else, suggests that they are singling out network neutrality.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
Something like that should mean that if they attempt to degrade your connection because of a payment a the website or service didn't make and that you are requesting, they are subject to a fine for each instance. So in cases of www.google.com being throttled, if 10,000 people are effected, they can sue for $5000 for each time they are effected, google can sue for 10,000*$5000 for having all those customers effected and the company involved would have to pay 10,000*$5000 to the government.
Lets say it slowed 5 visits down, that's 50,000,000 per incident or 250,000,000 to consumers, 250,000,000 to the government, and $250,000,000 to google. So unless they can make more then $750,000,000 from the deal in 5 turns, it is going to be a loss every time it is tried. But it allows for problems with the network that get fixed without demanding payment from third party people. The wording could probably be trimmed down a bit too. But it doesn't have to be complicated.
Exactly, which is why I specified a phased-array system, like the ones Vivato makes. Phased-array systems use multiple antennas and mathematical tricks to transmit/receive narrow beams of radio waves. (Each antenna gets a programmable signal delay. Pick the delays right and you can make a flat antenna act like the dish antenna of your choice.) The neat thing is that radio waves don't interact with each other, so you can run many beams on a single antenna array. The number of beams is limited by how many antennas and math chips you can afford, which greatly multiplies the data throughput. The systems would also use small dish antennas for the fixed building customers, meaning the customers don't see each other or other base stations, and nearly eliminating interference with omnidirectional wireless systems on the same frequency.
It would work, and goddamn fucking well. We'd have a new era of blazing fast networks, rapidly improving because of intense capitalistic competition. It would be just like the Alexander Graham Bell era of cowboy telecommunications: whoever can deliver charging whatever the market will bear. Why, within a few years, it will have worked so well that people will forget there was ever a problem, and take the new status quo for granted.
And then the professional administrators will take over the regulatory agency. Just like the post-Bell Great Wars era of telecommunications. They'll have inherited the three-ring binders that tell how to do things, figured out years before by people who actually knew what the hell they were doing, so the system will keep working, a little creakily but not bad enough that the people who could fix it care enough to.
And then the professional administration layer will be captured by the industry that is being regulated. Just like the AT&T era of telecommunications. Gradual consolidation and mission drift will mean the industry becomes dominated by a giant near-monopoly, at both the government and market levels. It will end up running for the benefit of the people running it.
And then a social crusader or a revolution will smash the near-monopoly into bits and pieces. A new era of cowboy whatever will start, bringing cheaper and better whatever to the grateful capitalistic masses.
And so on and so forth.
You see, human enterprise has cycles just like wild things do. Riotous growth, consolidation, stasis, fire and chaos, ash. The wheel turns. People like you come up with these oh-so-clever little plans for perfecting an enterprise, but what you usually end up doing is yanking the wheel around to the stasis phase.
If you should succeed, start planning the anti-trust lawsuit before the network neutrality laws go into effect.