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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.
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.
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.
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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.
Sounds good. We can repurpose the existing Post Office infrastructure and employees to run the internet infrastructure.
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!
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.
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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.
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 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.
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*) 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
well, if conservatives would stop lobbying for lower and lower taxes(but only for the rich), maybe all our infrastructure wouldn't be crumbling.... You'd think people would get that crumbling government is EXACTLY what conservatives want. They even SAID SO. They are actively trying to starve the government so it shrinks and they can point to all the badness and say "See! We told you government sucked!" even though they're the ones that caused it all.
"Our goal is to shrink government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub." - Grover Norquist
What do you people THINK happens when you keep cutting taxes. Guess what. You can't pay for things. Military has to be paid for. debts have to be paid for. Social Security has to be paid for (because it's OUR money). Roads? Bridges? Those can wait a few more years...
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....
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