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The Far-Reaching Effects of Comcast v FCC
eldavojohn writes "We've had a lot of discussion about what the overturning of FCC v Comcast means for net neutrality, but CommLawBlog argues that net-neut is just the tip of the iceberg as far as the effects of this ruling. In the National Broadband Plan, local TV broadcasters might be forced to give up their spectrum 'voluntarily' to be repurposed for broadband; this decision diminishes the FCC's authority to cut such deals. Another issue at stake is how this will affect the FCC's approval of Comcast's acquisition of NBC."
Hold comcast to the same laws fox / directv where under when Directv was owned by fox and they where not able to make fox directv only.
This is a failure of Congress.
What is needed is clear legislation from Congress that enumerate what exactly the FCC is allowed to regulate. Regulation should come from our elected officials, not from the policy statements of unelected commissions.
Funny that Slashdot editors can be bothered with changing stupid things like that while letting egregious typos, or more frequently, completely incorrect information, go by without blinking.
in fact, any student of economic history knows that corporatism, monopolies, oligopolies are greater threats to capitalism than socialism or communism ever could be
the libertarian naivete that a free market of equals is a natural balance and that governments can only interfere in that is nonsense
the truth is that some players in the free market grow and begin to use their heft to suppress smaller players. this is completely natural. the way to fight that is to have a government with strong regulatory powers to enforce equality amongst 800 pound gorillas and tiny players. you want to be taxed to do this, and you want the "bureaucracy" that does this. or you will suffer far more than any inefficiency or waste in the government. fight the inefficiency and waste in government, don't fight government itself
insomuch as the government is merely a tool of the big time players is the extent which corporate dollars warp and infect and corrupt the government that is supposed to regulate them
in other words, if you are a true believer in capitalism, you will lose your libertarian naivete and insist on a strong regulatory government to keep the marketplace healthy
and you will recognize the greatest threat to capitalism is not the government, it is corporations and their corruption OF government
stop fighting government. start fighting corporations, or more exactly, the immoral infuence of corporate dollars on a government that is supposed to represent you, but is bought off by corporate dollars to work against you
and i didn't say it was easy. but when you fight government itself, you are actually making it worse
fight the corporate infection of government, even though you are working against powerful addicted junkies of corporate money and it is a hard fight. but please, stop fighting government itself. it is supposed to represent your interests, so get it to do that
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
but i am not "refining" threats to capitalism or democracy, i am clarifying
because currently there is a lot of fud out there that it is the government itself which is the enemy, when we both know that is a red herring
if the people who believe that fud could see that (bought and paid for) demagogues are redirecting their righteous anger in the wrong direction, then maybe we could finally pull the curtain back and see the wizard for what he is
financial influence in a democratic system warps and weakens it. we both see this. so let's keep hammering that point home so the fools who believe the blame lies somewhere else for our troubles wake the fuck up from their tea party delusions. their anger is valid. where they are directing their anger is invalid
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Yes, it did really take off without regulation but lately, the ISPs have been trying to extend their role beyond that of "internet service provider". For example, many cable ISPs now provide phone service, via VoIP. Also, some ISPs are trying to become content providers (ex: Comcast's acquisition of NBC). In the last 5 years, ISPs like Comcast have tried to block bittorrent traffic, block competing VoIP phone services such as SKYPE and Vonage, discriminantly block emails websites and more.
The FCC should DENY the transfer of NBC's broadcast licensees to Comcrap (which is the approval that Comcrap is seeking). Giving the largest cable operator and ISP in the country ownership of network TV stations that cover 2/3rds of the population, and control of a major TV network (and all their cable channels and retail) is monopolistic. It's bad enough that Comcast has the pure arrogence to challenge the FCC's control over them-now they want it ALL, with NO oversight whatsoever!
If Net Neutrality was good for big business, as you suggest is possible, then why is big business so strongly against it? I'm baffled by how many people buy into the arguments coming from big businesses that this will help big businesses step over consumers. Since when has Big Business been a watchdog for themselves in order to protect Average Joe?
The reason it took off without government regulation enforcing net neutrality was because competition was so much greater. There were tons of small internet service providers popping up everywhere offering dial-up service at increasingly cheaper prices and with better service and features. As more and more dial-up providers were born and competed, we went from paying by the minute or e-mail to unlimited usage because of competition. It led to many providers offering other services like Usenet access, extra e-mail accounts, free homepage space, and better customer support.
With so much competition and a culture of internet freedom, nobody would even think about trying to violate net neutrality without dooming their business.
Then came the rise of broadband. As broadband became more ubiquitous, suddenly the huge number of dial-up based ISPs began to dry up and internet access became dominated by telephone companies and cable companies. These companies usually had strong footholds in their areas, and enjoyed the luxury of limited competition.
Now, we have less and less competition, and we see consumers gradually losing what we gained due to competition. Not many ISPs give free homepages anymore. More and more are cutting free Usenet. Dealing with many of these businesses has become much more bureaucratic than it used to be. They want to bring back caps and paying by the byte, and they want to have more control over how you use the internet with less responsibility to their customers.
It's also important to remember what ignoring net neutrality can mean for Comcast. It's not just about them controlling the level of bandwidth customers use, it's about them controlling who is piping all that data to you. As they try to make you sympathetic to them by invoking images of bandwidth hogs committing rampant piracy, they are setting themselves up so that they can potentially make it more costly for you to stream any video that is not from their service (or NBC) and reduce the performance of VoIP services that are from competitors. I won't even go into the other potential cans of worms that this could open up, if they are allowed to continue on this course.
I don't believe that much regulation is needed as long as market forces are working in healthy ways, but when the number of competing companies shrink while their individual power grows, then sometimes regulation is needed to keep them from abusing this position of power.