Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
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.
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.
The private corporations already own Congress, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court. May as well own the rest of it too.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
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.
Privatization is a scam. Governments sell off public assets that are needed long-term for a short-term cash boost, but then the public pays more forever for the use of the assets. So it makes one year's budget look better but is a *terrible* deal for the public. But if the local government is full of self-centered people that don't care about the long-term, they'll make that tradeoff. It's easy to come up with examples: water, roads, parking meters, mercenaries replacing soldiers, you name it - letting private, for-profit businesses take over what should be public infrastructure has consistently been a disaster for everyone other than the business' investors, as the businesses always deliver as little value as possible while jacking up prices, because that maximizes investor ROI. Public infrastructure should be run to maximize value delivered to the public, not ROI to the investors. And the two motivations, public service vs. private profit, are in direct opposition, which is why it fails every time.
As for network, I'd suggest that very much like water, postal service, etc., that the city should run a public networking utility, and people who want more/better can use private services. That eliminates most of the overhead from the equation, letting the engineers focus on delivering services efficiently. For example, if you look at telecommunications generally, the actual cost of delivering the voice/data is a relatively trivial cost. The complexity of metering usage and billing for it, marketing, sales, distribution deals, executives, etc., is the large majority of the costs. So if everyone got, say, 100 Mbps for a flat fee, paid for by splitting the cost and covering them with no profit margin, the cost per-person would be much, much lower than what we're paying now for service. And because it would be publicly managed and audited, anyone can inspect the books, and voters can control the policies. Very different from private business, which can hide their costs and do anything they like with the traffic.
And if a private provider can come in and compete with that, great! Competition is good! It's just for-profit monopolies that are bad.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
In case you didn't notice, they're already doing that, and we don't have net neutrality to show for it...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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?
These petitions have been mostly worthless in the past.
The purpose of the petition is double edged. They communicate the will of the people, and if they are ignored, they document the failure of government.
The FCC is nominally an independent agency
The chairman serves at the discretion of The President, and The White House's official statement includes the following:
Absent net neutrality, the Internet could turn into a high-priced private toll road that would be inaccessible to the next generation of visionaries. The resulting decline in the development of advanced online apps and services would dampen demand for broadband and ultimately discourage investment in broadband infrastructure. An open Internet removes barriers to investment worldwide.
The President would be entirely within his authority to direct the FCC to reclassify data carriers as common carriers, and to terminate Tom Wheeler when he refuses.
the best way to make yourself heard is to file a comment on Proceeding 14-28 at:
That's good, too, though my tendency is to think Tom Wheeler is doing exactly as he intended. Obama is blowing in the wind. There is no chance with the former, the latter might work. More likely both merely document the failure of our government, which is the first step to reforming it.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
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
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.
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
Some cities are trying to do this. Unfortunately, the big ISPs have tossed lawyers at nearly every such project to halt them. Even if the ISPs didn't serve those particular areas, they are of the opinion that municipal broadband is bad because it might compete with them if they decided at some point in the future to serve those areas.
I think we need a strong statement from some government official with the proper authority to clear up that municipal broadband is 100% legal and these lawsuits are ISPs attempting to be anti-competitive. (You don't see UPS and Fed-Ex suing to get the USPS shut down because it's "unfair" for the government to compete with them in delivering mail.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
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?"
Is the Internet essential infrastructure? YES
Should local governments step in to preserve equality of access? YES
It really depends. Optical is fixed or networked around. People tend to notice coax issues - no TV, slow/no networking.
Copper line is an area where warer and age can really degrade. backhaul would be looked after. Per home depends on the voice, legal data rate limits before a fault is fixed vs just slow.
The telcos are not happy to just move packets anymore. They want a payment if a movie or game or service needs speed and only then will their servers/hardware be upgraded and exisiting copper/optical be allowed to deliver.
Telco essential infrastructure is not rotting at a backhaul level. The servers and older hardware works, its just not been replaced until new contracts are in place.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
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.
AC should be modded up, not on the validity of the article but for recognizing this is not a black and white situation. Internet access should be placed on par with phones and electicity: Privately owned but state regulated. (And yes, states don't do perfect jobs with those two industries but it is much preferable to the oligarchy now present.)
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."
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.
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
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.
You scream at lack of competition...in some markets...and want to solve it by government takeover, ending competition and turning it into a committee that becomes slow-response bloat?
As with socialized medicine, you can't give it out for "free" until someone invents it first, and greedy, profit-seeking capitalism is what drives that fastest. It's not even close.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
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
nm
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
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.
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.
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.
It isn't thinly veiled at all. It is Socialism. And it is so efficient in this marketplace that it has been outlawed time and time again.
"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.
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.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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/
Who said municipal broadband equals no competition from private companies? And what about the areas not being served by private companies? They try creating municipal broadband efforts and the private companies (who decided not to serve those areas) sue to stop them. How is it a government takeover if the government is giving a service that the private companies decided not to give?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.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.
True.
False.