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No, Net Neutrality Doesn't Violate the 5th Amendment
An anonymous reader writes "Yesterday we discussed the theory that net neutrality might violate the 5th Amendment's 'takings clause.' Over at TechDirt they've explained why the paper making that claim is mistaken. Part of it is due to a misunderstanding of the technology, such as when the author suggests that someone who puts up a server connected to the Internet is 'invading' a broadband provider's private network. And part of it is due to glossing over the fact that broadband networks all have involved massive government subsidies, in the form of rights of way access, local franchise/monopolies, and/or direct subsidies from governments. The paper pretends, instead, that broadband networks are 100% private."
You're right. The government should never have allowed ISPs to lay cable underneath or on poles over government-owned streets. Such interference is unconscionable.
Boston College Law Professor Daniel Lyons points out how the Emancipation Proclamation violated the 5th Amendment.
Further back even... while they were "loans", it was still interfering with "private enterprise" to pass the Rural Electrification Act in 1936. I imagine that electrical power would still be in much the same state that broadband to rural communities is today without it.
His conclusion is right, but for all the wrong reasons...
Government subsidies are irrelevant. Could the government take back all those subsidies and right-of-ways? Problem not without compensation under the fifth amendment. Under current jurisprudence, the fifth amendment applies even to benefits provided by the government, including certain government jobs and welfare benefits.
His other argument is that there is no 'invasion' because 'these service providers chose to connect to the open internet allowing their users to request such content.' I'm not sure this is a very strong argument compared to Lyon's paper. The paper argued that net neutrality would essentially grant an easement over the ISP's wires and that this permanent invasion would be a taking under the fifth amendment. As far as I'm aware, Lyon's theory is novel in telecom regulation. I doubt the courts will accept it, but the techdirt article doesn't really have a strong argument against it either.
Under current jurisprudence, a regulatory taking is a taking under the fifth amendment. The relevant question is whether net neutrality would be a regulatory taking, and Techdirt does not address that question. I think net neutrality leaves the ISPs with enough room for profit that it would not be a regulatory taking. Whether I'm right or not, who knows...
IANAL and this is not legal advice.
If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
Thanks for letting me know that government interference always fucks things up on the government-created information network. It would be so much better if I was unable to hear your insightful commentary. The internet sure has fucked up our economy.
The enemies of Democracy are
My word you've been busy spreading some free market love and dry humping that ideological leg today. Are you one of those plants I hear so much about?
or otherwise interfere with private enterprise. Every time the government does it, it fucks up the economy. Every. Single. Time.
By that line of reasoning the government should get out of the business of war, then, as it is fucking up the economy. Clearly the corporations should be entrusted to wage war on their own, hire their own armies, and fight an ethical fight.
Because after all, that is what corporations are known for.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I don't get it. Without government subsidies and other involvement, there would be no internet. So you are arguing that we would be better off without the internet...on the internet no less? Or maybe you were talking about government subsidies to help build power grids, telephone lines, or highways? Our economy would be better without infrastructure that directly enables commerce? Fail.
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
So government only fucks things up unless it doesn't fuck things up, those times don't count. Gotcha.
Except, of course, the times where it didn't fuck up the economy. Or the times where government action was necessary to prevent a fucked-up economy that would have run unchecked if private enterprise was allowed to run amok.
Anti-trust and public infrastructure (roads, canals, harbors, etc) being the most glaring exceptions to your "Every. Single. Time." malarkey.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
The problem with the author's position is that no one is asking for open access to the "Internet". They are asking for open access to networks that were privately funded, like Comcast's _access_ network. The government didn't help AT&T (or any of the component companies SBC, Bellsouth, etc) run copper lines to houses nor wire fiber to digital loop carriers in neighborhoods. The government was of course deeply involved in the initial build of the Internet and did in fact try to give it to the original AT&T (who declined because they didn't think it was commercially viable), but none of that infrastructure is in service nor has it been for a very long time. No one has a complaint about getting access to the Internet. Google and all of the other commercial entities asking for open access don't care about access to the core, they have that in spades already, what they want is a guarantee that people who built _access_ networks can't charge them for sending their content over those networks. I personally see merit on both sides of this position, but the author of the Techdirt article is dead wrong.
Uh, net neutrality means that my ISP needs to give packets from your server the same QoS as packets from your wealthier competitor, so that (for instance) eBay can't pay consumer ISPs to speed up its access and slow down or block Craigslist. What does this have to do with the "fairness doctrine"? What are you even talking about?
I'm pretty sure the GOVERNMENT has no concept of, or right to, ownership. .
This is incorrect on several levels. For one thing, ownership is actually defined by the government. Without a government, the piece of paper that says you own something would be worthless. Not only does the government have a concept of ownership, it actually creates all ownership.
"Owned by the government" means "belongs to the people" since WE paid for it.
Of course that is quite correct, but it does nothing to negate the grandparent's point. We the people paid for the property on which streets are built. Therefore in order to use that property for their networks, ISPs need permission from the elected representatives of the people, a.k.a. the government.
If these providers are not going to give all of us unfettered access to their networks, what incentive do we have to allow them to use our property to build those networks? They should buy their own damn land and put their networks there if they want to have total control over the signal. As long as they're putting the network on our land, we should have unfettered access to it.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
No. Private enterprise did not want the internet. In large part they said "it's just a fad, no significant amount of commerce will be done over the internet." Were you asleep all through the 90's? Here is a typical such article from Newsweek in 1995:
http://www.newsweek.com/1995/02/26/the-internet-bah.html
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
People are using the same argument that "Government can't make me buy health insurance!" in order to kill the already-law health care reforms. But the pseudo-code looks like this.
function HealthCareTax($BoughtInsurance)
{
$HealthTax = $money;
If $BoughtInsurance == True {$HealthTax = 0;}
return $HealthTax;
}
The government most certainly has the power to tax, and also has the power to create tax deductions for those who qualify. So, this challenge is going to go nowhere fast.
Back to Net Neutrality, the way to implement this is a tax on what we consider unfair network activity. If they want to do what they want with their property, sure... but then they've got to pay a tax that makes that behavior less profitable or perhaps even unprofitable.
Government did not make the internet what it is today; private industry did. Government wanted a WAN design, granted, but yeesh. 'government-created information network' is definitely not just a stretch, it's inaccurate. Government opening the door to private industry does not equate to government creation, and it certainly doesn't show initial interference to back up your somewhat rude point (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet#History) In fact, looking at current government and military uses of networks and IP, and it's inability to keep up with not just commercial; but foreign government uses as well, I'd be tempted to say that I'm surprised this post is modded 4 to insightful instead of 0 to troll. At either rate, to quote PJ O'Rourke, "Giving money and power to Government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."
Building infrastructure is one of the few areas of where government involvement in private enterprise is reasonable. That's why public utilities fall under a special set of rules and regulation and end up being quasi-governmental entities. Unfortunately, telecom has even more layers of special rules so it's ripe for corruption.
I believe the answer is to force the segregation of infrastructure providers and service providers - very similar to how many want Microsoft's OS and application divisions to be separate companies. Infrastructure providers can own the transmission medium (cables, pipes, etc), but not the content carried and cannot be a content provider. The infrastructure must be open for all service providers to use.
In many areas, this model is used to provide natural gas services. This is similar to the early railroad model in the US, but the railroads were allowed to give preferential treatment and rates to sister companies.
One drug that saves 10,000 lives a year being delayed by a decade of testing
So we should replace the FDA with psychics who can tell that an untested drug will save 10,000 lives a year?
Or just trust the drug company when they say they're certain it will but haven't actually tried it yet?
The Internet's early beginnings were in the networks of the 1970s, but as a network resembling what we have today you'd have to go forward to the 1980s. There were a number of "free market" networks that also sprung up, or became popular, during the 1980s, including most successfully AOL and Compuserve. By the mid-1990s, the Internet was still immature enough for Microsoft to believe it had a chance of promoting its own alternative, the original version of MSN (which used Microsoft networking technologies, not TCP/IP, in its original incarnation as a Windows 95 thing.)
When the Internet did take off, the backbones and computer servers relied upon by the majority of users were outside of direct government control, with only academic sites, in practice, being government subsidized.
The Internet did not become popular because it was the only thing capable of doing what it was doing due to the government providing it with a big collection of servers, it was popular because it was a neutral, open, network, and the alternatives were closed and locked down.
While it's possible for the free market to introduce open, standardized, networks, the reality is that most of the time such standards only achieve success through government support. The Internet is an unqualified success, successful in large part because the government could provide the neutrality required to ensure it would work for everyone. And right now, the "free market" continues to be at the mercy of a handful of parasites who, on getting into the right positions, are willing to lock down and de-neutralize the network, putting short-sighted control goals ahead of the long term welfare of our network. You couldn't have picked a worse example of "governments stepping in causing failures" if you tried.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Are you smoking crack homes?
Do you honestly think private businesses would come up with "elegant solutions that [work]"? Let's imagine your energy scenario, in your magic ron paul world, private companies adopt alternative because (and only when) it's cheaper than coal. But here's what happens in the real world:
Private companies wait forever to adopt alternative energy sources, because the only thing that (really) matters to them is the cash, and alternative energy is not only more expensive per joule, but there are high start-up and research costs which coal doesn't have. So instead, they keep burning coal as long as the absolutely can, completely destroying the environment in the process, not only in their emissions, but also in their mining techniques which destroy mountains and ruin fresh water sources all over the country (but especially where all the poor coal miners live). No worries though, because surely the glorious free market system will save us when people say no and just stop buying from the bad companies! Oh wait, the mining and power companies all have monopolies in their sphere of influence, not to mention the fact that they are all colluding (actively or not). Don't like dirty coal? just turn the power off then! I'm sure ron paul will show up on a generator bike to keep grandma's respirator going.
Yes, the free market system and capitalism are good and important, but regulation is important when it comes to situations where either:
The company is heavily subsidized
The company has a monopoly, government mandated or otherwise
The environment or some other critical not-profitable consideration is involved
You also really need to come to terms with the fact that government regulation is the best way to get a lot of things. Imagine if power companies hadn't been given monopolies and subsidies, electric power would be spotty at best (sure companies want to sell you power, but running lines out to joe-farmer-in-the-sticks just so he can read in the evenings doesn't sound too profitable to me, which is exactly where we are with broadband and mobile coverage right now), but to ensure competition (since monopolies aren't allowed as they break the no-regulation magic system) there'd have to be several different sets of power lines coming to my house so I could choose the one with the best price and features. Not only would this never happen (companies would just rent lines from each other, or more likely just sell joules, or just buy each other up, bringing us back to monopoly), but if it did happen, it would be a colossal waste of resources and would greatly increase the end cost of power. So clearly the better choice is either - government-regulated power companies with subsidies, mandated monopolies and right of way, or quasi-governmental utilities co-ops which are owned by their customers (the best choice).
Apparently you and I have different ideas of what net-neutrality means. To me and I think most people (but I may be wrong) net-neutrality does not mean anything about specific servers it means neutrality in the routing and access of data. For example, if my ISP cut a deal with Microsoft to only allow Bing as a search engine and block or throttle my access to Google I would consider that a violation of net-neutrality. To extend your public road analogy, what if your city cut a deal with Daihatsu to only allow Daihatsu cars on the city streets, you can still shoot first, but your stuck with a Daihatsu in your garage as well.
It's character hasn't changed, you're just paranoid of the current administration while you were asleep during the last one.
Perhaps you could point me in the direction of the FCC declaring that "net neutrality" is going to affect the contents of your servers? Something from the the primary source, please, not grandstanding from a technologically-illiterate senator. It sounds like the FUD you're spreading makes you a "useful idiot" for the ISP duopoly.
The internet would be born no matter who designed it. [snip] And who knows, had private enterprise designed the internet from the start, it could have more elegant solutions and such.
Ah, the youthful imagination of how things might have been, unhindered by knowledge of how they were, knows no bounds. And in that imagination, the Internet comes to be in its current form regardless, only better!
But in reality, we already know what private enterprise would have created, because they did create it, or rather them. And they were called Prodigy, AOL, CompuServe, MSN, and others. Of course they were largely piggy-backing off the government-created telephone network, but let's skip that for now.
And you're right, they had some very elegant solutions. For example, they dispensed immediately with the idea that every host should be able to act as both client and server, and that it should be possible to host data outside of on the singular corporation's servers and without their approval. Why it would be so much more efficient if we couldn't waste our time on Slashdot because it violated the AOL community standards.
And talk about elegance -- how about having multiple, mutually exclusive networks! This whole "one global network" thing is totally inelegant. Oh sure there was some consolidation due to buyouts and mergers, but we'd still be waiting for that process to conclude. It's only because of the existence of the Internet, and it's obvious superiority to anything private industry had provided on its own, that forced AOL, MSN, and the other few remaining private networks to first provide Internet access, and then ultimately become simply ISPs with only minor portal websites to remind you of what had been. Though even as this was happening, Bill Gates was saying the Internet was just a passing fad and he was betting everyone would come back to the safe walled garden of MSN soon -- oh yeah, he was just about to create something even better than the Internet. Uh-huh.
Had it not been for the Internet, we wouldn't be having this conversation because you'd be on MSN and I'd be on AOL.
We know what private industry would have done if there was no government interference, if you had your way. And it would have sucked ass.
The enemies of Democracy are
The more I hear of this the more I think we should declare the lot of them "Common Carriers"
"A common carrier holds itself out to provide service to the general public without discrimination (to meet the needs of the regulator's quasi judicial role of impartiality toward the public's interest) for the "public convenience and necessity". -- Cut some out -- in the United States the term may also refer to telecommunications providers and public utilities" -- Wikipedia
Stops the whole "Net Neutrality" issue and gives them some extended protections. If they want to say thay are not common carriers, I say we throw the lot of them in jail for transportation of child pornography. Every one of them provides it to there customers and seeing as they are not protected as a common carrier then they can be responsible for what they carry.
Just my 2 cents
No, because private enterprise would find a way to make it work.
There are as many examples of that not happening as there are of it happening.
If enough people want something and the government doesn't interfere, the free market comes up with an elegant solution that works
The free market solution for electricity prior to the rural electrification act was to just not sell it to people who were outside the cities, because it was not seen as profitable. After all at that point most of the country's wealth was concentrated in the cities, so why would the market be interested in bringing electricity to poor people who might not be able to afford the requisite rate for bringing power that far away?
Hence it is likely that had that act not taken effect, much of our agriculture (which tends to not be in large cities) would have needed to be done without electricity. That, or the farms would need to be sold to large corporations who could afford to pay for electricity to be purchased and brought to them - which would have put small businesses out of business.
Or are you just anti-small-business?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
If enough people want something and the government doesn't interfere, the free market comes up with an elegant solution that works.
No. The whole point is there aren't "enough people" to make it economical for business to deliver certain services out to rural areas and still make a profit (must the tired USPS/UPS point need be repeated?). Sure, the market *eventually* came up with affordable on-site power generation products, but it hadn't bothered at the time the bill was passed. Why is it so hard to understand that private enterprise is fantastic when it has a market to supply and otherwise it's useless and we need government to actually get anything done?
There's a large difference between what government decided to subsidize decades ago, and today's politicians being too cowardly to cancel outdated subsidies like coal and corn. If you insist on living in the past please stick to arguing about the merits of a subsidy, but don't keep boring us with verses from your stupid free market bible.
Meanwhile, private enterprise largely built the Internet after the very early phase, while government did its best to prevent commercial use. You know, companies like Sun, Cisco, etc, etc, etc, etc....
FAIL: Information Infrastructure and Technology Act of 1992
Nuff said.
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
The first time a large ISP tries to charge Google, Yahoo, Facebook, or some other large site money to allow their customers access to it and that same site says "No" and gets blocked/slowed down, their competitors (the ISP's, that is) are going to add that to their ad campaigns and you'll see their customers desert them in droves.
A couple issues with that solution:
1. In many areas, a reasonable question to ask is "what competitors?"
2. It's not just what my ISP does, it's what every ISP anywhere between me and Google does.
I am officially gone from
Government did not make the internet what it is today; private industry did. Government wanted a WAN design, granted, but yeesh. 'government-created information network' is definitely not just a stretch, it's inaccurate. Government opening the door to private industry does not equate to government creation, and it certainly doesn't show initial interference to back up your somewhat rude point (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet#History)
They created the technology, deployed the first real networks, and when they opened it up to private enterprise in 1988, many of them received government subsidies for the development of their networks, not to mention right of way and other dispensation. The ones that already existed only became part of the Internet because the Government had first created it; before that the private networks were walled gardens. Yes private enterprise developed the internet from that to what it is today, but to say it was government created is completely 100% accurate, and to say it exists in its current form only because of government "interference" is also 100% accurate.
If you don't like the term "government created" to describe the Internet as it exists today, fine, in that context I misspoke. You can't deny that the government did "interfere" with private enterprise in a way that guided them towards creating what does exist, directly contradicting the OP's point, which is my point.
The enemies of Democracy are
Full disclosure: My wife has chronic pain so I'm not completely detached from this issue. I still wouldn't want her taking drugs with unknown side effects.
Actually, with the government our data might actually be SAFER. Because then it has to abide by the 4th amendment.
UPS, FedEx, and DHL are free to snoop around in your packages all they like, because they are private entities. The USPS, on the other hand, being a government agency doesn't have that privilege. If they want to snoop in the mail, they have to get a warrant first.
The same thing would probably apply with government run networks under wiretap regulations.
Only during Nap Time, but between that, Recess, Arts and Crafts, Story Time, and Reading and Arithmetic, who has the energy left to keep up on current technology trends?
American corporations have been behaving like welfare queens for decades, and all the while pounding their chests and proclaiming their love of free enterprise. The disgusting part of the whole thing is that the business press is so used to kissing corporate heinie that they never call them on it.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
You prevent them yourselves by subsidizing prices in any competitors area until that competitor is out of business, then jack the prices up to outrageous levels until you've recovered your losses.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Not a bad argument, used for many "laissez faire" open/free market arguments. The problem is when it comes to basic and near-basic utilities (electric, gas, oil, cable, internet, health care), there are quite often only one or two companies in your area that provide those services. They often know it, and without some sort of government oversight, they can do whatever they feel will net their upper management a few extra $$$ so they can get their kids yachts for Xmas.
What if Verizon gets no signal near your home or work? Are you going to cancel your AT&T contract and get a Verizon Droid phone you can't use?
Where I live in MA I am lucky enough that I can pick from Comcast or Verizon, but I started a new job up in NH and my boss, who lives locally, was pointing out that in most of the areas around here there's just one residential ISP (someone I'd never even heard of). What happens when Net Neutrality is quashed and this ISP decides to jump on the money machine and start charging Google, Wikipedia, Fark, Facebook, CNN, Yahoo, or hell, AT&T to use their network or be slowed? What do you do when you take a WFH day and decide to remote in to work but since AT&T didn't pay the no-name ISP enough, they get throttled and it takes you an hour to do what could've taken 10 minutes? Cancel your ISP and go stare at the wall? Or worse, get DirecTV satellite Internet? *gag* Oh I know, you could complain to your single ISP! Enjoy the laughter.
And while competition might limit the effects of losing net neutrality, it wouldn't stop it. Sure, Comcast might run an ad campaign touting how they don't slow down Fark and Google like Verizon does, and Verizon might run ads saying they don't slow down Bing and Spankwire like Comcast does, but what gets shuffled under the carpet is the fact that in the background, they BOTH slow down bbc.co.uk, Washington Post, and Slashdot, just because they can.
I'm not a fan of big government or government interference in daily life, but I'm definitely not a fan of monolithic, unregulated corporations either.
ad astra per alia porci
"A market dominated by a collusive cartel" is what all unregulated free market systems naturally devolve into, in much the same way that entropy naturally increases.
When I first heard of Net Neutrality, people had mockups of what they feared ISP's plans would eventually degenerate into. Things like "facebook+ebay+1GB other". It gave me the creeps back then, but what horrifies me is that in less than a year this has become reality to Australians.
Check this out: Optus iPhone plans. Click the "Plan Comparisons". Each one has a "Unlimited mobile access to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, eBay, foursquare" bonus.
The fine print says: "Unlimited use of these services within Australia only. Use of these services is separate and does not count towards your included “Mobile Internet Data Value.” These features are only available to you if your handset is compatible with the service. Optus Mobile Fair Go Policy applies..."
Keep in mind that Australia already has "tiered" internet pricing, because local bandwidth is practically free, while international bandwidth is very expensive. However, this is not what's happening here. None of those sites are hosted in Australia. It costs Optus no less to provide those to their customers than any other site. This is some sort of back-room deal.
If you host a website, or work for a company that does, welcome to second-class citizenship on the internet, unless you pony up the cash and make a deal with every two-bit ISP and Telco out there. Can't afford to do that? Tough.
Welcome to the free internet, where you are free to use all 6 Optus approved services.
Wow, you're new here on Earth, aren't you?
Private enterprise didn't "largely" build the Internet. After the "very early phase" when government actually built the thing, it was publicly-funded universities that did the heavy lifting.
Private enterprise has mostly been "me too!" when it comes to the Internet, doing their best to turn it into cable television when they finally got a clue. In fact, I think if you were to point to the things that you love the most about the Internet, you'd find that they were mostly already in place before "private enterprise" got up to speed online, while the things you hate most (Flash, advertising, spam, spyware, etc) about the internet have been almost entirely the result of bright ideas from private enterprise.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Actually, cartels, price-fixing, collusion, etc are exactly what you get if you had a truly "free" market (assuming that such a thing could exist in the first place).
There is no mechanism in a "free market" that would prevent price-fixing or monopolies. Only government regulation can do that.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If you're going to die anyway, why shouldn't you take an untested drug which might kill you or might save your life?
Because you have absolutely no reason to believe it might save you, nor how to distinguish it from a thousand other "medicines" which claim to fix everything wrong with you. And government-employed doctors at HHS can't because of the oath to "do no harm" as they're still charged with protection of its population regardless of what kind of stupid ideas they may have individually.
The more appropriate question is: if you're going to die, would you knowingly take something which is *more* likely to shorten your life than extend it? You wouldn't have the luxury of knowing the drugs you use are most likely safe, having no access to documentation. tests, manufacturing processes, safety measures, etc.. Those fake "dietary supplements" are generally physically harmless, which is the reason they're still around duping the induhviduals. There's a huge moral difference between leaving someone the freedom to do what they want and standing idle while lives are at risk. Letting big pharma reduce testing *just enough* to avoid massive wrongful death lawsuits is just an all-around nonsensical idea when you accept the fact that their boards have no care about negative consequences of their operation if the balance sheet is positive.
Reducing regulation would only serve only to reduce testing cycles to a fraction of current far-from-perfect standards, an explosion of names for the same drug sold under a plethora of brands to the point where it would take even a doctor forever to figure out what to prescribe. Sure it *might* be a little cheaper, but at a cost far too great. There's room to debate making the process more efficient or even less cautious, but you zealots can only manage the complexity of thought with room for a single option: abolishing federal agencies.
BTW, I'm glad to see you didn't deny that pharmaceutical regulation has killed vast numbers of people.
They probably didn't because it's a pointless exercise only a simpleton would require. Even when the pass FDA tests and get approved, bad drugs still kill plenty of people. Tipping the scale in the other way makes sense only if you consider death as simply part of doing business. But there I went and forgot who I was talking to: of course that's acceptable to you. It's not Merck's fault people suffered heart attacks- it was their own damn fault for using Vioxx! It shouldn't even have been removed from the market- people should have all the options and damned be psychology for proving that excess choice has little to do with making good decisions.
We used to live under that system, and it fucking sucked. It sucked so badly that the masses revolted and demanded government regulate these industries which perpetrated terrible lies and destruction upon the population. This happened over and over and over again.
People like you have forgotten the lessons of history. Do you think big government was instituted by bureaucrats last Tuesday? We have built up the government over hundreds of years, a little at a time, each time to solve a problem. Every now and then we stumble, but we usually trade in a big problem (say, unregulated drug markets causing huge causualties) for a small one (say, fewer casualties).
Competition would keep everything tidy soon enough.
I base my beliefs on evidence, which is why I completely reject statements like this one.
Not hardly. Corporate networks would never, ever have evolved into the Internet.
Without the work done by government and the publicly-funded universities, there would never, ever have been an internet. There are no business models from individual corporations that would have resulted in anything nearly as great as the Internet.
Private enterprise took their best shot at making an Internet and it turned out to be cable television. Remember all the "public access" and "interactivity" there was going to be on cable television? Maybe you're too young to remember the hype surrounding the early "pay TV" efforts, but it was supposed to "serve communities" and "bring us together". We would do our shopping on cable TV and communicate with each other on cable TV and play games on cable TV and have town hall meetings on cable TV.
Instead, we got Spike, the Home Shopping Network and some expensive premium channels.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Oops, got in a hurry there. My FAIL. While parts of that bill were passed in other legislation, that bill ultimately failed. What I was thinking of was actually:
High Performance Computing Act of 1991
http://www.nitrd.gov/congressional/laws/pl_102-194.html [nitrd.gov]
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
And meanwhile, the operation of public roadways enabled both the buggy-whip makers and the automobile makers to make a profit in their time.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I will skip right to "talking out of your butt". The FAA has no problem with ultra-light planes, gliders, etc. that are all small, private, flying craft. Why would a "flying car" be any different?
"But this one goes to 11!"
Actually, we don't have to choose between those two things. That's called a "false choice." Everyone except for you realizes that there is a sliding scale of how much regulation and competition we want, and that the best market is a balance of many competing dimensions.
And who knows, had private enterprise designed the internet from the start, it could have more elegant solutions and such.
If private enterprise designed the internet, we would have had an internet designed by Microsoft, DoubleClick, and Real. Jesus, that makes me shudder. We all benefit every single day because the internet was designed by idealistic hippies who believed in sharing, equality, and freedom, even at the expense of profits. The internet is so good specifically because it was designed by academics and government.
I'm sure there are a couple examples, but I can't actually think of any standards which arose from unregulated markets. Insofar as standards benefit consumers (and that is insofar VERY far indeed), the credit is almost entirely due to unfree, regulated markets.
Government opening the door to private industry does not equate to government creation
No? It sure seems that way to me. How not?
How did this get moderated "informative"?
Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes.
And it's not informative, either.
Making fun of dumb people since 2009
[Citation needed] is the modern call of the idiot who has no better rebuttal. We need to coin a term for it as a logical fallacy, something like Denial Of Reality or something.
I own what I can defend from taking.
Interesting theory... but it's not really ownership if anyone can just organize a big enough gang to steal it with no repercussions (no matter how good your defenses are, someone will always be able to get more people than you can handle). You "owning" something means that you are exclusively entitled to possess and use it, and that such rights don't disappear just because someone failed to respect them.
$ make available
Can anyone honestly argue that an all private internet would have grown as fast in the last 25 years as this one has?
No, of course not; but they can dishonestly make that argument, and do.
Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes.
No it isn't!
And it's not informative, either.
Yes it is!
Well, actually, no you're right it's not informative at all. At most it's ever-so-slightly informative or funny. Mostly it's just me being a wag. One way or another, I was trying to engage Darkness404 on his intellectual level, and I think I achieved that.
Right, fundamentally, there is no ownership. Someone can always organize a larger or more powerful gang and come take it. At some point, this frequently escalates to nations going to war in order to do some taking.
So, really, there is no ownership. It's a fantasy created by transient national stability.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
>>>>>Mom&Pop ISP is Smalltown USA doe not engage in commerce among the states.
>>
>>If they're providing access to a worldwide network
Just because Farmer Jo is selling chickens in Smalltown USA, and her customer carries them into the next state, doesn't mean Farmer Jo is engaging in "commerce among the States". Her chicken business is still INTRAstate commerce. So said the US Supreme Court in the 1930s when they struck down one of FDR's New Deal laws. They ruled the farmer was not engaging in interstate commerce, just because his customers carried the chickens over state lines, and therefore he was not subject to US price-fixing regulations.
Likewise just because Mom&Pop ISP sells bits to a customer, and later passes those bits to the AT&T Megacorp which carries them over state lines, does not mean Mom & Pop engaged in interstate commerce. ATT is subject to Us Law, but Mom & Pop's business, customers, and wires are wholly-and-completely within the State..... in the same way that the EU operates. Member States regulate within their own borders without interference from the general government.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Unless it's a company that's in the supply chain and you are not a direct customer.
What if you really hated something ADM was doing? They were involved in wide-spread price-fixing a few decades ago. How would you "stop doing business" with them? How are you going to "call out" a corporation like that? Without the government's enforcement, ADM would still be price-fixing (actually, they are, just no so much in the US).
See the problem is not companies with retail outlets so much as corporations that by their very size and scope and power have exceeded any authority that any nation or customer can have upon them. Say, Haliburton, or Blackwater, or the Carlyle Group, or Enron (back in the day) or KBR, or AIG? How could any consumer have an influence in the behavior of any of these corporations when these huge corporations don't have customers in the normal sense?
I'm sorry, man, but the most dangerous corporations today are not mom and pop storefront operations. They're transnational monstrosities that are more powerful than governments. They buy and sell governments.
When you have a vote and a free Press (we still have both in the US, no matter what Glenn Beck says), you have a say in what government does. You can organize, you can influence. The biggest corporations are way beyond the reach of consumers and citizens.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I think too many people talk about free markets without actually knowing what it means. A free market means companies regulate the market not the government so if companies decide to team up and agree not to compete on price in order to keep prices artificially high then that is still a free market.
The US mobile phone market is awful. It's a much more free market than Europe yet it's less competitive and more expensive and your phones are still locked down more than Europe and you have incompatible networks where as I can buy any phone in the UK use it on any network without thinking about it.
Companies are self serving and will not give people what they want if they can get away with it and people will generally let them get away with it because they just assume all businesses are greedy and you have to live with it because that's just the way it is.
If the internet were created solely by private businesses it would be nothing more than incompatible AOL networks for people to pick from. It would be utter shit.
That's because there is no incentive for a company to provide an open standard unless absolutely necessary. It just makes sense. If you have something people want why would you want to allow other companies to leech off of your work?
I think people that bang on about free markets just don't think. A completely free market would be just as bad as a completely government controlled society. The ideal situation will always be a fine mix of the two that will require fine tuning over time. There will never be a one size fits all solution.
Thank you, good sir. Apparently, this needs to be said time and again, since some people seem to be blind to the obvious:
THE FREE MARKET IS A MODEL. IT IS NOT REALITY.
Because reality is too complex to understand, we have to create models of it. Don't misunderstand me: the "free market" model is useful AND it's something we should aim for, but it is NOT reality because its assumptions cannot ever be fully met:
1) Economical agents are rational (do I need to explain why this is a false assumption?);
2) Information symmetry (counter-examples: insider tips, speculation...);
3) No participant with market power to set prices (counter-examples: monopolies, cartels...);
4) No/low barriers to entry or exit (counter-examples: ISPs/cable companies, oil companies, banks...);
5) Equal access to production technology (counter-examples: pharm, biotech companies, software patents...).
If you actually pay attention to the world around you, you'll notice that the ones who shout "free market" louder are actually the same people who attempt to subvert the assumptions on which a _real_ "free market" would be based on.
There are standards that arise from private industry that aren't directly spurred by regulation or involvement of public entities. (There is no such thing in reality as an "unregulated market", so its probably not worth looking for standards that emerged in such a market.)
For instance, while the AMQP messaging standard effort largely came from a heavily regulated industry (the early movers were in the financial industry, though software companies and others have signed on), it wasn't regulation that drove it, it was the fact that a bunch of large users of enterprise messaging software were unsatisfied with the existing offerings (and, I suspect, particularly the vendor lock-in that came with the existing enterprise-class offerings) and all had an interest in a developing and adopting a standard that would meet their needs and that vendors who wanted to business with them would need to conform to.
In fact, many of the standards that get adopted in government regulations (at least, in the US) are existing products of industry workgroups before they get adopted by government and mandated for use, and the existing industry workgroups are often charged by the government with updating the standards (though the regulating body chooses whether and when to adopt a new version of the standard that has been developed by the industry organization.)
Just a few nitpicks here:
The Internet didn't even allow any commercial traffic until 1992.
The National Science Foundation funded the US Internet backbone (ran by Merit Networks, a collection of universities) until 1995. So, a plan to have tolls at every stop would have, if nothing else, benefited the government the most. If that were the case, do you really think that the government would have sold the backbone off?
Incidentally, the government selling the backbone off is what caused the current situation, because several of the telcos (AT&T and Verizon) own pieces of the US Internet backbone and are using that as leverage.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
BTW, I'm glad to see you didn't deny that pharmaceutical regulation has killed vast numbers of people.
The material question is, has pharmaceutical regulation saved more people than its killed?
No, but in cases of government regulation, the people in charge are more accountable to the public.
No it isn't!
Yes it is!
this isn't an argument! You're just contradicting.
Thanks for that, DragonWriter. I wasn't aware of the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991. I guess we owe even more of what we now know of as "The Internet" to the efforts of government.
Obviously, not everything government does is good or helpful, but the anti-US government movement that is all the rage in right-wing America today would have us take a big step backward.
You are welcome on my lawn.
What a great opportunity for a company C to come into the market and sell it for $10 and take all the customers.
That's when Company AB sells at $5 for long enough to drive C out of business.
(Which, if it's an industry/product that has an even remotely non-trivial barrier to entry, probably won't take very long, since they'll be deep in the hole to start with.)
Race to the bottom. Look it up.
Example: the minute a bank starts charging to send customers their monthly statements, customers will move to other banks, right? Wrong. At least here in .nl, the other banks decided that this was a good time to start charging for formerly free services as well, until the current situation where you get nickeled and dimed to death with small charges.
In your hypothetical case, the other ISPs will not advertise their neutrality, they will start extorting content providers themselves. This is not theory, it has happened in the marketplace before; I provided but one example.
Mart
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
And if Farmer Jo grows wheat for the sole purpose of feeding those chickens, she still isn't engaging in "commerce among the States".
Unfortunately, there is precedent for saying otherwise.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
Awhile ago I compared the cost of an iPhone in the US and the UK. You had to pay for the phone, pay a higher per month cost, pay to receive calls, get fewer free minutes and fewer free texts. This is despite the fact the UK has a higher tax rate and considering most things are more expensive in the UK I think that speaks volumes about how much of a rip-off phones are in the US.
At the time there were exclusive deals so there was only one seller of the iPhone in both the UK and US.
In the US you can't take your phone to another network or you have to put up a fight. Where as I don't have to. Not that I really do take my phone across networks. It's just too easy to get a new phone for no cost.
It's not just the iphone and some sort of Apple elitist pricing like their computers. In general it just seems more expensive and it seems fairly standard to pay something for the phone while still having to take out a contract.
A quick look at verizon shows only 7 phones that can be had for free on a 2 year contract and they're all old phones and it would appear their cheapest package is $39.99 and that's just for talking. Where as for $42.92 I got a completely free Android G1 when it came out on a 18 month contract with unlimited internet, unlimited texts and 800 minutes which I only use when I call people because I receive calls for free. Plus the phone was unlocked from day one without me having to ask so I can put any SIM card in it that I want. The reason is because standards have been set and they have to operate in a more open and cooperative way so really the only way to draw customers in is with better deals rather than locking them in with a different network or closed phone.
CDMA might have a superior signal but I have no problems with my network and I prefer being able to take my phone to whoever has the best deal. That and if I want to take my phone abroad I will have more luck with GSM. I've not seen anything that says CDMA is by far a clear winner and I believe this link is a fair comparison.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07119/781379-371.stm
GSM came out of Finland and was helped by multiple funding EU funding which sort of proves my point that the best option doesn't come from corporations only or the government only but instead a combination of both.
The bulk of the US population isn't that spread out. By far most people live along the coasts and believe it or not if you go outside of cities, like London not everyone lives right beside each other in Europe. I live out in the fens so most of the land around my small village is flat farm land but I get 3G and 8 meg broadband. Where I lived in the US was a fairly similar area with similar spread between towns / villages and my only option, if I still lived there would be dial-up and a costly mobile phone which may or may not have a decent connection.
Thanks to the land being cheaper here (because there isn't much here) they're going to put a data center on the outskirts and loads of fiber to connect it up with London so I can probably look forward to a fiber connection in a few years.
I'm not sure if I can think of anything that came about in modern day America where corporations have had a lot of control or full control and they have competed through providing a superior services with competitive prices rather than lock in and anti competitive actions.