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If the FCC Had Regulated the Internet From the Start
In the spirit of (but with a different approach than) last week's post "Is Net Neutrality Really Needed?", an anonymous reader writes with this "counterfactual history of the internet, but one that is all too plausible. Unfortunately, I can see this happening under the new 'Net Neutrality.'"
If the internet had been regulated under Title II in the first place, as it should have, giving ISPs and upstream providers "common carrier" status, we would not have the mess we have now.
Deep packet inspection would be illegal "interception" of content, making tiered or discriminatory service impossible. The government would explicitly need a warrant to snoop. Etc.
It might not be a perfect solution, but it would be a hell of a lot better than what we have now. Sometimes regulation is not evil.
Ok, its an interesting read, but not every realistic. As draconian and fascist as the US govt has become over the last 10 years, many of the ideas in the article simply wouldn't fly. Not everyone in the US is a sheeple. Again, interesting, but there is no way in hell that it could have happened remotely as they stated in the article.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
There was another option that also failed but parts still live on with the decedents of X.400 and X.500.
"In late 2010 the last act of the democratic congress was to pass a massive legislative coup giving the FCC all the authority it required to enforce Net Neutrality and a mandate to bring america's infrastructure up to par with the rest of the first world.
Over the next two years the FCC rolled out a series of reforms which led to the end of the stagnation and abuses of the monopolies and duopolies in charge of access to the internet in america, began a campaign to run fiber straight to the home in all major american cities creating a massive number of public works jobs, and singlehandedly raised speeds, lowered prices, and improved the quality of american internet connectivity."
See? I can play the "lets make up a fantasy scenario that perfectly supports my position" game too.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
but basically it's a fairy tale about if the FCC had started regulating interstate electronic communications in 1993, and how it would have mandated Minitel compatibility for electronic devices.
It's amazing how many people have gotten taken in with the misconception that the FCC is "taking over" the Internet. The simplest analogy is toll roads: they're built by private companies, but the government doesn't allow the operators to favor or ban traffic of competing contractors (or anyone else, for that matter).
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
While I don't agree with some of the scenarios in the article (a bit simplistic), I have always been astonished at the laissez-faire approach the Federal Government has always had toward the internet and the WWW. I can only explain it by their ineptitude. Not their libertarian philosophy. As a whole, the Government really never "got it" nor understood the potential until it was too late. Now that it's too late, their hoping that it's not too late. Typical.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
And if someone in a position to do so had gone before Congress in 1990 and testified that in ten years or less, every 12-year-old in the country could have a box in his bedroom which would provide him with 24/7 access to unlimited, free hard-core pornography, the Internet would have been smothered in its crib. Politicians aren't the people to be making these decisions.
Who owns the internet !!
WE DO !!
WE DO !!
And you know it !!
Who-rah !!
This isn't about regulating the internet, it's about preventing private regulation; if you hate people telling you what you can and cannot do then you should support preventing ISPs from being able to decide how your connection can be used.
As long as people are tied to their service providers then they're at the provider's mercy unless it is illegal to impose such controls. "Regulating the internet" would be telling users what to do; that's exactly what would happen if ISPs could shape traffic and they wouldn't have to release you from your contract.
Most people don't realize that draconian rules and totalitarian environments don't happen overnight. They happen over several years of incremental changes that fly below the radar until there comes a point when people wake up and cry "How the hell did this happen?!?!" What's worse is that these incremental measures are instituted "for our own good" and those who place a higher value on emotional reasons for doing things rather than the practicality of the measures and blindly accept these measures. They rarely see the unintended consequences of a policy. Net Neutrality sounds like a good idea: Cool, all traffic will be equal! My ISP won't be allowed to filter my torrent downloads!! WOOT!! Yeah, um, no. Your ISP is going to scale back or cancel any rollout of faster service or they will lower everyone's speeds or they will charge everyone more money. The targets of government regulation never bend over and take it up the ass. They always pass on the ass-f*cking to someone lower in the food chain.
What's up with the anti-NN articles lately? Smells of astroturf if you ask me, to be honest, though I'm wondering how it got past firehose stuff. This article is just the usual FUD approach, I thought slashdot was a bit more capable of recognizing such. The article boils down to some simple appeals to partisanship, fear of being on the "losing side" (when we all are unless you happen to be one of the F500 CEOs or something else equally silly), fear of oppressive government control / fear of the government 'breaking' the internet (the Order and Report is actually very specific and focuses merely on anti-competitive cartel/monopoly tactics)...
On Slashdot it's mostly imagined that regulation is a wholly good thing, at least in principle: the government siding with the people against the corporations.
Any reminder of the problems that can be caused by regulation is therefore worthwhile.
This is not to say that regulation is a wholly bad thing, either. But it can easily make things worse, by closing out competition, for example.
Wherever you see corporations colluding against the public, you may be tempted to suggest regulation as the solution. If so, don't be surprised to discover that their industry is already heavily regulated, and (perversely) regulation is exactly what is enabling the collusion.
And what is the inevitable solution to that collusion? Why, more regulation, of course. The existing regulation must be inadequate, so we need more of it.
In other words, we have only a hammer, so every problem must be a nail. There is a cycle here, and it's not the virtuous sort.
So, if you wish to call for regulation, you should consider the regulation that's already in place. Why is it inadequate? And how is your proposal immunised against the same problems? Because you will not be the first person to suggest regulation - those who came before you had similar ideals, and despite their good intentions, they created the current mess.
The tao of democracy: the government you can vote for is not the real government.
This shows not just an obvious hatred for regulation, but a lack of knowledge about the beginnings of the Web beyond a few names and dates. While showing that any high level of regulation would be used to the advantage of the big companies like Microsoft, it ignores the fact that companies like Microsoft would use their market share to try to create their own standards and to try to force out their competition through incompatibility -- just like they did in the real 1990s with IE.
Yet Another Tech Blog
(but so much more, including game and movie reviews)
http://yanteb.peasantoid.org
Wish I had some cream and onions to go with that tasty red herring.
The fact that one can envision scenarios in which FCC regulation would be bad is no more convincing than scenarios in which the monopoly and n-opoly service providers hamper innovation -- except to the extent that we have evidence of one or the other actually happening. As it happens, we do have such evidence with the service providers. Evidence that they will engage in anti-competitive content restriction which inhibits new business models. The broad and rich exploration of new business models is absolutely critical to being a dominant economy during the advent of sea-change new technology.
If the FCC were inhibiting new approaches to communication by the citizens, consumers, and entrepreneurs (as suggested by the fantasy editorial), we would be well advised to spank them. They are not. If the n-opolies are inhibiting such new concepts, we are equally well advised to prevent that behavior. Government exists, in the business world, to ensure that we as a nation can compete and ideally dominate. In new technology fields, that ability is fundamentally premised on exploring unproven business models. Leaving the governance of the Internet exclusively in the hands of existing profit-maximizing corporations is a perfect formula for optimizing existing business models.
Established corporations are very proficient at analyzing what already exists, and making such things more efficient. That is an important component of our economy. New technology demands the more experimental path trod by entrepreneurs in an unrestricted market exploration space. The FCC's role in this new realm of economic opportunity is to ensure that the market remains unrestricted to those entrepreneurs.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Actually, regulating the Internet could take many forms. For example, you might only be allowed to use certified equipment (or perhaps only certified software) to connect, as is the case with CB radio. Or, more optimistically, ISPs may be required to act as common carriers and not be allowed to turn the Internet into a clone of the cable TV system.
It is not really a question of whether or not the Internet should be regulated, it is a more of a question of which regulations would be best for the American people. The large corporations that currently control our access to the Internet want to turn it into another cable TV system, with "websites" acting as "channels" and "peer to peer" being a forgotten memory; without some sort of regulation, they will go ahead and do that, and we'll need to establish a second Internet to escape.
Palm trees and 8
since the line sharing agreement (hellooo regulation) ended in 2006, there are no small regional isps left anymore in the first place ? how that has been any different ?
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"If the Government had regulated the roads from the start!"
Meh, what a poorly written and scaremongering article.
Sorry, this is tiresome idealogical Bullshit. It's not close enough to a plausible alternate reality to be interesting.
The internet is a worldwide network. If one country banned or censored it, it would make almost no difference to everyone else - expect that the amount of spam might be down a little.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
It is interesting that the private companies killed off the walled garden without intervention. It's an example where companies didn't think long term and went for short term advantage that *happened* to luck out for the consumers. If they had thought long term business, they would've emphasized exclusive content and explicitly not granted internet connectivity (maybe allowed email, but no routable IP address to the home), making it hard to move from one service to another. We are very fortunate things didn't go that way.
In terms of the article, I don't see FCC mandating full stack to the point of mandating a portal UI (absolutely no precedent of that). If they would have hypothetically stood in the way of service providers offering internet on top of their other services, it would not have been due to instability, but obscenity. Even then they would probably have just required parental controls to access the internet at all. I do see them not moving to shift the open/closed status quo one way or another (if the general market is open, they do endeavor to preserve openness, but if the market is closed, they don't seem too eager to open it up excessively much, e.g. cable television).
The only entities that would have stopped the internet are private companies.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
In the early days, internet service did not require regulation because there was plenty of competition. The barriers to entry were low; anyone could set up a modem bank and T1 service and start serving dial-up customers. My provider was a local one-man operation, with service just as good as (and cheaper than) the big names.
But with the transition to broadband, the incumbent phone and cable providers gained immense power. Their existing physical infrastructure gave them a largely insurmountable advantage over potential new entrants. This created an effective duopoly, one that still persists today in many markets. In such a situation, the free market cannot function, and government regulation is required to prevent abuses.
.
GMAFB
what relevance does this have ? telcos consolidated because of the all you can eat prices ? they werent going to consolidate, if there wasnt such a model ? youre talking as if consolidation didnt happen in ALL other sectors left without regulation.
let me put bluntly : if you allow it, big dog eats the small dog.
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We already had "the internet" regulated, tarriffed, and adopted by the suits.
It was called X.25.
In retrospect it was the best possible scenario. All the standards writers, and the big business suits, and the government, and the telcos, were chasing X.25. Giving hackers the freedom to do TCP/IP and SMTP and FTP and the web etc.
BEST POSSIBLE SCENARIO!
is supposed to regulate the wireless spectrum but all they've done is turn the free airwaves into the most expensive communication system ever by selling the best parts of the spectrum to an oligopoly of highest bidders whose business model is to nickel and dime the consumer for everything.
Why not set aside some of the spectrum for mobile IP addresses that consumers can use for voice, email, text or whatever they want with any device they want without having to follow the dictates of Verizon and AT&T.
Where does this come from? Current sizzling fresh regulation does not say anything about that as far as I know.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
So, the Bulletin Board Systems just up and disappeared?
I find it near impossible for the FCC to gain the authority to regulate a computer running in someone's basement, even under this unrealistic scenario.
Sorry, Usenet still evolves under this scenario, it's just more like FidoNet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Shafer
Regulatory capture is the relevant mechanism.
To which I humbly ask, for an organization which result is easier to achieve: success or failure?
Now, given the fact that we tend to elect as representatives those who openly subvert the intentions of the standing institutions of government, then as they twist the already plunged keys-of-good-faith from our nation like a dagger in the side, proceed to sell short public opinion in the very organization they swore to uphold, all the while riding the 24/7 rating-making-machine straight into their next election like a prophetic hero, how reasonably can we expect success?
Seriously, I had to check which site I was on when I started reading that article.
If the FCC was as evil as it is painted in that article, BBSs would never have come into existence. Instead, FCC regulation ENABLED BBSs to exist, and at a level that could be afforded by most anyone.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
I have been sending emails sence 1984, pre-DNS with email servers identified by IP.
My first email address was like ohabcdef@IPv4.
The referenced article is a fictional spin that would be reasonably probable with a FCC regulated Internet.
The wild-wild-west is always best for innovation.
Corporate-Draconia/Welfare will always support oppression of competition, in favor of sustaining customer-hostages, with little or no innovation.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
If the founders of this country had had the foresight, they could have put a clause in the constitution about the internet. They should also have clarified what was included in 'arms' under the 2nd amendment.
Your cable and telephone companies have guaranteed monopolies in most municipalities. They can set prices wherever they want because it is actually illegal to compete with them.
Make it illegal to give a company a local monopoly and you will solve some of this problem.
So you're saying there should be no regulation of any kind in the (quite substantial) market demand for hit men?
I'm sorry, but specifically which part of the War on Drugs are you referring to? While there are parts of the War on Drugs I disagree with, broadly I would argue it's legally permissible.
... How is the War on Drugs an abuse of the Commerce Clause? It is essentially tantamount to an enormous anti-smuggling operation, and it clearly involves interstate and foreign commerce. That seems to me to be clearly within the purview of the Commerce Clause.
If you agree that the FDA is constitutional, then the government clearly must have the power to regulate harmful substances. Illegal drugs are illegal because they've been judged to be harmful. (Some, like marijuana, arguably incorrectly - doesn't matter; there's a difference between overstepping your authority, and making a mistake.) I believe the FDA is a good thing, that it's something the government should be in the business of doing, so therefore I believe it has the authority to regulate abusable drugs.
Given that the government has this power, and given that it has chosen to exercise it by banning certain substances
What this leaves out of the perspective at all is that the FCC doesn't regulate jack in the rest of the world.
Imagine Google, Amazon, EBay and all the other "first tier" internet giants emerged in the UK or somewhere else in Europe (Switzerland comes to mind, considering their tax policy), do you think the FCC could hold back the 'net for long?
Comparing the internet with telephone has one fundamental flaw: A company that wants to sell to the US by phone pretty much HAS to be in the US because you won't order with a transcontinental call. With the internet, it doesn't mean jack where you put bricks and mortar.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Great article! Gives some perspective It is really unfortunate when people pretend these regulations are going to improve on anything. Slashdot is overwhelmingly FOR Government control/regulation.... And when it backfires the supporters either lie about it or say "well atleast they tried something!!!!!!". It's called the law of unintended consequences.
Why did the war on alcohol need a constitutional amendment to start and end?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Here's my summary of the article:
First off, the article misinterprets (or misrepresents) net neutrality (via FCC regulation) as regulation of the Internet, rather than regulation of Internet connections. So it was off the rails from the start, beating on a strawman. Which is also sort of a dead horse. A dead straw horse you might say. Anyways the article uses a Randian "world is holding back the supermen" storyline combined with Beck-ian tinfoil-hat and backwoods-militia conspiracy theories about net neutrality to form its alternate reality dystopia.
It's the libertarian's equivalent of dystopian sci-fi. Perhaps the ultra-cheesy dystopian sci-fi that's so bad you feel guilty reading it, and yet you have trouble putting it down because the raw pleasure of its dirty back-alley ideological handjob momentarily overpowers the guilt and shame.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If you agree that the FDA is constitutional, then the government clearly must have the power to regulate harmful substances.
We have established that there are circumstances under which regulation of speech is constitutional. Then the government clearly must have the the power to regulate speech which (imagine a hidden "I think" here) is harmful. See what I did there?
Just because government has some power to regulate food and drugs(and I don't think all of the FDA's activities are constitutional and/or beneficial, such as its regulation of experimental drugs), doesn't mean that it should have the power to seize your property or jail you, if you are caught in possession of certain recreational drugs.
Given that the government has this power, and given that it has chosen to exercise it by banning certain substances ... How is the War on Drugs an abuse of the Commerce Clause? It is essentially tantamount to an enormous anti-smuggling operation, and it clearly involves interstate and foreign commerce. That seems to me to be clearly within the purview of the Commerce Clause.
The Commerce Clause is a constraint on government power. The government has this power only through a very opportunistic interpretation of the clause. Suppose I had the legal power to kill you with no justification required whatsoever. Actually deciding to kill you would be within the purview of my power. But would it be just or moral to kill you without explanation? Merely having the power to do something doesn't in itself justify doing it.
The internet is an international thing nowadays..?
The examples being given of "the horrors of regulation" in both articles are exactly what is trying to be PREVENTED by the "Net Neutrality" regulations being proposed.
Specifically: The article writers are saying that "regulation" means the government could regulate which SERVICES we end-users use, but the whole point of "Net Neutrality" is that no entity between any Server/Client can dictate which services or even low-level protocol packets their networks carry. I.e. nobody can say you can only use Google, and not some other search service.
So, I can only conclude that the article writers are trying to fool people into thinking that "No Regulation Is Good", and by that letting the ISPs choose for you with the claim that "competition amoung ISPs will keep the customer in charge".
Frankly the claim that there are "lots of competing ISPs in each area" is laughably false.
Imagine the FCC regulating those pioneering ISPs:
- Mandating maximum user-to-port ratios. Oversubscribing was just plain essential for survival. Wrong, but necessary.
- Mandating modem interoperability. What fun having to have both K56 and X2, with different pools and numbers. Ack!
- Making ISPs common carriers, would they have required them to be treated differently than the telcos did? My first ISP had 10 phone lines in his closet (LITERALLY the living room closet of his apartment) with modems stacked in front of a desk fan. The phone company asked about why he had so many lines, and he basically said 'cause i wanna'.
- Would Usenet have survived? Would I have been required to maintain the FCC's mandated days' of files, which was an enormous task?
- Would BitTorrent have been a permitted protocol? So much for RFCs, carriers would want to regulate the protocols permitted, to ensure orderly traffic management and of course avoid crushing providers with massive traffic.
- Would the FCC been able to regulate spam without destroying free speech on the Internet?
No, the FCC would have ruined the Internet. If they had gone in, we would today have AOL and Compuserve. That's all.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Ah ah!
this alternative history of the Internet is sooooo american that it becomes exotic. I especially like the idea that the FCC would mandate the French minitel to fix bob. Eh eh ! Microsoft protocol fixed by a French (socialist) govenment mandated cheese carrying protocol. Bob must be VERY BAD.
Joke aside, although it is a good thing that Minitel has been superseeded by the Internet in France, it WAS a success and brought millions of people online way before the Internet was widespread. It also enabled a generation of French telecommunication engineer to have a market outside the telecommunication adminsitration (France Telecom was still public at that time). I do not share at all the view of some of my compatriotes that it slew down the rollout of Internet in France.
Finally, it haf this kiosk feature that would enable users to be charged of service usage on their phone bill without hassle. Apple store and iTune replicate this in a much shinier and user friendly way but which one is more 'neutral'? A market operated by a single company or by a public administration?
The answer would probably different on both sides of the atlantic.
We absolutely positively do not need and must not have FCC regulation of the Internet.
We absolutely positively do need and must have strong regulation of the regional monopoly telecom providers. Without regulation they will form trusts like the railway operators of the 19th century did, using their monopoly control over the transit market to dominate many other markets. The telecom monopolies, if they are to continue to exist, must be made common carriers with no leeway to discriminate among their customers, and no ability to prefer their partners and subsidiaries over independents.
This article has nothing to do with NN. It is a teabagger-horror story about how if them stupid dems had been in charge during the Clinton administration*, they would have passed dumb laws that would have destroyed the internet. Network Neutrality was not one of them.
* Yes, I know Clinton is a democrat who had a democratic congress for the first part of his term. The author of the article never explains the real disconnect between what they would have done in his fantasy, and what they actually did.
Yes - all the government has is a hammer (regulation).
No - not all hammers are the same.
You're just stating the obvious in a twisted metaphor. Obviously not all regulation is good. It's not all bad/necessary/evil/* either. The debate is (or at least should be) on how to solve the problem, not whether or not to drop the hammer. In keeping with your metaphor - which kind of hammer do you use?
the bandwidth blabber is just an excuse for pushing anti net neutrality. telcos had, and do have the means to make investments that would render the bandwidth/traffic issue a non question.
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But they have to want to make that investment.
they dont have that choice. they are physically monopolizing connectivity.
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/04/18/1318210
which is actually also a reason why there is no investment. they dont want to invest AND want more. and they are using that monopolizing situation to force everyone to their will.
so, they have no choice. or, they should be left with no choice. noone in a monopoly situation, has the right to their 'private property'. because once youre in a monopoly or near monopoly (or oligopoly, cartel) position, it means that you are controlling the lives of people to a great extent without choice. and it is against the concept of freedom.
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