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"Net Neutrality" Coiner Tim Wu Is Running For Lt. Governor of New York

Posted by timothy on from the well-tim's-a-good-name dept.

speedplane (552872) writes Tim Wu, the popular Columbia Law Professor, author of The Master Switch, and the guy who coined the term Net Neutrality, is running for Lieutenant Governor of the great state of New York. He "has waged a shoestring anti-establishment campaign," that is well underway, and has even begun receiving attacks from the incumbent: "It has not always been smooth for Mr. Wu .... Surrogates for Mr. Cuomo have pounced on his admitted lack of 'message discipline' for comments he made comparing net neutrality to the suffragist movement (which he says were taken out of context) and sympathizing with Airbnb (which he says is 'fair game' because he has a 'wait-and-see approach' to regulating start-ups)."

10 of 40 comments (clear)

  1. What else does he do? by The+New+Guy+2.0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Net Neutrality is another name for "Give me the Internet, not a subset." and is a key part of what a legitimate ISP does, as opposed to a censored ISP like sometimes exists in the USA and often exists overseas.

    1. Re:What else does he do? by mi · · Score: 2

      Yep... And — for a car analogy — if I'm driving, I want to be able to drive on any road with any speed by car can go, and park wherever I see fit. No matter, who built the road or attends to the parking lot.

      legitimate ISP does, as opposed to a censored ISP like sometimes exists in the USA and often exists overseas.

      Legislating service is a losing proposition. The service provider will get around the legislation (have we not seen it just recently, when telcos were forced to allow other DSL-providers access to their copper-wires?), but the costs for you and the barrier to entry for a would-be competitor will both be higher.

      The government's role is to help competition appear — by reducing the red-tape around laying down wires and fiber — not by trying to force the incumbent monopoly to play nice(r).

      --
      In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
    2. Re:What else does he do? by sumdumass · · Score: 2

      Yep... And â" for a car analogy â" if I'm driving, I want to be able to drive on any road with any speed by car can go, and park wherever I see fit. No matter, who built the road or attends to the parking lot.

      Except you purchased a car and I sold you a horse and buggy. You see, the problem without net neutrality is that you believe you are purchasing 10 megs of unlimited internet but if the website you are trying to reach is popular enough but doesn't pay your provider additional money or the services you want to use compete with those offered by the ISP's company you do not get 10 megs unlimited access. In some cases, you do not even get the internet because parts of it is blocked (ports). So this is just like a bait and switch.

      The government's role is to help competition appear â" by reducing the red-tape around laying down wires and fiber â" not by trying to force the incumbent monopoly to play nice(r).

      It is also consumer protection. Just like the government would get involved when you purchase that sports car and I shove a horse and buggy in front of you, if the ISP is purposely restricting speeds or access that they sold you, they are not delivering what they sold you.

      Now I'm against government regulating the internet. Eventually evil will come from it if allowed. What is needed for a net neutrality law is something simple stating what the internet is, and that unless addressing a bona fide attack, the ISP cannot limit the speeds or data amounts to anything below what they advertised when selling the service to any customer. And no, up to claims would not get around that because if a limit is placed at 8 megs and you purchased up to10 megs speed, you can never achieve that 10 megs when they intentionally limit it. Congestion likely would because it would be beyond their direct involvement.

      A simple law like that, maybe with some penalties and strict instructions to not call a service the internet if it isn't open and available to the definition and the speeds sold, is all that needs to happen. But on that note, I think existing consumer protection laws could be applied if the judges and juries didn't think something magical was happening when they typed WWW or that the internet consisted of only WWW.

    3. Re:What else does he do? by PvtVoid · · Score: 2

      Yep... And — for a car analogy — if I'm driving, I want to be able to drive on any road with any speed by car can go, and park wherever I see fit. No matter, who built the road or attends to the parking lot.

      How about a phone analogy? When I pick up the phone, I want to be able to call anybody else who has a phone.

    4. Re:What else does he do? by Duhavid · · Score: 2

      Meant to moderate insightful, fat fingered it, so I am just removing that moderation.

      --
      emt 377 emt 4
  2. Tea party by sumdumass · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It is about time we got some tea party democrats.

    I know, tea party is a bad word, but anti-establishment is almost synonymous with it. It finally sound like we might see a democrat who is still actively supporting the working man instead of riding the coat tails of the real democrats who went before him.

  3. NY Times Endorsed Only Wu Out of All Candidates by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    An interesting development was the New York Times not endorsing any candidate for governor, but did endorse Wu for Lt. Governor over incumbent Cuomo's choice. The editors liked Wu's desire to transform the position of Lt. Governor into a public advocate, where he can proclaim the messages for fairness not only in Internet governance, but in governance in general.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/28/opinion/timothy-wu-for-lieutenant-governor.html

    Democracy Now! recently had an interview with running mates Teachout and Wu as well as gubernatorial candidate Randy Credico, whose quest against inequality includes fighting Rockefeller drug laws.

    http://www.democracynow.org/2014/9/4/new_york_candidates_zephyr_teachout_randy

  4. I live in New York by penguinoid · · Score: 2

    And I think that incumbents have things way too easy for re-election.

    --
    Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
  5. great state of New York - Citation needed by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 2, Funny

    >> great state of New York

    Citation needed.

  6. Wu & net neutrality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    While Wu is a smart, well-meaning guy, his coining the phrase "net neutrality" set back the public debate by a couple of decades. Introducing a new term for an old concept was, at best, dumb. If he had stuck with "common carrier" - a centuries old legal term - which is well understood, we'd probably have "net neutrality" today.

    The US made telegraphs common carriers in the 1840s and later, telephones. The term also applies to railroads - whose bad behavior outraged farmers in the 1800s -and trucking companies. Telco lobbyists would have a much tougher case to make against common carrier than they do against the new-fangled "net neutrality."