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FCC Commissioner Urges, Don't Regulate the Internet
Brett Glass writes "In an op-ed in today's Washington Post, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell makes a case against government regulation of the Internet, opining that 'engineers, not politicians or bureaucrats, should solve engineering problems.' With state governments pressuring ISPs to pull the plug on Usenet, and a proposal now in play for a censored public Internet, McDowell may have a very good point." McDowell is one of the two FCC commissioners who did not vote with the majority to punish Comcast for their BitTorrent throttling.
Because you own the spectrum and there's no longer a valid technical reason to grant it exclusively. Government granted monopolies on spectrum is a primary internet regulation someone that believes in free markets should oppose.
Laying cable and fiber in other people's back yards and public property is a privilege. Those granted that privilege must accept public regulation in return for the public servitude. Think about that for a while and you realize that the Internet is already highly regulated but the regulations do not always serve the public interest. Common carrier and net neutrality is the least the public can ask in return for exclusive use of public property. The public can and should also demand competition in wired service. Someone who believes in free markets would lower barriers to entry and use of wired networks.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Exactly. Internet service is provided to most people in a similar fashion to phone service.
The only regulation that we need for BOTH "internet" and "phone" should be total separation of content from service.
Cell phone companies can sell bandwidth and for chrissake quite counting each individual text message.
Untie the ringtones and make them like any other sound that you can download.
Internet providers should be held to the same "regulation".
If you provide bandwidth in any way at all it should be neutral to all content, uncensored, unfiltered, etc.
The law could be a very simple one: If you provide any sort of bandwidth for sale you are prohibited from messing with any content whatsoever.
You are also prohibited from partnering with any business that does "mess with" content. End of law.
I don't even think Comcast or whoever should be allowed to have a "Start Page" on the internet. It's anti-competitive bundling. It's bad. Everyone knows it.
I'm sure of the above, but truth be told I don't think (not sure) bandwidth service should even be a part of the free market. It's a utility. Just like electricity and heat.
We all know how well anti-trust efforts and deregulating the phone companies worked out: http://youtube.com/watch?v=I6nuwQmhrZ8
If it's going to be just 1 or 2 giant companies screwing us over, removing our ability to vote with our dollar, then I'd rather it just be government run, so we can vote with ballots.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
The USA isn't censoring Usenet... it's encuraging ISPs to drop an area that has become too much of trading point for illegal files. The ISPs are complying willingly because it's not been profitable for them to run, and most users won't miss it.
Still, services like Google Groups and EasyNews are still up and running. There's no threat to those as of yet.