Court Upholds Internet Deregulation

Internet Voting writes "Big telecom companies seem to have won big with the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling upholding FCC's ruling deregulating the Internet. Opponents argued that telecoms could now deny third parties access to their telecommunications lines and eliminating competition. From the story: "In its September 2005 ruling, the FCC relieved telephone companies of decades-old regulations that required them to grant competing Internet service providers 'nondiscriminatory' access to their wirelines in order to reach consumers.""

Comments

Fine... pay the government back, then.

[glindsey]

You want to deny everybody else access to the wires you laid on public easements, using grants, subsidies, and tax breaks given to you by the government? Fine. Pay all of the back leasing costs and taxes that were handed to you so you could establish your geo-monopolies everywhere. Sounds fair to me.

Re:Fine... pay the government back, then.

[krunk7]

Look, it's simple: either you believe in the free market, in which case deregulation is a good thing as it will open up the market that regulation is currently closing off, or you believe in fascism. It's that simple.

Yeah! that's telling them! Your either Good or Evil, Capitalist of Communist, good with God or a baby eater!

Don't be a dunce. There's no such thing as complete deregulation except in anarchy. In any system of government, local, federal, you name it any system of government there is regulation. And there is enforcement of regulations. That's what government is. For example, "You may not use monopoly status to leverage competition in other markets." This is a regulation that maintains free and equal competition, the very core of Adam Smith's capitalism.

I love how many self proclaimed capitalists and free market advocates fail to understand their founders work.
Here's some quote's from Smith that clearly outline his feelings on keeping big business in check:

• Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.
• People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
• As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.
• The rate of profit... is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin.
• The subjects of every state ought to contribute toward the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state ....[As Henry Home (Lord Kames) has written, a goal of taxation should be to] 'remedy inequality of riches as much as possible, by relieving the poor and burdening the rich.
• Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favor of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favor of the masters.
• We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations [that is, unions or colluding organizations] of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor above their actual price.

And my personal favorite:

"Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favor of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favor of the masters."

So yeah, buddy, I'm a Capitalist with a capital C. I advocate free and fair markets. And I, like the father of capitalist theory and the invisible hand, am not so dense as to think that deregulation, for the simple fact of being deregulation, is a good thing.

But you keep drinking that cool aid.

Fine with it...

[usmc0656]

I understand why a lot of you are upset over this, but at the same time see it from the company's perspective. They paid for the lines, the installation, the maintenance, etc... Then you have the government come in and say, "Well that's nice, but in the interest of "fairness" you need to let other companies who didn't drop a dime for the hardware use it...and take business away from you." That's like building a family business, then having the government tell you that you have to let a competing business use your facilities to compete against you.

But since we're talking about "big evil telecom" companies, no one gives a crap. You give them shit because they control the market, well yes they do...because they helped CREATE the market. This is business...there is no fair or unfair. If you don't like their service and can't get another one...you either do without or suck it up. You have no "right" to anything they produce.

Now for a dose of reality

[davmoo]

Its easy to get up in arms about this decision, and start poo-pooing how its going to lead to less competition. But here's the reality of the matter.

In 2008 there will be an election in the US for President. A good chunk of Congress will also be up for grabs. And unless something really radical happens between now and then, in all likelihood the next President is going to be a Democrat, and the Democrats will hold a majority in both houses of Congress. This is what happens when a Republican President falls to a 24 percent approval rating in the polls (and Congress is doing only slightly better).

Democrats are generally pro-consumer and love regulating things (Republicans, on the other hand, are generally pro-business, and like to deregulate). The first time one of the big telecoms tries to openly block competition, the Dems will be on it like hair on a gorilla. And even the telecoms are smart enough to know that.

Re:I can't wait!

[bmwm3nut]

It hit me then that the openness of the internet is under attack from many different vectors, not just on the net neutrality front.

Yes, you're right, however, I don't fear the loss off "free" communication like the internet currently provides. If we do get to a stage where only Hotmail users can talk to other Hotmail users, or only Comcast customers can see Comcastnet, or whatever, it will be just like the bad old days of AOL, Prodigy, CompuServe, even local BBSes. While the "internet" or whatever we call the "internet" today may turn into a walled garden, I'm sure there will be something out there (yet to be invented) that will allow us unfettered access. As first it will be only nerd friendly (like the early days of the internet), but it will catch on. Even look at how much "freedom" the Chinese have with the internet and that's with the totalitarian government doing it's best to curtail it. For example, look at where we are with wireless mesh networking. If something happened that made the internet not free, you can bet there will be even more research into mesh networking and then you don't even have to worry about the telecom layer, you (the user) control it all.

how long before

[Spiked_Three]

How long will it be before the phone company, and their physical infrastructure becomes irrelevant? Can the wireless networks now provided primarily for cell phones replace the copper wire that we are so dependent on any time soon? I sure hope so. I think the best thing that can happen in the long run, is for the phone company to shoot itself in the foot and generate enough interest to get themselves replaced. The sooner the better. Hopefully the power line companies see this de-regulation, and start using their infrastructure to bring internet access to homes. Then the phone company would have real competition. I hope. Then again, they could be like the clueless cable TV operators who seemed to be doing a real shitty job of it.

I watched a TV program the other night. It was an early 1960's version of what the future would bring. They showed handheld telephones (we have them), space flight to the moon (been there), instant food cooking (ala Microwave ovens), tiny refrigerator sized computers (we have more than they imagined) and of course, a telephone system with video. Every prediction came true, except the one the phone company has prevented. The technology has been there for decades, but there is no motivation for the monopolies to innovate. The entire world suffers stagnation as a result. Now, I'm not one to bash self made monopolies. I personally believe in some cases even though they are a monopoly they can be driven by market pressures to improve, but in the case of the phone company it has been an apathetic selfish government sponsored pig. I hope they die soon.