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To Save the Internet We Need To Own the Means of Distribution
indros13 (531405) writes "Net neutrality took a hit when the FCC gave its blessing to "Internet fast lanes' last week and one commentator believes that the solution is simple: public ownership of the hardware. 'Owning the means of distribution is a traditional function of local government. We call our roads and bridges and water and sewer pipe networks public infrastructure for a reason. In the 19th century local and state governments concluded that the transportation of people and goods was so essential to a modern economy that the key distribution system must be publicly owned. In the 21st century the transportation of information is equally essential.'
Is the Internet essential infrastructure? Should local governments step in to preserve equality of access?"
Is the Internet essential infrastructure? Should local governments step in to preserve equality of access?"
I mean, just look at how great things are now that the FCC regulates the internet. Can't wait to have more business-owned politicians to mingle in the foundations of the internet.
"Is the Internet essential infrastructure? Should local governments step in to preserve equality of access?"
Yes.
...but you forget that the (U.S.) government is owned by the corporations, not the people.
However, given local and national governments' propensity to legislate the way the political donors dictate, it would seem on reflection that not much would change.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
We can't trust the government anymore then we can trust corporations. Do we really think they won't capture all the information being delivered to us?
Without commenting on the desirability of the change, I'll note that some areas are reverting to privately financed and owned roads, with significant tolls (that tend to creep up). Probably a way of coping with reduced transportation budgets.
This is nothing but thinly veiled Socialism. The free market always will provide a superior solution ... and probably already has. I am not interested in a step backwards and I am definitely not interested in a step towards the European or Russian model. Fuck. Go back to New York or California.
Here in the US, local governments are a large part of the reason we have such poor competition for internet service. Many municipalities grant franchise agreements to ISP, allowing them to operate as the only service provider in a given area. To be fair, these do include *some* incentives for the service provider to provide a good service (often in the form of a "Good Service Bond," money the service provider only gets back if they do a good job in the eyes of the local gov't). However, despite these incentives, I feel consumers would get better service if there were actual competition for their business. To address OP's question: local government has already stepped in, and has been a part of the problem thus far.
I love it when some utopian statist poses such a question - "should the government take over X for the benefit of all?" - as if government is a neutral, rational entity that has the best interest of the public at heart.
Local governments (still, one might put it, "within arm's reach of the voter")? Very likely so. I know lots of people at the local government levels that work their asses off to do the right thing and the best thing for their communities.
But what has been abundantly proven over and over from the food industry to the car industry to the power industry to the cable tv industry is that larger scales of government are ever-more corrupted/corruptable to the point that at the highest, federal level, it's lobbyists, private interests, and power-brokers all the way through.
I used to be a starry-eyed idealist, and was insulted when Jackie Chan commented to a Chinese paper that "America is more corrupt than China". I still think he's wrong in an absolute sense, but the more I try to look clearly and skeptically at my own country and government, the more I'm repulsed by the greed and nepotism at the highest levels and am, perhaps finally, beginning to admit that it may not be fixable.
-Styopa
Would classifying broadband providers as common carriers not be an effective solution to this as well? There's a WhiteHouse.gov petition circulating that so far has surprisingly little support.
Is the Internet essential infrastructure? Should local governments step in to preserve equality of access?"
Yes... the internet infrastructure is essential. That is why nobody should own or regulate it.
Personally; I would rather see the government give each internet service provider a choice whether they will be a common carrier or not. If they choose NOT to be a common carrier, then that ISP may not be a licensed telecommunications company --- that is, that company is not given the right to install or own copper or fibre optic cabling installed on any public right of way ----- in other words, this "NOT a common carrier" option should not be open to any ISP who is also a Cable company or telco.
If an ISP or cable company chooses to be a common carrier, then they are subject to network neutrality and many other regulations. They are then allowed to be a licensed telecommunication carrier, and they are then allowed to own or install fibre optic cables, copper, other data cables, and IRUs (indefeasible rights of use) for data/telecom cables in a public right of way.
BUT: they are then subject to network neutrality and other regulation. At a bare minimum, they should be required to lease data access ("IP networking connectivity") to ISPs of all types on a fair and nondiscriminatory basis.
Remember what makes the internet work at all and work so well is that government is not involved in its administration. Every private entity can build their own network, AND they cooperate to interconnect and form internet.
The moment the government starts owning significant pieces, they will be subject to lobbying by special interest groups and start passing laws to regulate and control usage of it or insert web filtering to protect the children.
In other words: government ownership could be the undoing of open and free internet.
This could be much worse than what corporations will do.
After all... The internet was around and survived a long time with no "network neutrality" rules.
On the other hand: it is good and great if local municipalities own the last mile infrastructure. Like your municipal water authority installs and owns the pipes.
As long as the municipality does not decide they want to regulate what kind of information you can view, and start inserting web filters and censorship... which is much less likely, than if a powerful government entity begins to own internet exchange points and other critical internet infrastructure.
It would be a step in the right direction. However, political corruption will not allow it.
I'm for net neutrality but "To Save the Internet We Need To Own the Means of Distribution" is a little over the top.
The Internet has grown despite of restrictions from ISPs since day one.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
While I agree that there would be considerable benefit from this, I think that there's a whole mess of tinfoil hat issues here. Don't get me wrong, I fully believe that my government is spying on me (not specifically me, but in general). Giving them all the hardware means no more negotiating with service providers (at any level).
No more sneaking around what is or isn't okay. "This is my hardware, and to protect my hardware, I have to install this additional monitoring." There's the whole "If you aren't doing anything wrong..." argument, but let's not assume that giving the government the "means of distribution" is going to be all sunshine and puppy dogs.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not happy that service providers can do whatever they want, but at least then the competition drives them to all be the best (well, we're assuming that "best" and "most profitable" are related). The government has no such goal. It's possible this would even backfire completely and the government would let it languish - they've got dial-up, so our job is done, etc.
Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
How do you convince everyone to participate?
Also please take a minute to promote the petition for net neutrality and the petition for common carrier. Promote them on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit or wherever you normally put such things. The signature count was climbing fast last week, on track to hit 100,000 within a week, but over the weekend they fell below the fold on most of the news and social networks. We need to get the traffic numbers back up.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Obama announces the NSA will take over all internet delivery. The net stays neutral, secure and free from corporate greed. In other news, tin foil has been banned by the EPA.
They don't need to be publicly owned (think the government snoops now?) but they do need to be designated Common Carriers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
If you read that and agree, consider filing a public comment on Proceeding 14-28 at:
http://www.fcc.gov/comments
The question is not if the Internet is essential for survival, but rather is it "essential infrastructure". In that sense, I think most here would agree; yes. Roads are not necessary for survival in the same sense of food and water, but are clearly considered "essential". Game consoles are not essential anywhere, as they serve primarily as an entertainment device.
The best way to run Internet access would be to have the infrastructure e.g. fiber lines to every household) owned by the government (and run under a cost-recovery model only) and then any ISP that wants to being allowed to come in and run services over that link. The government would not be allowed to offer its own service over the links.
Its the best answer because:
1.You dont get any issues with lobbyists pressuring the government into doing stuff (e.g. political pressure from a special-interest-group to block porn or other "nasties")
2.You have fast efficient infrastructure with no incentive for the government as infrastructure owner to mess with things or be non-neutral in any way since they get no benefit from being non-neutral
3.Because there is competition at the retail level (and because the barriers to entry for new players would be low since the new player doesn't have to build actual infrastructure to people's homes) there is a disincentive for the retail ISPs to be non-neutral or to block things or whatever because if any ISP becomes sucky, people can switch.
These petitions have been mostly worthless in the past. See this previous petition about net neutrality:
https://petitions.whitehouse.g...
The FCC is nominally an independent agency so the best way to make yourself heard is to file a comment on Proceeding 14-28 at:
http://www.fcc.gov/comments
After all of the revelations by Snowden, I find it incredulous that people still think the government should have greater access and ownership over our data.
Really?
m
In the immortal words of Socrates, who said; 'I drank what?'
Let me get this straight --- you want to either nationalize or purchase (Verizon, Comcast, etc. are already publicly owned -- about $50 gets you a vote in what they do) the infrastructure so that governments can treat it like they treat roads?
You want them to be able to extend the network into new areas with the promise that once the infrastructure is paid for the higher rates they are charging those new areas will go away?
You want them to supposedly spend use fees on maintaining the infrastructure, but through slight of hand actually use it to pad underfunded pension programs?
You want your internet service to be as smooth and reliable as the average downtown public road?
Unless we want to go back to dial up speeds and introduce a whole bureaucracy this should never happen. I imagine the internet would freeze and never improve, and also we would get express lanes with toll. This would never be a good idea. At least in the private sector customers have a voice; but in the public sector corporations are the only ones with a voice.
Sounds good. We can repurpose the existing Post Office infrastructure and employees to run the internet infrastructure.
"We call our roads and bridges and water and sewer pipe networks public infrastructure for a reason."
We need not only crumbling bridges, pothole roads and leaky sewer lines, we also need the Internet nailed to dry-rotten, termite-ridden wooden poles in our possession to be happy.
While I do believe the internet is essential infrastructure, so are phones and electric and those are not publicly owned. Considering the reports of up to 30% of the bridges in the US being deficient, I'm not sure government does a much better job maintaining the infrastructure it's in charge of. Pot holes from this winter 2 feet around and a foot deep are still lingering in my area which leads me to believe broken internet lines wouldn't be fixed all that quickly for residents either.
Absolutely NOT. Local governments have their own agendas which would not align with the public good of the internet. Case in point roads and bridges crumbling.
Yes. Here is the reason why: in the US, landline phone service achieved 98% market penetration in only a few decades. It was able to do this because the benefits to everyone being able to access the system were so obvious, the government heavily regulated the phone companies to ensure that everyone received access, treating access as a public utility rather than a private good. Via regulation, the US government forced the phone companies to build out their network into low density rural areas, where there were so few subscribers the companies could never hope to recoup the cost of installing the infrastructure.
Everyone hated Ma Bell, but here is the simple truth: Ma Bell worked to provide everyone with access. The reason Ma Bell existed was government regulation; the goal of that regulation was to give everyone access to the system.
Fiber and high speed internet are the same deal. Look at the history of high speed fiber: broken promise after broken promise from companies like AT&T, who has received tax break and other incentives on the basis of a promise to lay high speed fiber for the masses, a promise they have never fulfilled. Or Verizon, who received enormous tax breaks in New Jersey to provide the entire state with broadband access, a promise Verizon is now trying to renig on.
The bald economic and geographic facts say that companies will NEVER extend high speed internet to low density areas, because these areas will never be profitable for companies. This is sound economics, but shitty public policy. Add to the fact that big communication companies like comcast, AT&T, and Verizon have proved consistently willing to pocket record profits rather than reinvest them into infrastructure, and the answer s clear:
If the US hopes to remain competitive in a global economy where high speed access is important, then high speed access needs to be regulated by the government as a common good, just as landline phones were.
I realize that, with a little work, the NSA can get all the metadata they want. If the government owns the infrastructure, though, then "with a little work" would quickly become "with no work at all" and "metadata" would become "anything".
Now notice how you don't eat and drink roads and sewage.
The author is recommending that local government own and control "the internet." He uses public roads as an example of local government ownership -- potholes and all.
When communities own their roads they can and have established the rules of the road. This is why the average speed and carrying capacity of these local roads have skyrocketed in the last two decades.
Local government ownership of public schools has given us a fine education system turning out young adults that know far more and are more prepared for good jobs than 20 or 30 or 50 years ago.
You can fire your local cable provider and stop paying if you don't like the product. Try to stop paying taxes sometime.
By the way, in most places the local cable provider has been handed a franchise by the local government. Clearly they (the government) was knowledgeable and able to specify a high performance product at a fair and reasonable price before awarding the franchise. Weren't they?
True, but if we hand all the infrastructure over to government, government that just shot down net neutrality what does it gain?
Is called a car pool lane. Sorry, making internet a public owned infrustructure will not help. Free market competition is always better than government regulation.
Almost borrowed the words straight from the Communist Manifesto. Read it; it's free on Amazon Kindle. We haven't learned from almost every aspect of life that public utilities always under perform compared to privately-owned utilities dollar-for-dollar. Here we go again...
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
The USA is not a democracy so don't think that this will ever happen.
Comparing the internet to roads is a false analogy. A road takes up significant physical space, and has a significant impact on its surroundings. On the other hand, fiber and other internet infrastructure takes up negligible space, can be out of the way underground, on poles or wireless.
But most importantly, multiple internet "roads" can occupy the same space and terminate at the same places. If you must have an analogy, then imagine having five alternative roads from your driveway, though your neighborhood, on the highway, to your parking spot at work. This means that the internet is not a natural monopoly. The only reason it may become a monopoly is because of government intervention in the form of onerous regulations, permits and sundry protection of incumbents.
The task of government should be to do everything possible to facilitate competition, disruptive technologies and laugh when companies that are too big to fail, fail.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Continuing the trend of evolving away from the medieval tradition of every strech of road or river, no matter how large, depending on the whims and ways of the local feudal lord - or robber baron.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zollverein
Self hating crony capitalists?
Well, the only way to fix that is to have a LOT of public IXPs. Inside a public IXP, two things happen:
1. open, free peering (often multilateral using a shared VLAN)
2. transit contracts.
And you don't pay much to the IXP. Free (as in beer) IXPs will not give you any SLAs and are operated by not-for-profit organizations. Paid IXPs will give you great SLA, and absurtly good money for bandwidth ratios. Such as less than US$ 1k per 10Gbe. Trafic within the IXPs are *never* mettered.
But you will have to lay the dark fiber to the IXP.
Usually, you actually have distributed IXPs, that are interconnected, so that one lays fiber to the closest peering point of that IXP, and all traffic within the IXP (including the traffic across facilities) is not mettered.
Public roads are public roads because it is simply to much of an impediment to have toll-roads everywhere. Delaying the speed of travel and hindering trade that way. There was no practical means to meter road usage without putting up a toll booth and stopping all the traffic on a road. Therefore to speed travel the government at various levels took on care of the road network and removed tolls.
This is very different to simple metered services like internet data. Where the access and metering can be easily and centrally controlled and the customer only deals with it as a monthly bill. Therefore there is no increased impediment to internet usage apart from the actually cost.
Look at our bridges and infrastructure ... potholes, rusting out, replaced/repaired on an irregular basis, usually years after they should have been EXCEPT toll brigdes and highways. Those keep up to snuff pretty well.
So yes make the internet public infrastructure with a toll on it's use. NOT taxes alone. That doesn't work (see above statement), but use a toll booth model where the funds go directly to maintain the specific infrastructure.
Note however that as a result, the infrastructure will NEVER be cutting edge. It will ALWAYS lag technology and if the wrong decisions are made, it may become too inflexible to adapt to future technologies (like our power grids).
Hmm .... doesn't sound so appealing does it?
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Government owned distribution has its drawbacks, but what about a public owned cooperative? It would operate like a corporation except that the shareholders are also the customers. There are two sticking points to this approach though- initial capitalization and competition. Startup costs for this kind of enterprise are not insignificant, and even if a cooperative could be established, existing providers would slash their fees (to the point of taking a loss) to insure that a cooperative would not gain market foothold.
he pointed out just how many different businesses had contracts with all these little agencies and offices.
So when we set it up in the usual means of centralized efficiency it costs less because they are fewer vendors and more money goes to a smaller group of people.
Then we complain about the problems of income distribution and wonder how we can use government to redistribute income.
Maybe this is just a kind of organic income redistribution. Maybe people, when given a choice, will choose a certain level of level of inefficiency to achieve some level of fairness over some measurement of efficiency that seems less fair.
And who knows, maybe its more economically beneficial overall to do it this way versus a government driven scheme to redistribute income directly.
The NSA won't need a warrent to view all your data.
My state actually outlawed municipal ownership of ISP's.
I don't know how viable that is for your particular situation, but some people are willing to choose a different state over this.
Who's We?
Don't forget the Internet covers more than 1 country (Unless of course you count "The Earth as one country, and Mankind its citizens")
The supposed solution here in order to guarantee net neutrality -- public ownership of the hardware -- is overkill. Other countries have net neutrality without that, so why can't the United States do the same?
Because almost all of US politics on the federal level is corrupt. Or else, how an earth did Tom Wheeler, a former lobbyist for the cable and telecommunications industry, ever get to become the current chairman of the FCC?? Because our politicians were paid by the industry to let it happen. And the worse thing about it is that the Supreme Court says this is perfectly legal these days (talk about activist judges). So, where previously the communications industry may have been reasonably well regulated, it's not anymore.
There is only one solution to this problem: get big money out of politics. And we can actually do this.
It would be difficult a thing to do in any other country with such a thoroughly corrupt political system, but lucky for us the United States Constitution includes Article Five, which describes an alternative process through which the Constitution can be altered: by holding a national convention at the request of the legislatures of at least two-thirds (34) of the country's 50 States. Any proposed amendments must then be ratified by at least three-quarters (38 States).
Is anybody working towards this yet? Yes. WOLF-PAC was launched in October 2011 for the purpose of passing a 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that will end corporate personhood* and publicly finance all elections**. Since then, many volunteers have approached their State Legislators about this idea and their efforts have often been met with unexpected bi-partisan enthusiasm. So far, 50 State Legislators have authored or co-sponsored resolutions to call for a Constitutional Convention to get money out of politics! Notable successes have been in Texas, Idaho, Kentucky and Illinois.
However, if the State Legislators are also corrupt, why are they helping us? Well, maybe they aren't as corrupt as you think. And even if they are, the important thing is that they seem to be just as fed up with the Federal government as we are -- so much so that they seem quite happy to help out with this effort. After all, it's a pretty simple proposal that speaks to both Democrats and Republicans.
If you think this idea makes sense, you can sign this petition, donate, or even take action by personally contacting your favorite State Legislator and asking for a meeting. It's easier than you might think and as a result we might be able to change this awful situation sooner than you think.
.
*) Over the years this has become the source of a problem that has lead to a series of bad Supreme Court decisions equating money to free speech. The decisions include Buckley v. Valeo in 1976, First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti in 1978, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010 and McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission in 2014, but there are probably more. Yes, legal personhood is important in that it provides a way to safeguard personal assets against the claims of creditors and lawsuits, but the truth is that if legal personhood were to be revoked we could simply pass a law to provide this protection in some way other than personhood.
**) At the State level, more than half of all political campaigns are already publicly financed in some way, so there's nothing strange about doing the same for political campaigns
In theory I like the idea. Because there's a lot of aspects of capitalist meddling in the Internet that I don't like. But the problem I see is then the development and improvement of Internet service is subject to government bureaucracies, notoriously efficient and well executed. Our infrastructure is already in a sad state of affairs according to engineers, overall. I'm just not sure how the Internet wouldn't suffer under government ownership. I'm not saying things are clearly so much better under the helm of capitalist entities, clearly they're not. But it largely seems to come down to what flavor of dog food do you want to eat.
I can understand public owned infrastructure if there is limited space or these things introduce huge public safety issues (such as come with rail or road infrastructure), but this is all about a piece of wire. If the wires were so huge that you could only run one length to service dozens of houses (such as you get with a road) you might have a good argument. But this patently isn't the case.
It's far better not to rely on one network, as doing so introduces a monopoly, and creates its own problems when services fail. What you really want is at least two, and preferably many more network providers that run wires to large numbers of homes. That brings healthy competition which in turn brings lower prices and better service.
"Is the Chief Priest an Offlian? Do dragons explode in the wood?"
The argument is typically framed as a battle between public v. private, but the cooperative alternative has been show to be viable as well. Consider http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/04/technology/fast-internet-service-speeds-business-development-in-chattanooga.html?_r=2
Is the Internet essential infrastructure? YES
Should local governments step in to preserve equality of access? YES
Instead of public net backbone, we might end up with private bridges and private highways.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I posted on this in Sept 2012. Best to use a coop to keep the ownership of the pipes out of the hands of the government (prevent censorship and conflicts of interest). You could even bundle up the electrical lines to keep overhead low, reduce conflicts over who owns & controls polls, line positioning, etc, and even bundle the two bills together to make everybody's life a little easier.
But first ask yourself how much difference there is between government and large corporations in this day and age.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Current FCC chairman should be arreseted and imprisoned for corruption as it's obvious that they aren't working for "the people" but for the "evil corporations" that gave big bonuses and promises of more to come once out of office. Hell, probably getting some right now while in office (conjecture / opinion, protected under first amendment)
From there, anything the current chairman did that was pro corporation should be reversed, all assets of the big 4 should be seized and placed into common carrier for corruption and abuse. AT&T, Comcast, TIme-Warner, Verizon should have to *pay* to access these now common carrier networks.
I'm seeing a LOT of "Government BAD" comments here.
I was around in the early days of the internet. It was a happening time. There was practically an ISP on every block back in the dial up days. Dial up service was CHEAP, it was ALWAYS upgrading, there was TONS of competition. It was awesome. Sure, speeds sucked, but it was what we had. Half the internet wasn't flash ads either, so it wasn't all that bad. The point was there was LOTS of competition and you could choose the big ISP or the small neighborhood ISP. The small neighorhood ISP could actually survive because the government told the Big Boys to play fair with the lines (that tax money subsidized). I was in a small town and we had several local ISPs. We had choices.
Know why? Common Carrier rules. Government regulation of critical infrastructure for the benefit of everyone. And it was AWESOME.
All these people whining about how the government is bad and always screws things up are just flat out WRONG. They're either too young to remember the age of dial up, or too ideologically opposed. Worse, they're LIVING In a privately controlled and unregulated internet. And it SUCKS and it's getting worse, and they're STILL defend it because they've been brainwashed. It turns my stomach....
You've seen the internet grow up under regulation. You've seen the competition and thriving it caused. Now you're seeing what happens when we take away the regulation. We're seeing the decline of competition. You're seeing, for the FIRST TIME EVER, that speeds are going DOWN while prices go up. Put 2 and 2 together, sheesh....
It pisses me off that I've been arguing for this same genuine network neutrality here for years and yet this latecomer to the idea gets front-page attention. Still, maybe you'll listen now and start the literal revolution that will be required to wrest the wires from the grasp of corporate overlords? The FCC is staffed by cowards and revolving-door shills who won't even suggest it much less help make it happen.
Without roads, you would be eating only what you could scavenge from whatever you could walk to. In competition with all the other scavengers.
Without sewer systems you would be eating sewage. You would be knee deep in the stuff, with diluted sewage coming out of every water pipe.
The real question is whether or not they are more like a road.
Roads are very different, because:
1. Government and emergency agencies use them to provide services (police, fire, national guard, ambulances) to every single person.
2. Everyone needs them and uses them, even if you don't have a car (people ride bikes and walk on roads/sidewalks created as part of the road building process - you can't cut across other people's property, that is called trespassing).
Those are the two essential characteristics that make roads different from cable, land lines, gas, electric, water, etc.
But government agencies do not need to use the internet to provide services. (Ignoring half-serious joke about the NSA here) If you don't have internet access, the government is not substantially prevented from serving your emergency needs.
Similarly, not everyone needs to use the internet. We all may WANT to use the internet, but it is totally possible to live without it, at least currently.
So I see no reason for the government to treat the internet like a road.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
When is the last time government did something that was truely without some conditions put on it? No.
I don't like corporation running things, but just remember that it was government that made that happen. I don't want government OR corporations haveing control over things. The solution is for government to simply restrict what corporations can do, but instead of that, many people in this forum have taken the stance that it's okay for government to own the internet access, because corporations are doing bad things that the government helped them to set up.
Folks, government are the ones that made it possible and probable that these corporations can do these things in the first place. The solution is to reverse it.
This guys are building the real public Internet. Every subscriber is owner. https://guifi.net/en/node/38392
Scavenging is mostly gone with agricultural revolution thousands of years ago. And in my part of world villagers were actually destroying roads so they would be left alone by turks. Imagine, they did not starve to death, nor did they ate sewage even tho there was no sewage system at the time. So, no. Roads, and sewage systems are far from necessity by your logic.
Subject says it all really. A major issue at least where I live is that private contracts with the government must go to the lowest bidder. This kind of short-term thinking is the perfect way to assure one has a crumbling infrastructure that costs more money in the long run.
"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." George Bernard Shaw
Fuck FCC, fuck greedy ISP, fuck Netflix and similar.
Let's focus on other things instead, there are higher priorities than network neutrality on the internets - like end to end encryption. Then remove the money producing capability from your goverments, by starting to use bitcoin or any similar technology. Without the ability to produce money they will gradually regulate and govern less (regulation takes people, people cost money). After that we'll have the opportunity to have a free market, which enemies of net neutrality won't survive in.
Fuck'em all!
nm
The importance of transportation of information isn't new to the 21th century. It was important enough in the 18th century that the power to establish "Post Offices and Post Roads" is explicitly granted to the Congress in Article 1, Section 8. There were debates over whether the public should bear the cost of newspaper delivery[1]. They debated whether Congress should delegate the power to determine post roads or if they should hold it themselves because the importance of the exchange of information was of too great of an importance to be left to one person (the Postmaster General)[2).
The USPS is in dire financial straits right now mostly due to the requirement that they prefund pensions. The other major reason is due to loss of revenue due to the internet. They were the original institution tasked with allowing free exchange of information. The should be the municipal ISP. Give them control of the hardware.
Is the Internet essential infrastructure?
The internet is becoming part of our lives, so I kind of agree that in modern society it will probably be essential before too long. It isn't yet though.
Should local governments step in to preserve equality of access?"
Regardless of whether the Internet is essential, you don't need "equality of access" to use it. I drive toll roads because they're faster and more convenient than the alternatives, but I could get to my destination without paying a toll
Federal ownership would be horrific - bringing to the problem all the corruption we currently see with senators, representatives and presidents doing the bidding of big donors and ignoring all the people in "fly over country" (all the land between the biggest half-dozen cities). The system would rapidly become as neglected and outdated as parts of the interstate highways, the postal service, the air traffic control system etc and hooking up to the network would become an exercise in fear and frustration to rival that of an IRS audit.
State ownership would be awful - all the problems of many state capitals where completely phony budgets and political favors rule; every upgrade would be accompanied by a new bond proposal (borrow money and then spend 30 years paying for it, while getting enough new capacity to suit the next 5 years) and all operations would be performed by over-paid unionized state workers (whose massive pensions would add billions to unfunded future state obligations). There are VERY few states whou would do it well
City ownership would nearly be a no-brainer (probably trouble in the mega-cities like NYC and SF where community/neighborhood/borough level would likely be better). The average mayor or city council member in a mid-sized or smaller city is FAR more accountable to the citizens than politicians at other levels AND any large corporations.
The vital element would be to have the community own optical fiber linking all the community, and then contracting with MULTIPLE VENDORS for access to the fibers - probably with a vote by the public. Every year or two, the voters could be offered a list of vendors wishing to serve the community and they could pick (for example) the top 3. It would be nice it a task force would start working on open standards for such a scheme (including the consumer end-point - a router/firewall that attaches to a shared fiber and probably has an access card scheme with multiple sockets), ensuring that it would support internet, phone, TV, etc
Normally, I'd favor the market and oppose ANY government involvement - but the government is already the "gorilla in the room" on this one since it currently controls the rights-of-way and already ensures most people have no access to the "free market" (by only allowing a single vendor to wire the city). If the city is going to control the "last mile" anyway ... you might as well have the city own it, let the voters have some input, and structure it so multiple vendors can offer choices through it.
So instead of it being for profit, you would rather the government point guns at their local citizenry and demand that they pay for the internet? As soon as you move it to the government, it is a monopoly. One of the biggest problems is that the government does not allow multiple broadband carriers to use the same right of way. It is LOCAL government that makes putting in new infrastructure so expensive. It is the essential things like roads, power, bridges, etc. that the new infrastructure has to run across, but the local governments and municipalities make it too expensive for multiple carriers to provide access to a potential customer.
It is already the government that is killing competition. Forcing people to pay for something they may or may not want is certainly the best solution. Sure, everyone needs and wants internet access, but there are many out there happy with satellite or mobile access to the internet. Now, they have to pay taxes to pay for new internet and potentially still pay for their satellite or mobile internet access.
Finally, and most important, if internet is an essential to life, then what is food and water? It appears that food and water are the most important aspects of life; therefore, the government should first take over all food production before considering some copper and fiber cables. Wouldn't it be better if all farms and production plants were owned by the government? The food infrastructure needs to be seized forcibly from owners so that we may all be guaranteed food and water.
I better receive only ribeye and filet mignon from my government farm system.
To make the Internet truly fair and with reasonable prices across the board, we need to disambiguate two essentially separate businesses, and prevent any one company from owning a significant stake in both businesses.
Internet Infrastructure Providers (IIPs) would be, essentially, what ISPs have been until the mid-2000s. That is, they provide physical infrastructure to create a network. Nothing more. IIPs would be law-bound to net neutrality because their entire business model would be restricted to providing open access to the infrastructure to anyone who wants it, at a reasonable price and without data caps. IIPs would be required to allow an unlimited number of competing ISPs to use their infrastructure. IIPs would also be liable for criminal Federal offenses if they are found to interfere or influence, in any way, with local, regional, state, or federal zoning processes that determine whether competing IIPs may be allowed to install infrastructure in a particular location.
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) would be businesses that depend on, and are built on top of, IIPs. ISPs would be the company you as a consumer (or business) interface with in order to buy service on an IIP's lines (or cellular towers). ISPs would offer you a plan consisting of a flat price, plus any restrictions they wish to put into place (data caps or whatever). ISPs would also be allowed to sell you add-on services such as streaming video, etc., and even to give you preferential access to their own services instead of third party services. ISPs would be the "digital" half of what ISPs in their *present* definition consist of -- basically, the half that has sprung up in the past 10 years or so.
By separating these businesses and preventing any holding company from owning significant shares in both halves, and by requiring competition at both the IIP and ISP layers, the "free market economics" that drive our economy are encouraged -- nay, required -- by the structure of the system. What's that, ComIIP can offer higher throughput over their cable than VerizIIP's DSL? Cool -- which ISPs are selling service on ComIIP? Let's see which one offers me a higher data cap / lower monthly fee / etc.
Those of you old enough to remember when by law there was only Ma Bell might want to think twice about this. There was no incentive to make POTS any better than it was. Once it was deregulated, competition drove innovation. What incentive would a single ISP run by a city have to add capacity? Just raise the price to the user? B.S. Municipal water and sewer fees go up every year but you're not getting more water. Sure, they could add a bigger storage tank and better pumps which happened in my neighborhood but that process took about 10 years to complete when it could have been built in 6 months. The giant sloth that is government bureaucracy would be the worst thing that could happen. Add to that the sticky fingers in any government and you can pretty much guarantee that ISP revenue won't go to maintaining and upgrading the service.
Competition is the only way to ensure continued growth and expansion. But the last mile is where the problem really lies. Right now, you basically have DSL or Cable. Two entities is not enough to ensure that things keep moving forward. Cellular-based technology would help but the wireless providers have taken the approach of charging the customer for consumption.
Aren't these the same folks that give us cable monopolies, can't fill potholes and run cities into bankruptcy? Why would anyone in their right mind trust them with even more responsibility and corruption possibilities?
The Patriot Act has shown that government overreach is a huge part of reality today. If they own the Internet infrastructure, it might take out the private players, but in the history of mankind, governments have killed and enslaved more people than businesses have. Anyway, without getting too political, I think we need better net neutrality laws. If the governments aren't willing to step in to create some sane laws in the internet business, how can we trust that the same governments will maintain neutrality when they own that industry's infrastructure? Remember the proposed SOPA and PIPA legislation? It was the US government that wanted to enact those laws -- I don't think politicians can be trusted with the internet hardware.
I hit that site once in a while, but most of the petitions that don't tow the party line get some boilerplate response that doesn't really say anything and nothing is really done to move them forward by the administration. That is when you can find a petition that isn't a duplicate or is on some insane topic (give guns to Ukrane, Diversity is a codeword for white genocide, etc).
The Turks were rampaging at a time when the vast majority of the population was engaged in agriculture. Nowadays, only a miniscule amount of people (I think it's around 2% of the US population) is farming the food that all the rest of society eats. So yes, if suddenly there were no roads, then the food produced by your "agriculture revolution" in rural areas would not make it to the densely populated areas where most people live nowadays. While in those densely populated areas some vegetable-growing occurs (on allotments or small gardens in the yard), it is not enough to feed metropolitan areas and if worst came to worse, there would be lots of scavenging.
If the government owned the internet infrastructure, it would look a lot like the Tappan Zee Bridge in New York City; which is to say neglected and falling apart. As much as I hate a lack of neutrality, it might be good to keep government hands out of this as well. I do think that since Big Telecom got its way about no neutrality then they should lose the regulations giving them the veritable monopolies. Make less (or zero) barriers to entry for smaller ISPs to come back on the seen. This way, people can just vote with their wallet. If Comcast wants to lock Netflix out, then say, MomAndPop Connect can go ahead and tell Netflix come on over to us - we won't charge you for content - hell, give us one of your media servers and we'll give you direct access.
"Is the Internet essential infrastructure? Should local governments step in to preserve equality of access?"
Absolutely. As for the second question... Presuming that government will not start using the network to their own purposes. I'd say yes. But no matter who's in charge of the internet connections, there are always going to be organizations that will want to control it. Best way would be ensure in legal ways that there are lots of service providers, and laying cables on ground is cheap. Power should be in hands of the many rather than in hands of the few and selected.
Yes, the Internet is 'essential infrastructure' since most food, gas, and supplies are based on the 'Just In Time' inventory model. No Internet and no orders are placed to fit that model and it all grinds to a halt; this is one of the reasons even a minor Carrington Event would kill off a metric crap ton of people after 3 days.
Because democracy devolves into ochlocracy. every. single. time.
The point and function of a republic concentrating power locally with actual limited government is lost in America.
I'm a libertarian.
I'm in favor of public (local) ownership of internet infrastructure. It should be treated like some conflation of the requirements of government to provide for roads and mail (but it is not exactly like either one).
I'm not in favor of very much about how the current government of the United States actually behaves toward its responsibilities.
I see these two as separate issues.
I disagree with many of the foreign policy decisions our federal government makes - but that doesn't mean i don't think it should be the place of our federal government to make foreign policy decisions.
I know I will disagree with what government will end up doing with public internet infrastructure control. That doesn't mean that public local government is not the right place for internet infrastructure management.
Workarounds don't work. Fix the problems. Don't make different problems.
One of the funniest TV episodes ever.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Big wires are almost the same price as thin wires. When people demand a new infrastructure in a city one needs to be rolled out along existing tubing. Sadly it's too late to run out a clean infrastructure once it's been sold to a teleco, or investor conglomerate. The reason they want to put one in is not freedom of thought or freedom of speech.
food to market or food to your home without the use of a road? I guess this doesn't apply to those with their helicopters, who can fly out to their favorite food shake for a midnight snack. I agree with you the internet is now an essential component of a modern society. Its not essential if we want to take civilization back to the third century.
Never too late to change that. We need to start thinking about organizing the "little people", rather than reflexively bending over anytime a corporate CEO wants a raise.
Never too late to change that. We need to start organizing the "little people" rather than reflexively bending over every time a CEO wants a raise.
How about an open source wireless mesh network, It could cross connect into the existing internet now to provide the backbone and interconnects between various high density areas, and as it fills in , simply de-couple from the existing internet. Use a digital currency like bitcoin with a block chain proof of work like protocol to pay for bandwidth with micro payments as you pull data from one part of the net to another , value gets shifted to each node involved in proportion to how much work it does. No corporations or politicians needed.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The US is unique in it's constitutional provision for communication, because the founders thought that unimpeded communication was essential for a democracy. We are facing a shift from physical communication to digital, so it is natural to evolve government provided physical mail delivery to digital delivery. Essentially, I believe the founding fathers would have nationalized the internet (and probably encrypt it too!).
Yes, Internet is increasingly becoming an essential piece of infrastructure. Government should own the infrastructure and probably involve private players to lay, maintain and upgrade the network infrastructure.
How about Banking? Should Banking become publicly owned too? Or is Bitcoin the right model?
As we all know, Net Neutrality was killed because ISPs are not willing to invest in improving bandwidth, and would rather optimize the traffic for those that pay (not based on actual customer usage). But, if the Fed resumed control of the Internet backbones, would the fed do any better, or would they use their law writing ability to restrict internet usage to try to keep us with in the bandwidth limits. That being said, the ISP's have no interest in increasing bandwidth, either. To that end, rather than the Fed taking over the Internet as this article implies, I would rather have a legal limit on just how much an ISP can over sell their bandwidth. But even that is just a band-aid to the real problem... Not enough competition. With merger after merger of the major ISPs and TelCos, you have very limited options in any given neighborhood for broadband. And what broadband choices we have tend to have extremely poor customer service. I think the only real answer is either offer incentives to bring new players to the market, or to break up the mega-ISPs we have now. Then instead of trying to get the most money for the least service, they would be trying to out do each other on bandwidth and other features to win customers from their local competitors.
Never too late to change that. We need to start thinking about organizing the "little people", rather than reflexively bending over anytime a corporate CEO wants a raise.
In theory, that's what the government should be - an organization that represents the citizens who individually do not have enough wealth to significantly influence society.
In theory.
Then the NSA wouldn't even need to ask to snoop on all Internet traffic exactly as the CHP needn't ask to drive up to my house, peer in my windows.
Cranky educator.
Just like the rest of our utility bills: water, sewer, gas, electric.... internet.
This has been functionally true since the 1990's, just the private companies don't want to give up their cash cow and hand it over to an accountable organization. Oh, and the FCC wants to enrich their friends and ensure private-NSA spying relationships.
What will municipal Internet mean for government surveillance?
There's really no good ending to this story.
Starts at about 3:00 in
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Do to be clear, you imagine everyone has access to clean water, all the food they need in their personal farms, and the means to harvest all that - in their back yards?!
You might need to think about what sustains you, where it comes from - and especially how it gets to your dinner table before making such a ridiculous assertion as "Roads aren't essential for survival."
Next you'll tell me child labor laws aren't essential to stop child labor abuses, or that polio vaccines aren't essential to survive polio outbreaks.
Good grief.
http://www.unfocus.com/
They can grant or refuse licenses to operate, but they can't tell Comcast or Verizon to take a hike on the basis of net neutrality. They don't have the authority to override the FCC on these issues. People want their cable when they can get it. They certainly do not have the money to provide broadband access on their own. With a couple of exceptions most attempt to provide civic internet access have failed rather spectacularly. The Internet has entered it's inevitable evolution of becoming another public resource turned into a commercial property which has been sliced up and sold to the folks with the money for as usual pennies on the dollar. Asking on what can be done is like asking your ship's departure time when the aft lights are already fading below the horizon.
OMG, what a bad idea!
You can own Comcast or Verizon or Google. You can own stock in the companies that "own" the internet.
Or you can have the government take control of the infrastructure and you can "own" the government.
Which of these options makes you feel more empowered to save the internet?
Or did you have an alternative idea for owning the means of distribution?