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US Lawmakers Propose New Net Neutrality Bill
An anonymous reader brings news that Net Neutrality legislation is making another comeback. A new bill, sponsored by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), would make ISPs who fail to provide service in a non-discriminatory manner subject to anti-trust violations. From the NYTimes:
"'The bill squarely addresses the issue of the enormous market power of the telephone and cable companies as the providers of 98 percent of the broadband service in the country,' said Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge. But broadband providers and some congressional Republicans have argued that net neutrality legislation isn't necessary. The broadband market is becoming more competitive and net neutrality regulations could hamper investment in broadband networks, some Republicans said during a hearing this week."
That Google are apparently now stepping up a gear in their fight against these ridiculous NN issues.
John Conyers is an African American and he has represented a district in Michigan that is predominantly African American for nearly 40 years. He's probably thinking more along the lines of race than anything else.
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That's just from a quick read-through. This is the New York Times?
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
For the eleventy-billionth time, ISPs do NOT have common carrier status, nor do they want to be, specifically because if they were a common carrier, they wouldn't be allowed to pull stunts like this.
They'd rather pass the buck to their customers. They do this in their terms of service where you agree that you are liable for your actions. It's why many ISPs respond to "John Doe" subpoenas. They don't want to be held liable. Under a common carrier system, they wouldn't be held liable no matter what you did.
There's DSL now, but it costs the same price for much lower speed. I'd like to have options, That situation is actually MUCH better than many, many people in the country. I have slow, expensive DSL at my house. My choices are to use that and accept whatever they decide (which thankfully, they've not imposed bandwidth caps or any throttling yet, but the reliability of the connection can be spotty sometimes), or if I don't like that I'm SOL. Even if I went back to dial-up the only company with a local access number to me is the same company that I get DSL from.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Hi, welcome to thinking about taxes. People making $32,000 a year have a nominal marginal tax rate of about 25%. Rich people have an effective tax rate of about 25%.
Until understand the difference, don't bother talking about taxes publicly.
Effective tax rates by household income:
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8885/EffectiveTaxRates.shtml
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
In the '90s, Clinton deregulated several industries. Among them: commercial power, media, and investment banking.
Current situation in commercial power: deregulated markets are seeing huge increases in rates; there is little-to-no new-plant build, the infrastructure is crumbling, and brown-outs all over the country are likely to be necessary within a decade unless something changes.
Current situation in media: there are 3 media companies, owned by even larger companies, that provide something like 85% of all media in the United States. They focus on profit and entertainment over truth and Real News. They peddle non-issues like Wright and Fake News like WomanWithHalfGallonSilliconBoob stories. Faux News is awful, but CNN and MSNBC aren't much better. ABC is owned by Disney. NBC is owned by GE. CBS is owned by Viacom. About 40% of Americans still think that Saddam Hussein had something to do with Al Quaeda. And some ridiculously high number believe God created the planet and the universe and everything on it 6000 years ago.
Current situation in investment banking: investment bankers invested in sub-prime high-risk mortgages. They used their investments as a way to boost their image to stockholders. The sudden drop in housing values had one firm almost going under, saved by the Fed, and others talking about the apocalypse coming. CEOs of these companies are walking away with millions while thousands of Americans that were sold a dream of low mortgage payments (they're to blame too, but they're the ignorant ones) are losing their homes, and it's dragging down the whole economy.
Tell me again, how is it that deregulation helps?
Well, competing on the free market was supposed to bring the prices down, _but_ only as long as certain preconditions are met. The whole free-market theory is based on the assumption that the market situation has:
1. well informed buyers making the choices, from
2. a choice of perfectly interchangeable products, from
3. many suppliers for each product
Basically it's like the market for, I don't know, almost anything in the 18'th and most of 19 century. Or like the market for sliced bread or orange juice nowadays.
Unfortunately, much as the some try to pretend that if they ignore reality it will go away, all three are trivially easy to subvert by a monopoly nowadays. E.g., by making products depend on each other, it's trivial for a monopolist to subvert point 2, and thus raise the entry barriers to the point where point 3 collapses too. Add a helping of FUD, and you've subverted point 1 too. That was Microsoft's recipe for example.
The recipe used by ISPs may differ in the details, but it's still at best a mockery of what "free market" was supposed to mean. E.g., to take point 1 alone, when was the last time you knew exactly what you're getting for your money from your ISP? They fight tooth and nail even against telling you what the usage caps are, and it took a massive effort to even find out that they're throttling stuff. They simply refuse to say what they sold you, even after you bought it. Any pretense that the customers can make an informed comparison dies right there. E.g., point 3, doesn't seem to be the case in most of America.
So, unsurprisingly, a sad mockery of the free market doesn't produce the same results as the real thing. Same as if I were to run around with my arms stretched pretending I'm an airplane, I wouldn't actually fly.
So, well, it was kinda predictable in this time and age. A market abstraction which actually worked like that two centuries ago, now needs government intervention to stay anyhere near the status where those self-balancing mechanisms work at all. Otherwise, if you let corporations have it their way, eventually they'll find a way to subvert and pervert the whole thing into a non-functional carricature of its former self.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.