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FCC Vote Marks Effort To Take Greater Control of the Web
GovTechGuy writes "The FCC voted today to open an inquiry into how the broadband industry is regulated, the first step in a controversial attempt to assert greater regulatory control over Internet service providers. In a 3-2 vote the Democratic members of the Commission voted to move forward with the FCC's proposal to reclassify broadband as a telecom service, increasing the regulation it is subject to. The move also has large implications for net neutrality, which FCC Commissioner Julius Genachowski has made a focus under his watch."
Yeah, the headline on this one is a bit sensationalist. The FCC is for prevention, not takeover.
In before the right wingers start ranting about how net neutrality violates the principles of the free market. (FYI, it doesn't)
/take control of the web/take action to prevent the destruction of the web at the hands of greedy ISPs/
The implications of this for net neutrality are important so I'm wondering how this effects the recent court ruling that stated the FCC didn't have the power to regulate them http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_15160454 Does this coming out of committee start the process that will allow a new law which will make the court ruling moot? If so, then hooray!
1 out of 10 government systems fail, and of course they will. The government puts out a lot of ideas per year. Medicaid was the one that worked. Social Security was one of the ones that didn't.
I find it amazing that corporations are overstepping their bounds and people complain that net neutrality with negate the ability for companies to regulate your internet. In short, they want to take away your freedom unless you give them more money.
Why is it people think the government doing absolutely anything is infringing upon rights but when a corporation does it then it's okay?
The law gives the FCC several categories to put things in, and gives them different powers over each category. That ruling said they were trying to use powers from category A on ISPs while ISPs were in category B. So now they're trying to move ISPs into category A.
Yeah, hooray, as an Administration that has several high ranking members who are on record as saying that freedom of speech is over rated moves to give itself regulatory authority over the one place that it receives criticism.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
most of the people who don't live in an area where cable or other broadband is available already probably live way, way too far away from a telephone CO for signal attenuation not completely destroy any notion of broadband via DSL being usable.
The Internet is one of the last few bastions of freedom left in the world...
...and since you only have one or maybe 2 ISPs to choose from, the Evil Corporations can steal that freedom pretty much however they want. Unless the FCC tells them not to, which is what this is.
The FCC should mandate that the phone company provide DSL to every customer that requests it.
That would be stupid. Requiring that they provide Internet access of at least some minimum speed (1Mbps maybe?) might be reasonable, but mandating a particular technology is not.
With the FCC being smacked down with regards to "lol you can't regulate us" the first step has been done to regulate the industry, not because of some wild-eyed's bureaucrat's fantasy, but because it needs to be done.
The days of the mom-and-pop ISP are over and done with. The lack of regulation let these thrive, but the large telecoms and cable companies have gobbled up every single one of these since the dot-bomb. They are gone, never to be seen again.
Now everyone is left with either a local monopoly or at best a duopoly of broadband providers, who are increasingly out to screw the customer, like Comcast has been shown to do. Comcast wanted to play hardball. Well, here it is, guys, the big-time. Don't say we didn't warn you.
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BMO
This is direct response to that court ruling. The court ruled that the way the FCC had classified ISPs it couldn't enforce the net neutrality rules it wanted. By reclassifying ISPs this way, they can turn around and re-enforce those rules.
In general media it's forgivable, but can't we make an effort at technical accuracy on Slashdot? I didn't see anything in the summary or in the article itself about "the Web".
There's a hell of a lot of people that do not have a POTS phone anymore.
Tyranny always rears its head under the guise of national defense, war or some sort of civil protection from the bad, ugly guys out there. The Internet is one of the last few bastions of freedom left in the world...too bad the Statists out there cannot see the Federal Government for what it truly is.
And remember when those damned abolitionists reared their ugly heads and took slavery from the free market? They really showed how much they love freedom then, didn't they? Damn Federal government! Damn them and all those who question capitalism!
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
This headline and summary blow and are almost exactly contrary to the facts. The FCC's position, as outlined here is that the FCC is identifying *only* the transmission component of broadband as a telecom service. In practical terms, this means precisely that they will *not* pursue net neutrality-based oversight at this time, and will ignore content-related matters in favor of simple access and transmission oversight.
In other words, the "web" itself is exactly the thing they are not trying to take greater control of.
You don't have to have all the DSLAMs in the CO. You can run fiber out to a remote point and put a DSLAM wherever you want. Yes, it costs money to do this. Maybe they should try using that Universal Service Fund for something real.
The days of the mom-and-pop ISP are over and done with. The lack of regulation let these thrive, but the large telecoms and cable companies have gobbled up every single one of these since the dot-bomb. They are gone, never to be seen again.
Weren't the mom-and-pops thriving under the original rules, back when broadband was classified as a telecom service and hence subject to regulation? It seems that those all died when broadband was deregulated as a telecom service in the past decade.
I mean, just because Romania, Bulgaria, and Lithuania have four times the internet speed and pay one-twentieth the cost that we do for Internet speeds and storage, doesn't mean we need to get the government involved, right?
What do you want - service?
At a reasonable price?
That's only for corporations and research universities - they get 1000 Gbps while we crawl around at 8 ... if we're lucky enough to live in a big city.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
They did well when everyone used dialup, because as ISP was basically no different from any other company with lots of phones.
I think they also did OK when there were line-sharing regulations, so the phone company was required to rent phone line loops to them at cost. But not as well as in the age of dial-up, since the phone companies could generally get away with providing horrible service, taking weeks to do things that they'd do in a day or two for lines going to their own customers.
Now you have to either lay your own wires (in the face of an incumbent that's been granted a monopoly) or get the government to subsidize your wires (really helps to be big and have a big marketing department). So there's no competition.
Why don't you look in to why you only have 2 ISPs to choose from before blaming the "Evil Corporations".
I suspect that a large part of this was due to their desire to go after and shut down providers that peddle spam, child porn, warez, and other services that aren't legal. I'm all for that. To be honest, the net has been a little too free and "wild west" like - to the point where the bandits and claim-jumpers have all but taken over.
And it's not like they don't scan and know everything already that you or I do online anyways. This just gives them the means to regulate the service providers and force them to do their job properly.
This is all about power and control. You have to ask yourself, what percentage of my life do you want the some wire monopoly to control.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Just make a regulation that all fees for this service must be itemised from this list. Oh and if they are really bad, then the government can actually force a monopolic or duopolic service provider to provide fixed services to fixed regions at fixed costs with fixed service quality levels. I don't know if that has ever been done in US. but it has been done elsewhere. Another alternative is simply for the government to provide their own baseline service, such as city wide WiFi and have the private sector compete to provide something better than that if they want to stay in business.
Just curious - What do you think of recent comments from Obama's employee Cass Sunnstein, that the FCC should mandate equal representation? i.e. If democrats.org has a posting about some political event, then they must also insert a popup window that links to republicans.org. Like a Fairness Doctrine for the web?
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Just provide a country wide free WiFi/WiMax service paid for by a federal tax on all computers and devices with WiFi/WiMax receivers. Provide strict QoS on this network so that P2P traffic does not drown out VOIP and Web traffic and ... you're done. Now all private companies will need to really stretch their legs to provide a much better service than that if they want to stay in business.
The FCC is trying to move broadband providers from class a to class b. They don't want regulatory control over all aspects, just want to make sure that every website gets "equal bandwidth opportunity". Think of the internet as a series of tubes...
"Weren't the mom-and-pops thriving under the original rules, back when broadband was classified as a telecom service and hence subject to regulation?"
No, the mom-and-pops were never classified as telecom carriers. They sure as hell weren't classified common carriers. They fell under the information provider rules.
I'm guessing you're talking about the deregulation of the pricing rules for the "fat pipe" telecoms that the mom-and-pops bought bandwidth from where previously the telecoms couldn't price them out of existence. At that time, the large telecoms weren't dealing directly with the end users - that was up to the individual ISPs, however they wanted to divide up the bandwidth they bought.
Those pricing rules went away (deregulation) as the fat-pipe providers decided to serve the end user (how convenient), and could then charge the ISPs a rate that would make the telecom's choices cheaper for the end users. But the end-user service regulations were always the same (information provider rather than telecom). Since it's the telecoms now directly servicing the end user, it only makes sense to bring telecom rules into the game.
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BMO
>>>way too far away from a telephone CO for signal attenuation not completely destroy any notion of broadband via DSL being usable.
Central Office -> Fiber Optic --> DSLAM (which hooks into the already-existing phone lines). That's how my neighborhood is wired up and we have 12 Megabit/s available here.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The law gives the FCC several categories to put things in, and gives them different powers over each category. That ruling said they were trying to use powers from category A on ISPs while ISPs were in category B. So now they're trying to move ISPs into category A.
More to the point - in the early 2000s the FCC moved ISPs from Category A to Category B, now they are trying to move them back to where they were originally.
The first (erroneous IMNHO) move to category B (aka 'information service providers') was finalized by the NCTA v Brand X scotus ruling that said the FCC has the authority to determine which category an ISP falls into.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
With the internet giving everyone a voice, that is a threat to the monopoly of broadcasting. Just like they took control of the airwaves in the 30's, and have controlled elections that way, they are looking to do the same with the internet. I'm sure the masses will fall for it since Idiocracy has long been in effect. Get ready to pay way more for internet access. The same way they said they've gotten involved with Health Care and Education in order to "help the poor"; but instead have driven prices up to unaffordable levels, they will now do the same to the internet. Too bad it's the poor that are stupid enough to believe these guys have their best interest at heart, and there's way too many poor who receive handouts...so the stupid cycle will continue.
This means things like common carrier rules and such will start to play.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
I'm pretty sure there's nothing that would give them the power to do that; you don't need a FCC license to run a website like you do to run a radio/TV transmitter or a phone/cable company.
>>>mandating a particular technology is not.
Good point.
I suppose the law could be written, "The phone company must provide DSL (or similar broadband alternative) to every customer that requests internet." - Then the companies would have a choice: DSL, FiOS, or some other technology. BUT let's be honest - DSL is the cheapest route because the wires are already laid-down under the earth, or on top of poles. I suspect 99% of phone companies would choose the DSL to hook-up Farmer Joe in Nowhere Wyoming, or Sister Sue in Cowsville Montana.
Which is fine - the goal is to offer something faster than Narrowband 56k and DSL certainly qualifies. Also I don't agree with mandating it MUST be 1 Mbit/s. Some of us prefer half that speed, because it's cheaper ($14). We should have the option of choosing slower to save money
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Now everyone is left with either a local monopoly or at best a duopoly of broadband providers
One of the proposals that always sounded good to me: Forbid the company that provides the physical infrastructure from offering any service. So for example, if Verizon builds the FIOS network, then they can sell access to ISPs (and voice/television providers) but they cannot act as provider themselves. Further, make it so that they cannot negotiate special/exclusive deals with anyone, but have to offer the same terms/prices to all comers.
You got something substantive that isn't from Free Republic?
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BMO
I've thought about that. How hard is it to change bittorrent traffic to look like VoIP traffic? If you go by port numbers (layer 4), it is pretty easy. To get around that, you're talking about Deep Packet Inspection. I'm not sure I want the government running that on every access point into the Internet.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Really? I thought the Universal Access Fee (tax on your monthly bill), plus Congressional law mandated that companies MUST provide phone service to anyone who requests it. I know SOME people have gone completely cellular, but I bet 99% of America still has the wires running to their house and those wires could be upgraded from Narrowband Dialup to Broadband Internet.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
So basically you're for bringing back line sharing.
That's the way it used to be.
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BMO
Because its prohibitively expensive to be a physical plant provider for the last mile when there is already an established player?
Yeah its called a Natural Monopoly
a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
Reading the article, I see that Verizon is against this, so I'm probably for it.
I especially grimaced when I read this part:
That's more transparent than usual, isn't it? In case it's not, I'll translate: "How are we supposed to have free reign to let America's infrastructure steadily decay, if regulation comes from someone other than the politicians we bought?"
The Internet is full. Go away.
How could Internet service not be a telecommunications service? Maybe we're just talking about some really specific legal definition here, but the Internet is a telecommunications network.
In fairness, Sunnstein's recent comments have been, in fact, against the idea of the "Internet Fairness Doctrine" which he discussed in his book Republic.com. Since that writing, he has said that he has been convinced by opposing arguments that such a policy would be ineffective and couterproductive. Having said that, I'm a bit astonished that he came up with it in the first place. As a Progressive, I'm perhaps still not far left enough to understand how such a policy, which seems to be unnecessarily destructive of free speech, would ever be worthwhile.
Seriously, regulating telecoms does not equal controlling the web.
The reason we want net neutrality is so that network carriers do not control the web, just offer their service without unreasonably interfering in the way a customer uses the network. Reasonable limits could be throttling heavy users WHEN there is high demand in order to more reasonably share network traffic, or when a user is using the network in a criminal way.
For example, without neutral networks, we could have a far-fetched hypothetical situation where an ISP limits the availability or performance of services from competitors, and gives preferential treatment to their own services.
I know that the web becoming more of a high-bandwidth place tossing around videos is pretty far-fetched. I know that it would be pretty crazy for ISP's to start competing with video on demand and telephone providers. I know that it would be ludicrous to expect some cable monopoly, such as Comcast, to manage to come along and snatch up some media outlet, say NBC, around the same time that they push for bandwidth caps and tiered pricing. Certainly they would never do something like make those limits apply to other media outlets, but not apply those limits to their own content.
Furthermore, nobody could imagine that they could manage to produce astroturf movements to gain sympathy from the average Joe so that not only can they get away with it, people will be begging the big bad government to stop interfering with their plans.
It would never even get this far, so we don't even have to worry about the unthinkable future possibilities, such as ISPs giving network priority and affect the actual network performance of their own content, compared to their competitors. We won't have to worry about ISPs extorting money from websites in order to give them enhanced performance (at the expense of the non-paying sites). We don't have to worry about them rerouting traffic, or trying to limit criticism by controlling the web.
Really, they couldn't even get halfway there without a lot of protest, right?
It's not like they were allowed to become a monopoly through the help of our government anyway.
Here's the audio DIRECTLY from Obama employee Cass Sunnstein. I don't know why I am bothering, because you'll just pretend he never said it (cognitive dissonance), but here's the link: http://www.prisonplanet.com/obama-czar-wants-mandatory-government-propaganda-on-political-websites.html
.
"The best would be for this to be done voluntarily," said Sunstein, "But the word voluntary is a little complicated and people sometimes don't do what's best for our society," he added. "The idea would be to have a LEGAL MANDATE as the last resort..... an ultimate WEAPON designed to encourage people to do better," Sunstein concluded.
"Rightthought" in other words. Mandating how people should run their private websites or blogs.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
So let me get this straight... in some bizarre way you find ANY moral equivalence between... ownership and enslavement of human beings... and an ISP being able to give preferential treatment to customers based on how much they pay?
Riiight.
Why not try to relate net neutrality to what the actions of Hitler while you are at it? It would be about as ridiculous.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
it will be useful to offer a few ideas, if only by way of introduction to questions that are likely to engage public attention in coming years.
and a little further down:
Websites might use links and hyperlinks to ensure that viewers learn about sites containing opposing views[...] Here, too, the ideal situation would be voluntary action. But if this proves impossible, it is worth considering both subsidies and regulatory alternatives.
He really doesn't say anywhere that the FCC should mandate equal representation. He only says that it's something worth thinking about. Perhaps it's naive of me, but I see a huge difference there. It reads not like a policy recommendation or even a statement of personal preference, but rather more like a brainstorming session. I applaud that kind of thought.
And no, the FCC shouldn't mandate equal representation.
You probably also have other options available. Besides, fiber to the neighborhood and DSLAM out from the CO isn't the same thing as running DSL over the copper that's already in people's homes.
Yes, if you remember they did not want to do that, but were pressured by the white house.
Most people won't remember because apparently 300 bucks wipes the mind of any wrong doing.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
>>>Just provide a country wide free WiFi/WiMax service paid by federal tax
You've never driven across the country have you? It takes about 40 hours to go from Seattle to NYC and 15 hours to go from the Gulf of Mexico to Minneapolis. Now how many WiFi towers do you think would have to be built to ensure 100% coverage of this giant zone? I have no idea either, but I bet it numbers in the billions, so we're talking about trillions of dollars that need to be spent setting-up these towers.
In contrast the phonelines are *already there* in the ground and running into 99.9% of Americans homes. All that needs to be done is convert them from Narrowband Dialup to Broadband Internet, and that's relatively inexpensive. All it requires is one ~$100 box per neighborhood or small town.
Cheap. Easy. Quick.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
It receive criticism from many places, and this move ensures the internet stays free.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
- Government School/Dept of Education (indoctrinates rather than educates - also very money-inefficient compared to private alternatives that d a better job with half as much cash, or an equal job with one-quarter as much cash)
There is precious little evidence that private schools can do the job cheaper AND better. Seriously. I defy you to find credible evidence to support your claim. I've looked and it simply does not exist. There are little successes here and there but there is no evidence that schools can be privatized on a mass scale and still succeed. It's a worthy idea but no one has figured out a way to make it work.
Taxpayer funded public schools have to take every child, not just the ones they want. I went to a private school and it was academically better than my local public school (which wasn't a bad one) but it was no where close to being cheaper. The teachers at my private school were paid less but worked there because most of the kids were high achievers and it was a nice place to work. The environment of my private school would have been impossible to replicate without the ability to select the student bod and kick out those who seriously misbehave. (plagiarism was an offense that would get you expelled for example)
There are lots of attempts at for-profit and not-for profit private and charter schools but the holy grail of simultaneously being better AND cheaper remains elusive, at least on a large scale.
But individual rights trump the right to trade. For example you can't buy a bunch of computers and then store them in your neighbors' basement. That's infringing upon his individual rights. Nobody is so stupid as to think "free market" trumps the rights of the individual.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Correlation is not causation, of course, and 2 sort-of-equal correlations don't make a valid analogy.
What evidence do you have for this analogy? In exactly what ways are tumors + blood vessels like government regulations + dishonest businesses?
Sorry to trouble your rhetoric with questions of reality, but ...
"The Constitution, the WHOLE Constitution, and nothing but the CONSTITUTION."
If it actually was a natural monopoly, the government wouldn't have a need to pass laws granting a monopoly... you can't have it both ways.
They are only a monopoly because the laws and regulations create them as such.
Without those laws, you don't actually know what could have already been invented in the market to make last mile technologies much more cost effective. I can think of a few off the top of my head that are very feasible, if it wasn't for government regulations preventing them...
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
>prisonplanet link
Right.
Fine.
Thank you for reminding me why I had you bit-bucketed.
Away with you. Loonie.
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BMO
It is appalling that the current admn., which have caved in to pressure from private interests in almost every front, and had generally been weak, is showing considerable backbone in this matter. maybe its because of the backbone of the guy that was appointed to the head of fcc ...
Read radical news here
No, I think the real expense in starting up the ISP is in the fact that without government regulation, they would have to go in and set up their own infrastructure which includes running hundreds of miles of line. Now if the government forces ISPs to open their lines to other companies a la electricity...maybe we can fix something.
Without regulation, those with the most wealth have the best chance of making even more wealth. Markets are not necessarily closed systems, but you can't just throw "growth" at the issue of wealth migrating into the hands of a few.
So your very first statement, which seems to put all blame for 'uncompetitive' markets on government regulation, sounds simplistic and even a bit troll-like.
Blar.
>Perhaps it's naive of me, but I see a huge difference there.
There is. And you're not naive.
There are a lot of things people say that get shot down because it's impractical or it's wrong. Sunnskind addressed the echo-chamber problem of the Web. The echo-chamber and confirmation bias are rampant across the world wibbley web in his previous book. It's probably best to leave it alone, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be talked about. It doesn't mean that because you brainstorm about something that suddenly you have aspirations to become Big Brother Incarnate.
But to get one's information from Prisonplanet, like he did with regards to this, well, that's just silly.
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BMO
May 17 (just one month ago) isn't recent? It sounds like he's still in favor of what he said in his book. Listen to the video at this link: http://www.prisonplanet.com/obama-czar-wants-mandatory-government-propaganda-on-political-websites.html
He wants to MANDATE a fairness doctrine on the web.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
No I'm talking about this speech from just a few weeks ago: http://www.prisonplanet.com/obama-czar-wants-mandatory-government-propaganda-on-political-websites.html
He wants to MANDATE by law a fairness doctrine for websites and blogs. I also hear he wants to force us to acquire licenses before we can get websites or blogs, although I've yet to find any proof of this claim... maybe that video is floating around somewhere too.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Comcast needs to be controlled just look at the CSN phlly that is not on sat tv. DO you want the internet to be the same way?
Do want comcast to lock you out of MLB.tv and force you to get Digital cable + $8 per tv or $16 per HD DRV + MLB EI to get the games vs just paying for cheaper on line ver of it?
1. Social Security Intention: Provide seniors with material security Result: It makes things worse. By any calculation, if the working people right now were allowed to put the same money they pay into social security (12.5% including employer portion) into an interest bearing retirement account they would receive a much higher payout once they retire, but we are not allowed to opt out.
Umm, Social Security DOES provide seniors with material security. Have you given a moment's thought to why participation is mandatory? A significant percentage of the population will elect to not save any money at all. This is not supposition on my part, it would (and did) happen if Social Security were optional. The fact that they make this poor choice unfortunately does not relieve the rest of us of the burden of supporting them once they hit retirement age or even earlier if they become disabled. Another significant percentage of the population will suffer ill fortune on their investments and be largely wiped out, sometimes through no fault of their own. (think low level Enron employees) How exactly do you propose to deal with these individuals once they are past productive working age? "Screw them" is not an acceptable answer.
Social Security is EXACTLY what the name says it is. It's a humane safety net. Granted it could be managed better but it is mandatory for a good reason. I'm not a fan of the program either but I think the alternative of letting people opt out would have worse consequences. Social Security isn't and shouldn't be about making the most money for those who participate. The purpose is and should be to ensure that all our citizens have at least a small income. The purpose is to prevent homelessness and starvation. Since we can't predict who will need help the most I have yet to hear a better plan than to make everyone participate.
3. United Nations Funding
Intention: "To maintain international peace and security...blah blah"
Result: It does nothing of the sort. The most it can be said about it is that it provides a discussion forum where countries with dismal human rights record can rant against the USA and western democracies in general.
The real purpose of the UN is to prevent World War 3. So far it has succeeded in that mission. Anything else it accomplishes is really just icing on the cake. Furthermore there is significant evidence that the UN is often successful in peacekeeping roles. Not always but often. The UN has plenty of flaws but it you are going to say it accomplishes nothing without providing any evidence to support that claim I'm going to go ahead and say you haven't actually looked.
4. National Endowment for the Arts
Intention: To promote arts etc
Result: Frivolously pays taxpayer money to "selected" artists with connections, while majority of artists get nothing. How would you like to be a struggling artist who pays taxes while knowing that the portion of your money goes to other, more "special", artists based on subjective and vague criteria.
Have you actually read what the stated purpose of the NEA is? Apparently not. No one has ever claimed the NEA was intended to support every or even most artists. The NEA attempts to bring art to all Americans, not bring money to all artists. I pay money to support all kinds of government programs that I'll never see a direct financial benefit and I'm fine with that. I pay for roads I'll never use, parks I'll never visit, weapons I dearly hope we never use, medical care for others and plenty of other worthy goals. The NEA has a budget of about $155 million. It is a teeny-tiny little piece of the federal budget that arguably succeeds in its mission. It brings art to Americans. Do you really have nothing better to criticize? Are you seriously arguing that all artists deserve federal grants?
Can I go on?
Please don't unless you improve your arguments significantly.
>I agree that the monopolized telecom businesses needs to be separated to free up space for new businesses.
I'm with you there.
>But I do not think the government is a good initiator for this.
Then who do you suppose is going to do it? The tooth fairy? Santa Claus? The Easter Bunny?
Also, you write as if you didn't live through the breakup of AT&T. Did you know you could *finally* plug your own telecom equipment into the wall? That you could set up your own PBX? That you could actually dial up a computer system without an acoustic coupler? That you could *actually* get long distance phone service from someone that wouldn't rake you over the coals (aka Sprint, MCI, etc)?
You honestly don't remember what it was like previously, when you could only rent equipment and it was only Bell's stuff, nobody else's.
The breakup of AT&T was a godsend to the telecommunications business and the information economy. The only problem is that the time limit barring AT&T and the baby-bells from re-merging was far too short. It should have been made permanent.
The government did a good job breaking up Ma Bell.
Monopolies are not free markets.
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BMO
The cable companies have been making a strong run at the elimination of telcos and copper lines. It would seem that bolstering land line telcos is an unfortunate and backwards idea.
I'll assume that you're a bright person who was fooled by the sort of BS tactics that extremists on both sides use to "prove" their points. That interview on Breitbart's site (which he leaves undated, purposely) is from 2001 not from a couple of weeks ago.
If you'd like to hear something more recent, try this 2008 interview with Sunstein and Eugene Volokh
And liberals were worried about Bush?
Canada is far ahead of the US in how far it has gone down this road - learn from it people!
In Canada, we too spend hundreds of millions by giving it to the telcos.
To see that telcos are doing the right things, we have a government oversight board called the CRTC.
The result:
- A duopoly between Rogers and Bell who own EVERYTHING.
- Broadband speeds are junk
- wireless costs are worse than that of places like Zimbabwe!
(how do a smartphone plans with 500Mb sound to you? No? Prefer the $0.03/Kb in normal plans? A mere $300 for 10 min of youtube! $180,000 if you dare use 6Gb of data. A bargain!)
So, how does this government panel (made up almost solely of ex-Bell and Rogers people) protect us - the public?
Well, they:
- recently ruled that throttling bittorrent is allowed as long as they give notice
- unlimited home Internet plans could be killed for small ISPs that lease their lines.
and about a hundred other rulings.
The answer to your problem, America, is not to copy our failure, but to regulate the companies into forcing them to sell access to their lines to wholesale customers at wholesale prices, and increase competition.
While net neutrality, as a concept is a good thing, I'm sure that any Bill the congress writes will just codify the desires of the Telco lobbyists by entrenching their monopolies into law. I don't trust any of them with any kind of Internet bill - remember the DMCA?
This isn't some weird system where space aliens using mind control technology can make things happen without anyone noticing. The basis upon which the FCC would regulate the ISPs is well-understood law, and is how the Internets were run until the Bush administration decided to throw a giant hunk of corporate welfare to the ISPs. That giant hunk of corporate welfare is why you see less competition in the ISP business these days--it pretty much shot all the smaller ISPs in the head.
What these regulations allow is something called common carrier status. What common carrier status does is to say that as long as ISPs don't attempt in any way to control what passes across their lines, they are not liable for what passes across their lines. This is net neutrality. It's a very clear regulation, and it's the diametric opposite of censorship.
So take off your tinfoil hat and let your brain cool off a little. Your blind acceptance of paranoid talking points is what's going to kill our freedom of speech, not some conspiracy on the part of Obama administration cabinet members that you somehow will not be able to detect.
Yeah, if I want to hear some pro-Obama propaganda I just turn on fox news.
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
Central Office -> Fiber Optic --> DSLAM (which hooks into the already-existing phone lines). That's how my neighborhood is wired up and we have 12 Megabit/s available here.
It's not a technology problem.
If you live in an area Verizon doesn't find maximally profitable, their standard response to this request is, "we don't do that". I tried for years.
Finally, they sold their Northern New England operations to Fairpoint, who bought it almost exactly when the market crashed (eliminating their anticipated credit sources), and has bungled everything for a couple years. But they're emerging from bankruptcy in August and I saw a backhoe burying conduit to our local remote terminal yesterday. Their only hope at profitability is selling video over ADSL2 (also bringing 'cable' to a mostly-satellite region), so they have incentive to update the infrastructure.
But, Northern New England is a big deal to them. For Verizon, investing in upgrading from DSL to FiOS Jersey City was a much better bet than doing anything here ("hey you can get a 9600 baud FAX-rated line, what't the problem?") It's hard to blame a company for trying to maximize its profits when planning infrastructure upgrades (though it's easy to blame them for stealing the $2B fund for universal FTTH).
Anyway, the point being that large corporations which have regions with different levels of profitability will always favor the areas that make them the most money (and, let's face it, until you can download a full movie in 30 seconds, it's too slow, people will upgrade).
You can give them a laundry list of things they must do, and they'll spend millions looking for the loopholes.
Or you can break the corporations into small enough parts that have profit motive to serve their markets, and then simple 'greed' will see to the rest.
Ideally, you just stop granting monopolies and let the market work it out (raise your hand if you've ever been successful at getting pole access as a startup...), but this government wouldn't even consider that option.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
No, it isn't "how the Internets were run until the Bush administration...". The FCC is proposing to reclassify ISPs as common carriers and regulate them under Title II of the "Communications Act of 1934" as currently amended. ISPs have never been classified as common carriers. The FCC reviewed and upheld the understanding that ISPs are not common carriers under that law in 1998.
While it would be possible for the FCC to regulate the Internet without censoring it, the fact that there are a significant number of people in the Obama Administration who have publicly expressed a desire to limit freedom of speech (including at least one of his appointees to the FCC) does not make one think that it will be the actual case.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Is rooted in the inception of cable systems back in the 1950's and 1960's. The FCC then classified them as content providers which later morphed to content/information providers.
Telecoms were always common carrier. It's what ultimately lead to the breakup of the Bell System. Mother Bell controlled hookups to other carriers with iron fist at the time.
The FCC regulatory environment for CI providers was mostly unregulated. So that's why there's the move today to shift them into common carrier status which I completely agree with. A broadband net connection is now used for more than just web and email, but VoIP and videoconferencing. In other words, services that used to be exclusive to common carriers.
So it makes sense to move broadband into the telecom/common carrier column. And contrary to the beliefs of the Repugs, it won't stifle innovation. Ma Bell did quite well under a fairly heavy regulatory burden back in the day and we got all sorts of features. Telecom is a far cry from the rotary dial days today. And all of it is rooted in Bell research.
Thats what's that tax WAS for. Now it's just another tax ending up in the general fund. I also think you underestimate the number of people that are cell-only. I've been POTS free for the last 8 years (cell only for the last 6, and phone free for two before that), and I don't know too many people younger than me that have a POTS phone anymore, and I'm in my early 30s.
As for the wires existing already -- most new construction around here is wired internally for phone (some "custom" ($$$) homes aren't, but they're generally wired for a lot more than phone anyway), but they're not running wires out to the telco's box. That's up to the buyer to have done if they want (and the telco's method is a trencher through the new yard, driveway, and the occasional sprinkler system -- and it's up to the homeowner to repair the damage). There's a new development I pass on the way to work that doesn't have any telco wires past their box at the entrance -- the telco may be required to lay wires if people want service, but so far, no one's asking. Time-Warner has been very busy in there with a pipe-pusher though and a pretty aggressively priced VOIP package. I also know a lot of people that are pulling old phone wiring out when remodeling (interior wiring) and/or landscaping (the run from the telco's box by the curb to the box on the wall -- "rip it out, don't need it, don't want it, screw ma-bell") and not replacing it, as it's not needed.
In short, yes, there's a lot of wiring that could be used. At this point, an awful lot of it would need to be replaced in order to be "upgraded" because it's either been removed, or it's too old and too poor quality to handle DSL. If you're going to be mandate re-laying a lot of wire, why not just lay fiber?
Wow. Your complaint isn't that the claim is incorrect, isn't that the quote wasn't said, but rather as your own personal complaint about the site that hosts the quote.
Talk about pure partisan noise, coming from you.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
Now everyone is left with either a local monopoly or at best a duopoly of broadband providers
Largely, if not entirely, due to FCC involvement and rent seeking.
The solution is not to restrict even more who can provide broadband, which is the suggestion here, but rather to open it up entirely. No regulation at all. I'm not sure where the gov't gets off regulating something that can't physically harm somebody anyways.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
Again, I hear that speech a little differently. I think what he's saying is this:
A) Selection bias has become a legitimate problem in our political discourse
B) If we decide to remedy this problem, we need to find some way to expose people to opposing viewpoints.
C) Links to dissenting websites are one way to expose people to these viewpoints.
D) If websites won't do this voluntarily, a regulatory agency may be able to force them to do so.
I really think that a lot of people misunderstand this guy. A lot of politicians would say "okay, we're mandating equal representation, because it has to be done." He says, "One option is mandating equal representation. We should think about it. Maybe congress should hold hearings to decide the merits and practicality of it."
That's a world of difference. This is a guy thinking about problems, and brainstorming ways that they might be solved. He's not afraid to suggest an idea that might be completely wrong; all that matters is that we think about it. He might be easy to demonize for that, but I encourage you to demonize and refute the ideas, instead.
Yeah, prisonplanet.com is pretty loony. However, the audio is exactly as advertised. You're a moron to disregard a factual clip just because of the site hosting it.
IIRC, the failure of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act to cover spam as well as junk faxes etc. was due to ISPs not being regulated the same as telecoms. Would this fix the problem?
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
That's because he's lying.
It's not recent.
It's from 2001. 9 bloody years ago.
Go read the other message in the thread that demonstrated this.
Seriously, this is why you stay the fuck away from prisonplanet, because it's conspiracy lunacy, with shit taken out of context and presented in a manner designed to frighten you. Because fear sells.
Jesus Christ.
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BMO
Here, I'll help you out.
I'll point to someone who decided to investigate it further.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1689978&cid=32608594
Oh look, it's a deliberate misrepresentation.
Going to Briebart and Prisonplanet is like doing research on immigration by going to the BNP or Stormfront.
But hey, the guy who referred me to Prisonplanet isn't interested in unbiased reporting. He's all about confirmation bias, which Cass Sunnstein talked about.
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BMO
I mistyped the name Sunnskind as Sunnstein.
Oops.
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BMO
Local and state franchising laws make it virtually impossible for the market to break these monopolies. The best thing the FCC could do would be to lobby Congress for authority under the interstate commerce clause to declare that these laws violate that by disrupting the ability of infrastructure companies to enter new markets.
I know SOME people have gone completely cellular, but I bet 99% of America still has the wires running to their house and those wires could be upgraded from Narrowband Dialup to Broadband Internet.
Its a growing trend. Of all of my friends that are +/- 5 years of my age I would say that half of them do not have an active landline in their house or apartment.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
How does the FCC asserting regulatory authority over the Internet ensure that the Internet will stay free? Especially, an FCC that has members who think that free speech is really not all that important, and are willing to ignore a law that explicitly says that they don't have authority over the Internet. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode47/usc_sec_47_00000230----000-.html See section (b)(2)
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I was thinking more about Mark Lloyd, the FCC "Diversity Czar". Although there have been several other Obama Administration officials who have expressed a desire to limit freedom of speech. I was unaware of comments by Rahm Emanuel expressing a disdain for freedom of speech, I thought he was too smart to say that sort of thing.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
He made the joke exactly because certain idiots who are paid to flap their gums over the airwaves accused him of having a disdain for freedom of the press/free speech.
He really is too smart for that, unlike certain Congressional members and "political commentators" on both sides of the aisle.
@Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.
Absolutely, Rahm Emanuel knows that if the American people knew what he would really like to do, they would be horrified.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison