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Net Neutrality — Threat Or Menace?
Roblimo writes "I had a dream. In it, I was CEO of a large telecommunications company that was also a major broadband Internet provider and all five members of the FCC were stabbing me with pitchforks and yelling in my ear that my company would be treated as a common carrier, not as a special entity they couldn't regulate. That's when I woke up..."
Side A: Net Neutrality means that I can do whatever I want with my net connection without paying different fees!
Side B: Net Neutrality causes the government to regulate what ISPs provide, and stifles free market!
Nobody is arguing true net neutrality, which is that my ISP is not allowed to regulate what content I receive through the means I have purchased. I don't care if they block ports on some plans, or limit my connectivity in other ways so long as they are not blocking sites or CHANGING the content before I receive it. If I use more bandwidth I deserve to pay more because it costs my ISP more to cater to me, but I don't want them to re-direct my web browsing (even my advertisements), I don't want them to throttle certain things that I am allowed to do, or otherwise hinder my connectivity unless it's actually because I have gone outside the bounds of my service plan (Too many GB downloaded/uploaded). Until we can stand together and support the free exchange of information without tying it together with freedom to do whatever the hell you want net neutrality will fail.
Where, pray tell, do you think the billions of dollars come from?
The level of cynicism in the US these days is appalling. Given the number of things that are wrong with the country, and the relatively sophisticated level of interaction that we see on slashdot[*], you'd think that action might occasionally result. But no, the very people whom you empower to make stupid decisions are treated as some kind of force of Nature, no more controllable than the weather.
Yes, the system is fucked from top to bottom. Yes, getting anything done is boring and tedious and draining and maddening and prone to delay. It's designed that way to keep things from changing. Yes, dream as one might about overnight revolution, the only major changes to happen in the US since the revolution have taken decades as often as not. Equality for all races is still not fully achieved, a century and a half after people first began fighting about it. The very concept of the government as having a role in preserving the welfare of the people remains contentious and under constant challenge, fully two generations after it was first introduced as policy.
What, did you think there was any other way? Did you think you could just throw a hissy fit and the nation would re-shape itself to fit your latest whim?
The media are corrupt and debased, so find better sources for reporting, analysis and commentary. They're there to be found. Yes, your politician is a small-minded dick (or dick-ette) who's happier to comment on some inane 'wedge issue' than take an actual stance on policy. That's because the tactic works. Challenge them, primary them, pick on them and don't let up. Pick your battles and goddam well fight them.
Yes, you're going to lose a lot of the time. Most successes will be compromises that will make you throw up a little in your own mouth. But you'll have moved the sticks another yard.
Even if you do none of the above, please, for Christ's sake, stop throwing up your hands in despair. Come on, you're clever people! Act like it for once.
You - more than the nut-bars on either fringe - are the people who most make me want to despair. You're smart enough to know better, and to achieve real change, but you've already given up. There will be nut-jobs in every generation; what's tragic about this one is that you've ceded the entire political process to them.
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[*] I said 'relatively'. Relative to the average forum, yes, this is sophisticated. Hell, you're even reading the footnotes, so QED. 8^)
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
I was going to moderate in this discussion. Forget it.
How is there enough competition? Is that why text message prices have gone up, despite costs to send them going down? Is that why AT&T has been spending less on their (famously bad) network lately, despite traffic being up at least 40%? Does that sound like something you do when you're in tight competition?
And what's this low barriers to entry stuff? Putting up cell towers is expensive as hell, and it's hard to get the land to put towers up (which is one reason it's hard to cover cities). Then you have to have a spectrum license, phones that work with your chunk of spectrum, backhaul.... And no one is going to sign up with a carrier that only has 2 or 3 towers.
Or are you talking about being an MVNO? Because those, even those that were arms of the big guys, have done so well over the last few years. The only carrier that seems to have entered the market recently is Wal*Mart, who is an MVNO (they don't have their own towers), and they have hundreds of billions they can spend to do it.
It's a legal contract, the government should stay out of it. But that's not the situation. We have 2-4 big companies, who move in concert (text message price raises are an example) and use their resources to keep new players out of the market (contracts, spectrum license auctions are bid up, etc). They have an oligopoly which they actively try to keep in place to stifle competition.
The government should keep it's hands off the free market. But wireless and consumer internet access are no where near free markets for the vast majority of people, so it's the government's job to come in and protect citizens. Sometimes an industry or market needs a kick in the rear to get it moving. Sometimes that comes from inside (foreign cars during the oil crisis pushed the direction of Detroit), and sometimes it has to come from outside (the AT&T breakup).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
You seem to think that the market will self regulate but it won't.
1) More smaller companies will not make regulation happen. We had dozens of wireless providers and they slowly consolidated again--that's the endgame of capitalism.
2) Cost of entry is too great for others to get in to the game and not because of regulation but because of hardware and wires, so we won't be seeing competition coming from the outside.
3) Some times a government granted monopoly is the way to go. What would happen if everyone had to pick their own garbage collection company to come to their house? Collection days would widely differ, so trash would constantly be on the curb on your street; trash would pile up if companies folded without notice; some people would crazy sums of money because they were out of area; and really since they are already going down the street, why not just get all the trash on the street at once.
Some times it's more efficient to be government regulated industry.
Where, pray tell, do you think the billions of dollars come from?
The level of cynicism in the US these days is appalling.
1. If I had millions of dollars in disposable income to setup lobbying groups that would be pro-consumer, I would... but (see point #2)
2. More often than not, industry groups get invited to the negotiating table and consumer advocacy groups don't.
Yes, you're going to lose a lot of the time. Most successes will be compromises that will make you throw up a little in your own mouth. But you'll have moved the sticks another yard.
Even if you do none of the above, please, for Christ's sake, stop throwing up your hands in despair. Come on, you're clever people! Act like it for once.
It doesn't matter how "boring and tedious and draining and maddening and prone to delay" the system is if you and I never get a seat at the table when it counts.
Ultimately, by the time industries/politicians go public with their plan, our ability to negotiate a meaningful compromise is already irrevocably fucked.
It's very rare for a large policy issue to not get decided behind closed doors and then "opened" to public input.
You can assert that I'm being cynical and despairing, but I'm calling it like I see it.
Or to put it succinctly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Are you serious or are you trolling?
FCC regulates stuff. For example, they regulate telephone networks so that telephone networks guarantee certain amount of traffic, *always*. What was the last time you picked up a receiver and didn't get a dial tone? That's FCC rules. FCC does not regulate your caller ID!
FCC job is to regulate ISPs such that they cannot to QoS on SIP vs. HTTP, or SIP from telco 1 vs. SIP from telco 2. They can regulate that ISPs can only do QoS based on end-point-IP of their customers only, and not on content provider's IP or what is type of connection.
Without FCC regulation, what is stopping ISPs from fucking over all SIP, IPX and any other voice connection because the ISP is also a phone company? What is stopping the ISP from demanding extra money to provide smooth HD traffic to youtube? Nothing. Monopolies can demand whatever they want.
PS. I pay $0.01/min (one cent per minute, or 60 cents an hour) to call any number in the US. Better quality than regular PSTN connection. All thanks to Internet and because my ISP *chose* not to fuck me over. But what guarantee do I have that the ISP will simply not start blocking SIP connections because their revenue for long distance from my number is non-existent?? And what choice do I have for another ISP? Absolutely ZERO.
My SIP provider, callwithus.com, even has a notice,
yeah, it's already happening. ISP fuck customers over because they know they can't move to another provider anyway.
What we have is good? Try telling that to the old-timers like me who remember when USENET was a place where people enjoyed conversing, rather than a place of spam, hatred and hostility.
Well, that's what we get for inviting the marketers and politicos in on what we were building. If we'd kept up the pretense that it was an Ivory Tower thing only of interest to academic types (and our military funders ;-), we wouldn't have these problems.
Of course, we'd also probably not have connectivity to our homes or mobile phones. The only way to make the Internet available everywhere we want to go is to make it universally available. The universe includes those marketers and politicos, so it was inevitable that they'd stumble into our sandbox and behave the way they've always behaved.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.