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Net Neutrality Seen Through the Telegraph
James McP writes "Ars Technica has a write-up on the unregulated telegraph of the 19th century, which gives a view into what could happen to an internet lacking any regulation mandating neutrality. The owners of the 'Victorian internet' used their control of the telegraph to prop up monopolies, manipulate elections, facilitate insider trading, and censor criticism."
Why do you think certain groups are so pushing against it? Telcos, news networks... It's no coincidence that the ones pushing to abandon NN are also the ones dealing in information.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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If anyone is qualified to make the call...
The bottom line is that you are being screwed. It's a mistake to interpret constitution as only giving us protection against federal government. Any entity with significant power over individuals must be prevented from restricting freedom of speech or any other basic rights that we consider important. ISPs must not be allowed to discriminate against any legal but unpopular content, or against use of particular protocols like BitTorrent. Companies must not be allowed to fire people based on private Facebook posts.
A lot of people seem to allow this to slip by, but the "free market" is composed of "actors", or PEOPLE.
When you remove law enforcement from an area people revert back to their "natural" state, robbing, pillaging, raping, and assaulting. For references, see looters in natural disasters, crime reports during blackouts, etc.
In the marketplace, without regulation, people with more power will perpetrate this in people with less.
People who provide internet services will abuse any way they can to gain more money, power, and control. (the same goes for software, medical insurance, mass media, commodities, you name it)
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"BadAnalogyGuy" is just so appropriate for you!
"There is only finite bandwidth available to everyone and one guy in his parents' basement can slow traffic for everyone else. "
"Shouldn't these users be forced to pay more for their extra usage or at least be throttled to the point they aren't causing physical damage to the entire system?"
Apart from all of that, you don't even know what is being talked about here. We are talking about REGULATING, CENSORING, and EVESDROPPING activities.
If you want to fix your Bad Analogy, you should compare this to allowing the turnpike authority to search the contents of every vehicle that enters their roadway, and also allowing them to steal and/or make substitutions for any cargo on any vehicle that enters their roadway.
There, I fixed your BAD ANALOGY for you.
Your whole argument depends on the premise that government regulation is always detrimental. This is untrue on the face of it. Government has a strong role to play in regulation, rule making, arbitration, justice, social justice, and defense.
OSHA regulations protect workers from dangerous work environments.
NTSB regulations protect travelers.
Our courts provide a venue to exercise our most important right, the right to redress of grievances.
Government regulation is a good thing because it provides the rules to which our society must adhere. Without these rules, a veritable free-for-all would occur. In a market with many players, this may be beneficial, but in a market of captive customers like we have in the American ISP market this can be very detrimental.
It's not even good enough to make the rules once and let things be. As we've seen countless times the rules need to be readdressed occasionally to adapt to new situations. Our founding fathers new this, and that is why we have the Constitutional Amendment process.
Historically, the only real "laissez-faire" founding father was Thomas Jefferson and pretty much all his contemporaries considered him a fraud and brigand. Government regulation has been the cornerstone of our country for almost two and a half centuries. To claim some sort of high moral ground because you oppose it in this one specific case is pretty sad.
"It's a service you pay for that an ISP can regulate however it wants."
No they are a regulated utility like the gas or the water. The gas company is required to pump gas through its pipes, they cannot pump salad oil or dishwater without getting into trouble.
"That you're actually arguing that an ISP has power over individuals is hysterical exaggeration."
I work from home and I need the Internet to connect to work. I have only one choice of ISP. My ISP has GREAT power over me. They can force me to MOVE OUT OF MY HOME or GET ANOTHER JOB if they decide that they do not want me as a customer.
"Somehow, people made do without the internet mere decades ago."
Somehow, that means that it does not require regulation? How does that follow? That argument can be used against the regulation of ANY technology.
The Internet and the gear that runs it is a source of Power to whoever runs it.
This power WILL be taken and abused by whoever controls it.
Take off your blinders and understand that our economic system and our society exist ONLY because there are government regulations to hold it together.
You speak of corporations acting freely but you fail to realize that it is the power of government that allows them to have this freedom in the first place.
You are INSULTING and WRONG to paint everyone who disagrees with you as hating free markets.
Again you FAIL to understand that free markets DO NOT EXIST without government regulation to keep them free.
Here let me fix one of your sentences for you:
"Yep, history sure has shown how pure, fair, reliable, trustworthy, and incorruptible corporations are. Uh-huh."
Uh, and just what the hell do you think the government is comprised of? Deities who are always neutral and never do anything wrong? It's made of people too, but they're privileged people who are making the laws, which makes them even more dangerous than the free market you so baselessly despise.
except the government is bound by a constitution, and subject to at least SOME form of public accountability.
And are you seriously comparing an ISP's rightful regulation of its internet traffic to robbing, pillaging, raping, and assaulting?
OMG HYPERBOLE, obviously that means my point is invalid, and that people aren't really being stripped of their fundamental rights to privacy and choice, that theyre not being defrauded, that freedom of speech is not being abrogated.
Could some of you stop giving the government so much power, please? We get it, you hate free markets and think government power solves absolutely everything by magic.
No, I believe in the government stepping on corporate toes, and the the people stepping up to the ballot box to make sure the government doesn't go too far.
Yep, history sure has shown how pure, fair, reliable, trustworthy, and incorruptible the government is. Uh-huh.
Let's ask the millions of jobless about which they'd rather have: ANY government beurocrat or the CEO's of AIG; shall we?
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The internet isn't a right.
equal opportunity however is a right. Since even minimum wage jobs now require online application, and you will not be allowed at all to submit applications on dead tree material to any place without nametags on the dress code.
The internet is just as fundamental to modern society as a telephone or vehicle, both of which, by the way, require a court order to be hindered.
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The key difference between government and corporate power: governments are ultimately answerable to their citizens, whereas corporations are ultimately answerable to their shareholders. That means among other things that corporations can and will ruin the lives of their employees or residents of the surrounding area (via pollution mostly) if it increases their profits, can and will bilk their customers if they can get away with it, and don't really mind a large population of unemployed, broke, desperate people.
I am officially gone from
There was a quote in TFA that caught my eye:
Our founding fathers understood that it is government that takes away people's freedoms, not individuals or companies
If they understood that, then they were shortsighted indeed, but history itself puts the lie to it. Government didn't hold slaves, corporations and individuals did. Including individuals in government. And they still do - ever hear the term "wage slave"? There are other things besides guns and whips that can make a person do your bidding.
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