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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."
net-neut
As the submitter, let the record show that I am not the originator of that term. I wash my hands of that wordsmithing and relinquish all credit with coining that term to kdawson or wherever he found it.
Personally the shortened form of that term sounds a bit more like a collection tool employed at a veterinarian than an internet principle.
My work here is dung.
The only real impact is that the FCC will start using Title II instead of Title I.
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in the slashdot world, there's only one 'monopoly law' and it says 'companies are not allowed to do anything i don't like'.
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
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.
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.