I doubt anyone is going to cry about inadequate service providers being forced to stop describing their service as "broadband" or even going belly up. Not that there is much danger of that probably... For goodness' sake, this is 2007 -- 2Mbps minimum in order to call it "broadband" is perfectly reasonable...
I disagree. When I first had "broadband" it was a 128k/128k IDSL connection. Guess what? It was excellent -- my latency was very low, and the speed was respectable for everything we needed to do at the time. That was broadband for me, because it blew away my 56k (really 32k) modem connection. For me, broadband is about low latency, for you, broadband is about leech priviledges for a torrent, maybe. I don't need 2mbps connections, my standard throughput for my office network (12 users) rarely breaks 300kbps. We want low latency, and we don't care about speed. This is why we have a T1, with most of it provisioned for VoIP, and little of it for the net. On the rare occasion that we download something huge, we probably use a lot more of that bandwidth, but I can't think of the last time I had to download something over 20MB. If I do, I buy a CD or DVD of it online, and ship it next day. No waiting for a download, and nothing is that necessary that I need it today.
Broadband should remain undefined, and let the consumer judge if what they bought is what they need. If you need more than a shared connection gives you, pay the piper and get a professional level of service.
I can choose between Verizon (BOO!) or Comcast (boo). Where's my free market? Where are my smaller providers? Hell, Verizon's not even planning on rolling FiOS out to me for another two years, even though I live in a densely populated area with housing values near those of my parent's suburban neighborhood.
No one is stopping anyone else from competing. Oh, waitaminute, someone is stopping them -- check with your local village/city, county and State laws. They might be preventing your community from getting more than 2 providers. They likely are.
The town over from mine (Libertyville, IL) is a small village. They have 7-8 broadband providers as of today. 3 provide reasonable WiFi, 2 provide local DSL, 1 providers national DSL, and 1 provides cable (maybe two). The village has limited laws restricting new competition. Service is good, pricing is good, speed is good -- you pay for what you need.
Don't blame ME, or restrict ME, with a federal unconstitutional law because YOU voted for people who restricted local competition. That's your fault, not mine. In fact, the U.S. government was created in order to prevent local States and governments from restricting trade, maybe you should sue your village on Constitutional grounds?
This bill was written solely to upset the current relatively free market of broadband. Because the government will set "standards" of speed, this leaves smaller providers -- who may still be able to provide acceptable speeds -- out of the market. If you won't be able to give the minimum, get out of the market.
Here's why I am against Net Neutrality -- instead of providing for a truly "neutral" pipe, regulations like these will be written by the strongest elements in a market, designed to kill the smaller competitors. It is unfortunate if geeks and techies support these kinds of bills, especially without reading them fully. There is no Constitutional power allocated to the Senate to REQUIRE levels of service. The interstate commerce clause was written so that the Federal government can restrain the individual States from harming commerce -- the word "regulate" in the Constitution did not mean what we think it means today.
I read the whole text of the bill at thomas.loc.gov today. It's long, drawn out, runs circles around itself, and really does nothing. You can tell that mercantilist businesses helped write it -- it will still make things worse.
If you want to reform something, you don't do it with steps like this. You don't write new laws to amend old laws -- it leaves loopholes and gaps that you and I can not find, but that patent lawyers are aware of and can help manage through IF you can afford them. It makes it more difficult to defend yourself pro se in a trial where your "patents" are infringed upon.
I'm anti-patent, of course, but I also would be happy to see a return to a Constitutional patent system. I have a recommendation for Congress to make the patent system more level:
1. Pass a bill into law that scraps ALL previous laws, amended laws, and riders to laws that cover the patent system. Declare all of these in that very bill. This would mean the old laws were fully sunset and removed from power. I'd also include a complete firing and deconstruction of the USPTO along with it. Might as well kick those cronies to the curb.
2. Work on a new bill that is easy to understand, and doesn't provide for loopholes. Have no exceptions.
3. Produce a VERY limited amount of time for the power of the patent. 7 years sounds good.
4. Develop a "previous art" website that is the first step to produce a new patent. Allow the average netizen to go and provide proof of prior art, at which point you can knock the patent out of the running. Provide for LARGE penalties for those who submit patents that are rejected.
I think you express your opinions at the grace of better people than yourself who spent their blood, sweat and tears in order to provide you the opportunity.
If you mean anyone in the military, I think you're wrong. Freedom can not be protected by the Government through force -- that is called anti-freedom, or tyranny.
The soldiers who join the military take one oath -- to uphold the laws of the Constitution. Many of the soldiers I've talked to have violated the Constitution, time and again, as has most leaders from the CiC on down. That is treason. They should be tried and found guilty, and jailed indefinitely at the same level of anyone else they've jailed.
If I wasn't a peaceful pacifist, I'd recommend tribunal legal execution for any soldier who committed treason against the Constitution.
My freedom is protected with my words and my hands and my body, not by a man in a uniform shooting people he never met, and who never harmed him or me.
If a foreign solder came onto my land, I believe most of my neighbors would leave the body in a puddle for me to clean up. That's what is happening in other countries -- and let that be a lesson to those who support a military outside of our borders. More body bags just means more people defending their property abroad.
I actually love my Windows 2005 MCE box -- 4 tuners. The problem is CableCard compatibility is impossible. It just doesn't work. I'm ready to give up the system I've perfected (other than encrypted HD and CableCard), for a box like the Tivo.
I had the original Tivo the week it came out, and I do miss it. TWF (The Wife Factor) is a big one, and she misses the Tivo also. Just to keep her happy I'd pay $30 a month if I had to for Tivo (2 phone calls from her a month about a broken TV is pricier than it sounds, and she's a geek too).
I appreciate this reply, but I want to make one thing clear: a Constitutionalist does NOT have to be a Libertarian, in fact, a Constitutionalist position is the BEST position for a Progressive, a Communist, a Green and a Socialist. The only group that would not want to be a Constitutionalist for their Utopia would be a neoconservative, that needs a strong central government to promote their Imperialism.
Look at it this way: with a truly Constitutional Federal State, the average person would only deal with the Federal level when paying a portion of their retail purchases in the form of a tariff (the only really Constitutional form of Federal income). They may also deal with the Federal level when coming into the country, or when dealing with issues where the individual State really tramples on their natural rights.
In a truly Constitutional U.S., each individual State could be run the way the people want it to run. California could have a State single payer healthcare system, Montana may have no healthcare regulations or subsidies at all. You could live where you wanted to live, but still know that your basic natural rights were protected by a small Federal State governing the Individual States' desire to trample liberty.
Texas might have a drinking age, Louisiana may not. New Hampshire may allow gay marriages, Wisconsin may say marriage is only between a man and a woman, Florida may allow polygamy. This is what States' Rights is about -- giving each citizen of each individual State more power to set the laws.
New York may have a strong police force, New Jersey may decide against it. Oregon may allow any and all drugs to be "legal," and Washington may say that even Tylenol has to be by prescription only.
The closer government is to you, the easier it is to tell them what you want and don't want. The more centralized government is, the more every law is "one size fits all" and every law harms everyone, helping only the very rare elite few.
Our Constitutional Republic, if managed the way the Founding Fathers said, the Federalist Papers debated and the LITERAL and UNCHANGING Constitution was written would be the ultimate central government for almost all other forms of politics -- from liberal to conservative to libertarian. Each individual State would be what the citizens wanted.
Exactly. Again, reading the Federalist papers and reviewing the numerous debates of the time, it is evident than the idea of "regulating commerce" only meant that the Federal government's true power here was to PREVENT THE STATES from restricting commerce between each other. Regulate did not mean "to govern, restrict, tax or control" in the sense it does today. It solely meant that the Federal government, a State enacted solely to protect private property and individual natural rights, was also empowered to make sure the individual States did not trample on free trade between the individual States.
Unfortunately, the legal profession is not what it was once. Maybe you're a rare exception.
It does not do that based on what modern Justices believe that means.
Per the Federalist Papers and the Madisonian debates before the Constitution's finalizing, the definition of general welfare was "for the diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate."
The idea of general welfare was for the Federal government to PROTECT, not instill, the rights of property and the rights of man to use his diverse faculties to provide for a better life for himself. It was not for any State or the Federal State to provide for people's welfare.
How politicians get elected without reading and understanding the definitions of the Constitution is beyond me. The Federalist Papers is a great read -- and it openly defines many of the phrases that have been mutilated by the regimes since that time.
As I've said in other threads, just because it is law does not mean it passes Constitutional muster. The Constitution is VERY specific on the types of crimes the Federal government can police:
1. Treason 2. Counterfeiting (of gold and silver bullion coin, the only type of money the Federal government can legally mint) 3. Piracy (on the high seas or open plains, not software or movies)
Everything else the Feds try to police is illegal and unacceptable for them to do.
Congress does a lot of things that are not authorized in the Constitution..Social Security, Department of Education, and on and on. Many of them are "good" things.
You just named the two of the worst parts of Congress from the beginning of the 20th century. Both of these items are local items per the 9th and 10th Amendments, and since the Federal government got involved, both those items are now much worse for the average citizen today than before those "laws" were enacted.
Personally, I heard a suggestion a couple of years ago that I think would be a great idea: before Congress can consider any Bill, it must contain a clause which states where in the Constitution Congress is given the authority to legislate on this particular topic. This would eliminate a lot of laws from even being considered and make it easier to determine the Constitutionality of a law. If said clause of the Constitution does not actually extend said authority, the judge can readily declare it unconstitutional and if Congress wants to authorize it based on some other clause of the Constitution, they can start over.
Actually, there is one Congressman who reads EVERY bill before he votes on it (along with his staffers). The minute they hit an unconstitutional part of the bill, he immediately decides to vote no. I believe he said he rarely has to get through 2-3 pages of any bill before his decision is made for him.
The judges of this country are criminals, as much as the Representatives and the Executive branch is. It is up to the People to stop voting for criminals who violate their oaths moments after taking office. Then again, many of you learned the Constitution in a Federally-funded public school, so it doesn't surprise me that 95% of Americans have no idea what the document is about: it does not give you rights, it takes rights away from the State who want to take your natural rights away.
You are wrong about constitutionally protected speech when it can cause harm or mass hysteria. That is NOT protected.
At the Federal level it surely is, regardless of what the Supreme Court wrongfully interpreted. Let us read a very simple part of the Constitution, a document written specifically to declare what the Federal Government can do, and what it is restricted from doing:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
As you can see, no law means no law. Harm, mass hysteria, are issues that have been with man since the dawn of man. They were nothing new to the Founding Fathers who knew that government uses the idea of "mass hysteria" to harm natural rights. They left those issues to the People and the Individual States.
I'm curious how the 2nd would protect against airline hijacking though.
Airplanes are private property. Private owners should be free to allow, or disallow, armed passengers. In fact, the United States airlines DID allow armed passengers until the Federal Government unconstitutionally prevented people from carrying their weapons on-board planes. Show me one terrorist who would dare to threaten hijacking on a plane where half the passengers are armed and trained and protecting themselves. In all the years people armed themselves on airliners, we had no issues with terrorism in the States.
I think that it would be considered a "Threat". ie. "Death Threat", which is illigal. Last time i checked, bombs kill.
The Federal Government has no power to police threats OR murder, Constitutionally. Murder is defined by the People and the Individual States per the 9th and 10th Amendments. This is why abortion should be the People's or the State's right to define -- the definition of murder can and should vary State to State. Threats, to me, are free speech issues, but I have no problem with an individual State or smaller government body criminalizing threats with intent. Again, the Federal Government has no power to define or criminalize any of these items.
I have read Title 28 of the USC, including Part II and Part III, and section 533 specifically. This part of the USC is definitively unconstitutional because no Amendment was provided for to allow this form of policing.
The original section (533) specifically gave the Attorney General the power to build a police force to protect the United States, which has no grounds in the Constitution for being a federal power. The 9th and 10th Amendments see to that.
The PATRIOT Act is also drivel, blatantly unconstitutional across the spectrum of the Bill of Rights.
Just because it is law does not mean that the Constitution allows for it.
I'm pretty sure car jacking and armed robbery and even hijacking an airplane aren't covered in the constitution either. There are however laws dealing with mass hysteria which said threat could cause. There is nothing in the constitution keeping me from going to the beach and yelling 'SHARK!!!' either, but guess what, its illegal.
Car jacking is a local crime. There were horse thefts when the Constitution was written -- and those aren't covered. People stole river boats, too, and those weren't covered. A crime against another individual is a local issue, and purposefully covered by the 9th and 10th Amendments. So is hijacking an airline (which wouldn't happen if the 2nd Amendment was not disturbed by the regime).
Yelling SHARK!!! at a public beach is Constitutionally protected speech. Congress shall make no law infringing on that natural right.
Yelling SHARK!!! at a privately owned beach is covered by the rules and regulations set forth by the property owner. Entering that private property may require an agreement or a contract, and violating that agreement or contract could be grounds for your being removed, or for the owner to sue you in civil court for violating a contract.
Such is the beauty of the Constitution. Such is the evil of the regime.
I keep re-reading my Constitution, and I don't see where it allows for a police power for the Federal government to go after bomb threats or any similar crime.
Is a bomb threat considered piracy?
Is a bomb threat considered treason?
Is a bomb threat considered counterfeiting?
If it isn't, there is NO Federal allocation of power to go after bomb threats, period. What the FBI is doing is not just unconstitutional, but any political leader who took an oath to uphold the Constitution is violating the only oath they took.
It is time that the residents and citizens of the United States of America ask where the government has gotten these powers from. I know that many of the previous generation is afraid of terrorist attacks, but we are all being attacked already in having our natural rights taken away from the very government that has one major purpose: to protect us from the State who wants to take those rights away.
It is fairly simple. The FBI has no provision in the Constitution, nor in any Amendments to said Constitution, and should just go away. Let the local State police force worry about bomb threats. If it happens from across State lines, let both State police forces work together.
That kills your stream of new people finding your site through Google, doesn't it?
Absolutely, but that particular site is going to allow snippets of articles for the unregistered. Almost all of my income streams are niche enough that there aren't a lot of competitors clogging up the search streams, but there's more and more competition from spam topics every day.
I have a mentally retarded brother-in-law who has hands we call "the grips of steel." He's mentally like a 2 year old but physically like a 25 year old in great shape. When he grips onto you, he can break bones, and leave a bruise at the minimum. It's impossible to get out of his kung-fu grip, so we don't hold his hand anymore but his wrist.
I always think of prosthetic hands when I have to help him into or out of a car or down steps. If the hand doesn't respond to the user, or if the user has a bad mental reaction, I wonder how much force can be applied by the prosthetic. Car windows aren't supposed to choke you if they're closed around your neck, but a prosthetic hand has to have the right balance of strength AND speed. What is the back-up release mechanism if there's a problem?
So what is the answer? Community-supported forums won't last due to the high bandwidth and processor cost of running a forum. I know, I host and maintain somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 dozen forums (all ad supported) and the hosting costs can be a nightmare. We did co-lo for a while, but that was a bigger mess, so now we're with NFSN.
1. Advertising keeps them in business because of the bell curve -- some people block ads, some people overclick ads (causing them to pay zero), but the middle ground is usually enough to keep a site alive. My oldest website still earns somewhere in the realm of $200 a month through ads and it hasn't been updated in 2 years -- but people still get there through Google and the information on the site is still "good enough" because it has to do with old hardware. That income offsets my new sites. According to my records, only 12% of my visitors block ads, which isn't a big deal. But as ad-blocking grows, we've had to resort to new income streams such as "advertiser funded posts" (ReviewMe.com for example), which I absolutely hate.
2. That is the worst. We tried it and canned it on most sites because it ruins the flow of the content. On a few private newsletter sites, we've gotten rid of advertising entirely except on the home page and moved to a subscriber-oriented system. But most people aren't interested in paying $20 a year for daily updates, so we had to balance it -- subscribers get news/updates early (like slashdot, but a day or two in advance) and registered users get it later. Unregistered users don't get anything but a homepage. It seems to work, and we've actually paid our writers a bit more this year than last, but I doubt it will last.
3. This is SO TRUE. On one of my newsletters (regarding Mobile Home ownership and investments, which is now the new spam-topic, ugh) we actually spend a great deal of time looking for more depth to the usual content. Most of the websites (spamsites) that cover this topic are loaded with old and antiquated information, but they can rank much higher in Google, causing the entire market to suffer. I think I spend as much time working on Google ranking as on content -- the more visitors we get, the more income we get, allowing us to spend more writing content. Rinse and repeat.
4. I'd love to see some sort of Web 3.0 ability to drag and drop CONTENT from a website into my own "newspaper format" site. I do it, sort of, through RSS, but it doesn't always display correctly. Some sites toss advertising into their RSS, which really throws things off if it has any formatting needs (in RSS, yeesh). One thing we're working strongly on this year is developing format-free sites for mobile applications. They're low bandwidth (tiny server costs), late latency (tiny server load) and they build your market for non-mobile readers.
5. Horrid. But then again, have you seen the language and grammar skills coming out of COLLEGES lately? I had to tell a new writer the difference between their and they're abut 60 times in a month. And this person had a journalism degree from a decent college. Unbelievable.
Since I'm pro-market, though, I know it will all work out. The MSM has been subsidized and protected by the State for far too long, and it's a good thing that information is falling in cost because of the supply of people willing to write. Hopefully some sort of "digg-like" article ranking system will start up that will let people moderate blogs and articles and forums, and also allow people to meta-moderate those moderations to keep people in check.
I am averse to concerts, I really din't think I've enjoyed any concert, the sound levels are just too uncomfortable.
I go to 3-4 shows a week, and I wear expensive form-fitting earplugs. I value my ears enough to wear them in my print shop and to wear them near an airport or subway/elevated line. I agree, the sound levels are ridiculous. But I do love live music, and I love finding bands to help out.
I really don't like the idea of devaluing a work just because it's easy to copy.
But that is how any market works. The laws of supply and demand are impossible to work around without government force and collusion, and I believe government makes it work. If an item has near infinite supply, no amount of demand will make that item command a price a little over cost, if not below cost.
The idea of buying presence may work for musicians, but it won't work for film makers and book authors, both require a lot of work and money to make, but once made, is easy to copy.
That's not true, necessarily. Any business you start has a huge level of risk to it -- it's called startup cost. With easy video distribution now available, you can create a few pilot-type episodes of a show, and Torrent or PeerCast the episodes for a loss. If enough people like what you're making (say, Firefly/Serenity), they pay for FUTURE episodes. This is how painters painted before copyright -- wealthy people would finance them. Today, fans can microfinance a production with more power than a few wealthy patrons of the arts. We're working on a small "TV" show that will be peercasted and torrented, utilized the directing and acting talents of 3 local Chicago theaters. Our estimated cost per episode, including sets, is less than $25,000 for a 44 minute show. $25,000 x 50,000 fans = $0.50 per fan. Bandwidth costs are relieved because of torrent/peercasting, and we believe we can break even with just simple Google Adsense and a paypal donation button. I believe we'll even profit enough to pay the cast and director and writers well more than minimum wage. Our cost to begin production is only $100,000, which we already raised from just 25 people we consulted with. If you can't raise $100,000 for an idea, it isn't a good idea. There is SO MUCH MONEY out there, even online, that there is no excuse not to move forward. Our episodes will NOT have a copyright, and we'll allow anyone to charge for distribution.
Under the suggested regime of no copyright, I just don't see how there's sufficient money to be made to make it worth making. I don't know if you'll recall, but a movie like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon only made money in countries with decent copyright. It effectively made no money at all in homeland China because the movie was bootlegged immediately and it was basically only the bootlegs that sold.
It would have made fine money regardless of copyright -- Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon had more ONLINE bootlegged copies in countries with copyright than in China -- the infrastructure for distribution in China is limited because of the State's ownership of so much. Bootlegging on DVD in a local community is the only form of distribution for much of China (I know, I've been there numerous times). It has little to do with copyight laws, it has a lot to do with the socialist ownership of physical distribution.
I've worked with 10 "local" bands that are now on national or international tours -- not one of them enforces their copyright notices. Not one of them has label support. All of them are eating, paying rent, and having fun on the side with the income from shows and merchandise alone. Two of the bands have active bootleg scenes for even their T-shirts, and they don't mind because the "real fans" laugh at those who buy the artificial merchandise. Big deal, the bands says, they can walk from a concert of just 200 people with $500-$1000 from the bar, and $500-$1000 profit from merch sales. $2000 for 4 guys investing 8 h
If someone is a biological imperative, we would be proactive about defending ourselves to protect our biological functions. If you're cold, you shiver. If you're still cold, you put on clothes. If you don't, you die.
If you're thirsty, your mouth gets dry. You drink water. If you don't, you die.
There is no biological response, yet, to keeping your information private. When you get a new credit card, do you read the contract that is included with the application? It's all there. When you install new software, do you read the contract? It's all there.
If you don't like a contract because it gives up what you consider private information, don't sign it. If you feel you need the item or service, find an outlet selling it that won't breach your privacy. It's quite simple. If there is no outlet for that service without giving up what you deem important, find out why. Many times it is State-intrusion in a market that creates a monopolistic cartel of providers. Don't blame that market for the privacy issues, blame your government that created the cartel (mercantilism, not capitalism).
Privacy to me is useless. I can't think of one reason why I need or require complete privacy. If someone wants to peep on my wife and I in bed, I close the shades. Big deal. Financially, it already makes little to no sense to have personal credit or a good personal credit score, because of past government interventions. I still track my credit report monthly, and am alerted to changes. If someone wants to try to steal my identity, let them try -- I already have an inexpensive insurance plan against identity theft. Privacy, to me, is irrelevant in my life.
What is important is the freedom for me to work the way I want to work, and have fun the way I want to have fun. If either of those issues "become public," so be it -- they're who I am. If someone doesn't want to work with me because of what I like to do, so be it, they're free to associate or disassociate with me. What do I have to hide?
When it comes to "optimal," we have to consider more than just two parties, what the layman would call "the producer" and "the consumer." In an area as complex as content creation, copyright definitely harms more people than it helps. Many people will say that copyright helps "the producer," but in reality the monopoly of force that copyright provides helps the distributors more than the producer. It harms the consumer (prevents them from using their talents as they decide their time is worth), it harms other producers who also are restricted in how they can use their time most optimally as judged by themselves. It also hurts the original producer because many distribution markets are monopolized because of copyright.
Look at what Prince just did -- he disturbed the distribution monopoly's hold on music sales, and they're PO'd about it. Instead of hoping for sales for an album he knows is already online and in the hands of fans, he used the music he created as a "loss leader" to drive sales to a market he can control -- his own time. Instead of hoping to make millions on an album (which anyone can copy, using their own time, their own equipment), he can now make millions selling something unique -- HIS time in front of his fans.
Albums are quickly becoming marketing structures to get people to attend your live performances. Many new bands give away their music via MySpace and PureVolume in hopes of getting people to come to their shows -- where they make the actual dollars doing actual labor on an ongoing basis.
I'm an artist, and I produce some musical acts myself. I've convinced most, if not all, to tell their crowds to go and copy the album they buy at the show for friends, so that the band has a bigger pull the next time they're in town. My own brother's band, Maps & Atlases, is now doing that to great acclaim (MTV2, college radio, and a large tour pending) with hopes of making their money on beer cuts, T-shirt sales, etc. Copyright is useless to them. They won't sign a contract to the various labels chasing them unless they are allowed to distribute their music in any way they want (including Torrent, free MP3 on their sites, etc).
What is optimal is a market that a producer and a consumer can both dictate what terms they want for a transaction. If an item has the chance to be infinitely available, the cost drops to zero. CDs can theoretically be nearly-infinitely available today. The cost should be close to zero. The time an artists can serve their fans is not infinitely zero (at least not in a live performance, face to face). This is where money can, and should, be made. That is optimal for all.
It sounds good -- use the force of the law to regulate businesses to provide unlocked devices "for the consumer's rights." But the idea of locking a device is irrelevant to this discussion, Mssrs. FCC, because it isn't the provision of locking a device that is anti-consumer.
The best situation for any consumer of a given market product is competition -- the ability for newcomers to a given market to try to provide better features at a lower cost and a higher quality. This gives consumers choice. Locking a device is the equivalent of removing a feature from a product, but the idea of locking a device may allow a manufacturer to offer better service because they won't have to pay for the support of third party hardware and software. In the print industry, I get significant breaks on same-day warranty service if I buy my toner and ink from the manufacturer (generally at a fairly competitive price, these are industrial machines).
So what is the anti-consumer situation here? Again, it isn't locking the device. The biggest anti-consumer provision in the communications market is also one that is anti-competition (amazing). It is called the Patent. In a market where almost every product is seemingly identical, we still see each product having patents or patents pending on the devices. Yes, the iPhone seems unique, but it really isn't. Apple just realized that the interface is more important than other features -- and they're proven correct so far in the short run. Yet the market is artificially disturbed because of the force of law (patents, copyrights, trademarks), and the FCC wants to patch the Congressional error by adding more regulation to the market?
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I doubt anyone is going to cry about inadequate service providers being forced to stop describing their service as "broadband" or even going belly up. Not that there is much danger of that probably... For goodness' sake, this is 2007 -- 2Mbps minimum in order to call it "broadband" is perfectly reasonable...
I disagree. When I first had "broadband" it was a 128k/128k IDSL connection. Guess what? It was excellent -- my latency was very low, and the speed was respectable for everything we needed to do at the time. That was broadband for me, because it blew away my 56k (really 32k) modem connection. For me, broadband is about low latency, for you, broadband is about leech priviledges for a torrent, maybe. I don't need 2mbps connections, my standard throughput for my office network (12 users) rarely breaks 300kbps. We want low latency, and we don't care about speed. This is why we have a T1, with most of it provisioned for VoIP, and little of it for the net. On the rare occasion that we download something huge, we probably use a lot more of that bandwidth, but I can't think of the last time I had to download something over 20MB. If I do, I buy a CD or DVD of it online, and ship it next day. No waiting for a download, and nothing is that necessary that I need it today.
Broadband should remain undefined, and let the consumer judge if what they bought is what they need. If you need more than a shared connection gives you, pay the piper and get a professional level of service.
I can choose between Verizon (BOO!) or Comcast (boo). Where's my free market? Where are my smaller providers? Hell, Verizon's not even planning on rolling FiOS out to me for another two years, even though I live in a densely populated area with housing values near those of my parent's suburban neighborhood.
No one is stopping anyone else from competing. Oh, waitaminute, someone is stopping them -- check with your local village/city, county and State laws. They might be preventing your community from getting more than 2 providers. They likely are.
The town over from mine (Libertyville, IL) is a small village. They have 7-8 broadband providers as of today. 3 provide reasonable WiFi, 2 provide local DSL, 1 providers national DSL, and 1 provides cable (maybe two). The village has limited laws restricting new competition. Service is good, pricing is good, speed is good -- you pay for what you need.
Don't blame ME, or restrict ME, with a federal unconstitutional law because YOU voted for people who restricted local competition. That's your fault, not mine. In fact, the U.S. government was created in order to prevent local States and governments from restricting trade, maybe you should sue your village on Constitutional grounds?
This bill was written solely to upset the current relatively free market of broadband. Because the government will set "standards" of speed, this leaves smaller providers -- who may still be able to provide acceptable speeds -- out of the market. If you won't be able to give the minimum, get out of the market.
Here's why I am against Net Neutrality -- instead of providing for a truly "neutral" pipe, regulations like these will be written by the strongest elements in a market, designed to kill the smaller competitors. It is unfortunate if geeks and techies support these kinds of bills, especially without reading them fully. There is no Constitutional power allocated to the Senate to REQUIRE levels of service. The interstate commerce clause was written so that the Federal government can restrain the individual States from harming commerce -- the word "regulate" in the Constitution did not mean what we think it means today.
Very, very unfortunate.
I read the whole text of the bill at thomas.loc.gov today. It's long, drawn out, runs circles around itself, and really does nothing. You can tell that mercantilist businesses helped write it -- it will still make things worse.
If you want to reform something, you don't do it with steps like this. You don't write new laws to amend old laws -- it leaves loopholes and gaps that you and I can not find, but that patent lawyers are aware of and can help manage through IF you can afford them. It makes it more difficult to defend yourself pro se in a trial where your "patents" are infringed upon.
I'm anti-patent, of course, but I also would be happy to see a return to a Constitutional patent system. I have a recommendation for Congress to make the patent system more level:
1. Pass a bill into law that scraps ALL previous laws, amended laws, and riders to laws that cover the patent system. Declare all of these in that very bill. This would mean the old laws were fully sunset and removed from power. I'd also include a complete firing and deconstruction of the USPTO along with it. Might as well kick those cronies to the curb.
2. Work on a new bill that is easy to understand, and doesn't provide for loopholes. Have no exceptions.
3. Produce a VERY limited amount of time for the power of the patent. 7 years sounds good.
4. Develop a "previous art" website that is the first step to produce a new patent. Allow the average netizen to go and provide proof of prior art, at which point you can knock the patent out of the running. Provide for LARGE penalties for those who submit patents that are rejected.
I think you express your opinions at the grace of better people than yourself who spent their blood, sweat and tears in order to provide you the opportunity.
If you mean anyone in the military, I think you're wrong. Freedom can not be protected by the Government through force -- that is called anti-freedom, or tyranny.
The soldiers who join the military take one oath -- to uphold the laws of the Constitution. Many of the soldiers I've talked to have violated the Constitution, time and again, as has most leaders from the CiC on down. That is treason. They should be tried and found guilty, and jailed indefinitely at the same level of anyone else they've jailed.
If I wasn't a peaceful pacifist, I'd recommend tribunal legal execution for any soldier who committed treason against the Constitution.
My freedom is protected with my words and my hands and my body, not by a man in a uniform shooting people he never met, and who never harmed him or me.
If a foreign solder came onto my land, I believe most of my neighbors would leave the body in a puddle for me to clean up. That's what is happening in other countries -- and let that be a lesson to those who support a military outside of our borders. More body bags just means more people defending their property abroad.
I actually love my Windows 2005 MCE box -- 4 tuners. The problem is CableCard compatibility is impossible. It just doesn't work. I'm ready to give up the system I've perfected (other than encrypted HD and CableCard), for a box like the Tivo.
I had the original Tivo the week it came out, and I do miss it. TWF (The Wife Factor) is a big one, and she misses the Tivo also. Just to keep her happy I'd pay $30 a month if I had to for Tivo (2 phone calls from her a month about a broken TV is pricier than it sounds, and she's a geek too).
I appreciate this reply, but I want to make one thing clear: a Constitutionalist does NOT have to be a Libertarian, in fact, a Constitutionalist position is the BEST position for a Progressive, a Communist, a Green and a Socialist. The only group that would not want to be a Constitutionalist for their Utopia would be a neoconservative, that needs a strong central government to promote their Imperialism.
Look at it this way: with a truly Constitutional Federal State, the average person would only deal with the Federal level when paying a portion of their retail purchases in the form of a tariff (the only really Constitutional form of Federal income). They may also deal with the Federal level when coming into the country, or when dealing with issues where the individual State really tramples on their natural rights.
In a truly Constitutional U.S., each individual State could be run the way the people want it to run. California could have a State single payer healthcare system, Montana may have no healthcare regulations or subsidies at all. You could live where you wanted to live, but still know that your basic natural rights were protected by a small Federal State governing the Individual States' desire to trample liberty.
Texas might have a drinking age, Louisiana may not. New Hampshire may allow gay marriages, Wisconsin may say marriage is only between a man and a woman, Florida may allow polygamy. This is what States' Rights is about -- giving each citizen of each individual State more power to set the laws.
New York may have a strong police force, New Jersey may decide against it. Oregon may allow any and all drugs to be "legal," and Washington may say that even Tylenol has to be by prescription only.
The closer government is to you, the easier it is to tell them what you want and don't want. The more centralized government is, the more every law is "one size fits all" and every law harms everyone, helping only the very rare elite few.
Our Constitutional Republic, if managed the way the Founding Fathers said, the Federalist Papers debated and the LITERAL and UNCHANGING Constitution was written would be the ultimate central government for almost all other forms of politics -- from liberal to conservative to libertarian. Each individual State would be what the citizens wanted.
I'd move to the most free State myself.
Exactly. Again, reading the Federalist papers and reviewing the numerous debates of the time, it is evident than the idea of "regulating commerce" only meant that the Federal government's true power here was to PREVENT THE STATES from restricting commerce between each other. Regulate did not mean "to govern, restrict, tax or control" in the sense it does today. It solely meant that the Federal government, a State enacted solely to protect private property and individual natural rights, was also empowered to make sure the individual States did not trample on free trade between the individual States.
Unfortunately, the legal profession is not what it was once. Maybe you're a rare exception.
It does not do that based on what modern Justices believe that means.
Per the Federalist Papers and the Madisonian debates before the Constitution's finalizing, the definition of general welfare was "for the diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate."
The idea of general welfare was for the Federal government to PROTECT, not instill, the rights of property and the rights of man to use his diverse faculties to provide for a better life for himself. It was not for any State or the Federal State to provide for people's welfare.
How politicians get elected without reading and understanding the definitions of the Constitution is beyond me. The Federalist Papers is a great read -- and it openly defines many of the phrases that have been mutilated by the regimes since that time.
As I've said in other threads, just because it is law does not mean it passes Constitutional muster. The Constitution is VERY specific on the types of crimes the Federal government can police:
1. Treason
2. Counterfeiting (of gold and silver bullion coin, the only type of money the Federal government can legally mint)
3. Piracy (on the high seas or open plains, not software or movies)
Everything else the Feds try to police is illegal and unacceptable for them to do.
Congress does a lot of things that are not authorized in the Constitution..Social Security, Department of Education, and on and on. Many of them are "good" things.
You just named the two of the worst parts of Congress from the beginning of the 20th century. Both of these items are local items per the 9th and 10th Amendments, and since the Federal government got involved, both those items are now much worse for the average citizen today than before those "laws" were enacted.
Personally, I heard a suggestion a couple of years ago that I think would be a great idea: before Congress can consider any Bill, it must contain a clause which states where in the Constitution Congress is given the authority to legislate on this particular topic. This would eliminate a lot of laws from even being considered and make it easier to determine the Constitutionality of a law. If said clause of the Constitution does not actually extend said authority, the judge can readily declare it unconstitutional and if Congress wants to authorize it based on some other clause of the Constitution, they can start over.
Actually, there is one Congressman who reads EVERY bill before he votes on it (along with his staffers). The minute they hit an unconstitutional part of the bill, he immediately decides to vote no. I believe he said he rarely has to get through 2-3 pages of any bill before his decision is made for him.
The judges of this country are criminals, as much as the Representatives and the Executive branch is. It is up to the People to stop voting for criminals who violate their oaths moments after taking office. Then again, many of you learned the Constitution in a Federally-funded public school, so it doesn't surprise me that 95% of Americans have no idea what the document is about: it does not give you rights, it takes rights away from the State who want to take your natural rights away.
You are wrong about constitutionally protected speech when it can cause harm or mass hysteria. That is NOT protected.
At the Federal level it surely is, regardless of what the Supreme Court wrongfully interpreted. Let us read a very simple part of the Constitution, a document written specifically to declare what the Federal Government can do, and what it is restricted from doing:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
As you can see, no law means no law. Harm, mass hysteria, are issues that have been with man since the dawn of man. They were nothing new to the Founding Fathers who knew that government uses the idea of "mass hysteria" to harm natural rights. They left those issues to the People and the Individual States.
I'm curious how the 2nd would protect against airline hijacking though.
Airplanes are private property. Private owners should be free to allow, or disallow, armed passengers. In fact, the United States airlines DID allow armed passengers until the Federal Government unconstitutionally prevented people from carrying their weapons on-board planes. Show me one terrorist who would dare to threaten hijacking on a plane where half the passengers are armed and trained and protecting themselves. In all the years people armed themselves on airliners, we had no issues with terrorism in the States.
I think that it would be considered a "Threat". ie. "Death Threat", which is illigal. Last time i checked, bombs kill.
The Federal Government has no power to police threats OR murder, Constitutionally. Murder is defined by the People and the Individual States per the 9th and 10th Amendments. This is why abortion should be the People's or the State's right to define -- the definition of murder can and should vary State to State. Threats, to me, are free speech issues, but I have no problem with an individual State or smaller government body criminalizing threats with intent. Again, the Federal Government has no power to define or criminalize any of these items.
I have read Title 28 of the USC, including Part II and Part III, and section 533 specifically. This part of the USC is definitively unconstitutional because no Amendment was provided for to allow this form of policing.
The original section (533) specifically gave the Attorney General the power to build a police force to protect the United States, which has no grounds in the Constitution for being a federal power. The 9th and 10th Amendments see to that.
The PATRIOT Act is also drivel, blatantly unconstitutional across the spectrum of the Bill of Rights.
Just because it is law does not mean that the Constitution allows for it.
I'm pretty sure car jacking and armed robbery and even hijacking an airplane aren't covered in the constitution either. There are however laws dealing with mass hysteria which said threat could cause. There is nothing in the constitution keeping me from going to the beach and yelling 'SHARK!!!' either, but guess what, its illegal.
Car jacking is a local crime. There were horse thefts when the Constitution was written -- and those aren't covered. People stole river boats, too, and those weren't covered. A crime against another individual is a local issue, and purposefully covered by the 9th and 10th Amendments. So is hijacking an airline (which wouldn't happen if the 2nd Amendment was not disturbed by the regime).
Yelling SHARK!!! at a public beach is Constitutionally protected speech. Congress shall make no law infringing on that natural right.
Yelling SHARK!!! at a privately owned beach is covered by the rules and regulations set forth by the property owner. Entering that private property may require an agreement or a contract, and violating that agreement or contract could be grounds for your being removed, or for the owner to sue you in civil court for violating a contract.
Such is the beauty of the Constitution. Such is the evil of the regime.
I keep re-reading my Constitution, and I don't see where it allows for a police power for the Federal government to go after bomb threats or any similar crime.
Is a bomb threat considered piracy?
Is a bomb threat considered treason?
Is a bomb threat considered counterfeiting?
If it isn't, there is NO Federal allocation of power to go after bomb threats, period. What the FBI is doing is not just unconstitutional, but any political leader who took an oath to uphold the Constitution is violating the only oath they took.
It is time that the residents and citizens of the United States of America ask where the government has gotten these powers from. I know that many of the previous generation is afraid of terrorist attacks, but we are all being attacked already in having our natural rights taken away from the very government that has one major purpose: to protect us from the State who wants to take those rights away.
It is fairly simple. The FBI has no provision in the Constitution, nor in any Amendments to said Constitution, and should just go away. Let the local State police force worry about bomb threats. If it happens from across State lines, let both State police forces work together.
That kills your stream of new people finding your site through Google, doesn't it?
Absolutely, but that particular site is going to allow snippets of articles for the unregistered. Almost all of my income streams are niche enough that there aren't a lot of competitors clogging up the search streams, but there's more and more competition from spam topics every day.
I have a mentally retarded brother-in-law who has hands we call "the grips of steel." He's mentally like a 2 year old but physically like a 25 year old in great shape. When he grips onto you, he can break bones, and leave a bruise at the minimum. It's impossible to get out of his kung-fu grip, so we don't hold his hand anymore but his wrist.
I always think of prosthetic hands when I have to help him into or out of a car or down steps. If the hand doesn't respond to the user, or if the user has a bad mental reaction, I wonder how much force can be applied by the prosthetic. Car windows aren't supposed to choke you if they're closed around your neck, but a prosthetic hand has to have the right balance of strength AND speed. What is the back-up release mechanism if there's a problem?
So what is the answer? Community-supported forums won't last due to the high bandwidth and processor cost of running a forum. I know, I host and maintain somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 dozen forums (all ad supported) and the hosting costs can be a nightmare. We did co-lo for a while, but that was a bigger mess, so now we're with NFSN.
1. Advertising keeps them in business because of the bell curve -- some people block ads, some people overclick ads (causing them to pay zero), but the middle ground is usually enough to keep a site alive. My oldest website still earns somewhere in the realm of $200 a month through ads and it hasn't been updated in 2 years -- but people still get there through Google and the information on the site is still "good enough" because it has to do with old hardware. That income offsets my new sites. According to my records, only 12% of my visitors block ads, which isn't a big deal. But as ad-blocking grows, we've had to resort to new income streams such as "advertiser funded posts" (ReviewMe.com for example), which I absolutely hate.
2. That is the worst. We tried it and canned it on most sites because it ruins the flow of the content. On a few private newsletter sites, we've gotten rid of advertising entirely except on the home page and moved to a subscriber-oriented system. But most people aren't interested in paying $20 a year for daily updates, so we had to balance it -- subscribers get news/updates early (like slashdot, but a day or two in advance) and registered users get it later. Unregistered users don't get anything but a homepage. It seems to work, and we've actually paid our writers a bit more this year than last, but I doubt it will last.
3. This is SO TRUE. On one of my newsletters (regarding Mobile Home ownership and investments, which is now the new spam-topic, ugh) we actually spend a great deal of time looking for more depth to the usual content. Most of the websites (spamsites) that cover this topic are loaded with old and antiquated information, but they can rank much higher in Google, causing the entire market to suffer. I think I spend as much time working on Google ranking as on content -- the more visitors we get, the more income we get, allowing us to spend more writing content. Rinse and repeat.
4. I'd love to see some sort of Web 3.0 ability to drag and drop CONTENT from a website into my own "newspaper format" site. I do it, sort of, through RSS, but it doesn't always display correctly. Some sites toss advertising into their RSS, which really throws things off if it has any formatting needs (in RSS, yeesh). One thing we're working strongly on this year is developing format-free sites for mobile applications. They're low bandwidth (tiny server costs), late latency (tiny server load) and they build your market for non-mobile readers.
5. Horrid. But then again, have you seen the language and grammar skills coming out of COLLEGES lately? I had to tell a new writer the difference between their and they're abut 60 times in a month. And this person had a journalism degree from a decent college. Unbelievable.
Since I'm pro-market, though, I know it will all work out. The MSM has been subsidized and protected by the State for far too long, and it's a good thing that information is falling in cost because of the supply of people willing to write. Hopefully some sort of "digg-like" article ranking system will start up that will let people moderate blogs and articles and forums, and also allow people to meta-moderate those moderations to keep people in check.
...if he had patented the virus.
...thought that I wrote this submittal?
I didn't!
+1/Egotistical
I am averse to concerts, I really din't think I've enjoyed any concert, the sound levels are just too uncomfortable.
I go to 3-4 shows a week, and I wear expensive form-fitting earplugs. I value my ears enough to wear them in my print shop and to wear them near an airport or subway/elevated line. I agree, the sound levels are ridiculous. But I do love live music, and I love finding bands to help out.
I really don't like the idea of devaluing a work just because it's easy to copy.
But that is how any market works. The laws of supply and demand are impossible to work around without government force and collusion, and I believe government makes it work. If an item has near infinite supply, no amount of demand will make that item command a price a little over cost, if not below cost.
The idea of buying presence may work for musicians, but it won't work for film makers and book authors, both require a lot of work and money to make, but once made, is easy to copy.
That's not true, necessarily. Any business you start has a huge level of risk to it -- it's called startup cost. With easy video distribution now available, you can create a few pilot-type episodes of a show, and Torrent or PeerCast the episodes for a loss. If enough people like what you're making (say, Firefly/Serenity), they pay for FUTURE episodes. This is how painters painted before copyright -- wealthy people would finance them. Today, fans can microfinance a production with more power than a few wealthy patrons of the arts. We're working on a small "TV" show that will be peercasted and torrented, utilized the directing and acting talents of 3 local Chicago theaters. Our estimated cost per episode, including sets, is less than $25,000 for a 44 minute show. $25,000 x 50,000 fans = $0.50 per fan. Bandwidth costs are relieved because of torrent/peercasting, and we believe we can break even with just simple Google Adsense and a paypal donation button. I believe we'll even profit enough to pay the cast and director and writers well more than minimum wage. Our cost to begin production is only $100,000, which we already raised from just 25 people we consulted with. If you can't raise $100,000 for an idea, it isn't a good idea. There is SO MUCH MONEY out there, even online, that there is no excuse not to move forward. Our episodes will NOT have a copyright, and we'll allow anyone to charge for distribution.
Under the suggested regime of no copyright, I just don't see how there's sufficient money to be made to make it worth making. I don't know if you'll recall, but a movie like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon only made money in countries with decent copyright. It effectively made no money at all in homeland China because the movie was bootlegged immediately and it was basically only the bootlegs that sold.
It would have made fine money regardless of copyright -- Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon had more ONLINE bootlegged copies in countries with copyright than in China -- the infrastructure for distribution in China is limited because of the State's ownership of so much. Bootlegging on DVD in a local community is the only form of distribution for much of China (I know, I've been there numerous times). It has little to do with copyight laws, it has a lot to do with the socialist ownership of physical distribution.
I've worked with 10 "local" bands that are now on national or international tours -- not one of them enforces their copyright notices. Not one of them has label support. All of them are eating, paying rent, and having fun on the side with the income from shows and merchandise alone. Two of the bands have active bootleg scenes for even their T-shirts, and they don't mind because the "real fans" laugh at those who buy the artificial merchandise. Big deal, the bands says, they can walk from a concert of just 200 people with $500-$1000 from the bar, and $500-$1000 profit from merch sales. $2000 for 4 guys investing 8 h
If someone is a biological imperative, we would be proactive about defending ourselves to protect our biological functions. If you're cold, you shiver. If you're still cold, you put on clothes. If you don't, you die.
If you're thirsty, your mouth gets dry. You drink water. If you don't, you die.
There is no biological response, yet, to keeping your information private. When you get a new credit card, do you read the contract that is included with the application? It's all there. When you install new software, do you read the contract? It's all there.
If you don't like a contract because it gives up what you consider private information, don't sign it. If you feel you need the item or service, find an outlet selling it that won't breach your privacy. It's quite simple. If there is no outlet for that service without giving up what you deem important, find out why. Many times it is State-intrusion in a market that creates a monopolistic cartel of providers. Don't blame that market for the privacy issues, blame your government that created the cartel (mercantilism, not capitalism).
Privacy to me is useless. I can't think of one reason why I need or require complete privacy. If someone wants to peep on my wife and I in bed, I close the shades. Big deal. Financially, it already makes little to no sense to have personal credit or a good personal credit score, because of past government interventions. I still track my credit report monthly, and am alerted to changes. If someone wants to try to steal my identity, let them try -- I already have an inexpensive insurance plan against identity theft. Privacy, to me, is irrelevant in my life.
What is important is the freedom for me to work the way I want to work, and have fun the way I want to have fun. If either of those issues "become public," so be it -- they're who I am. If someone doesn't want to work with me because of what I like to do, so be it, they're free to associate or disassociate with me. What do I have to hide?
When it comes to "optimal," we have to consider more than just two parties, what the layman would call "the producer" and "the consumer." In an area as complex as content creation, copyright definitely harms more people than it helps. Many people will say that copyright helps "the producer," but in reality the monopoly of force that copyright provides helps the distributors more than the producer. It harms the consumer (prevents them from using their talents as they decide their time is worth), it harms other producers who also are restricted in how they can use their time most optimally as judged by themselves. It also hurts the original producer because many distribution markets are monopolized because of copyright.
Look at what Prince just did -- he disturbed the distribution monopoly's hold on music sales, and they're PO'd about it. Instead of hoping for sales for an album he knows is already online and in the hands of fans, he used the music he created as a "loss leader" to drive sales to a market he can control -- his own time. Instead of hoping to make millions on an album (which anyone can copy, using their own time, their own equipment), he can now make millions selling something unique -- HIS time in front of his fans.
Albums are quickly becoming marketing structures to get people to attend your live performances. Many new bands give away their music via MySpace and PureVolume in hopes of getting people to come to their shows -- where they make the actual dollars doing actual labor on an ongoing basis.
I'm an artist, and I produce some musical acts myself. I've convinced most, if not all, to tell their crowds to go and copy the album they buy at the show for friends, so that the band has a bigger pull the next time they're in town. My own brother's band, Maps & Atlases, is now doing that to great acclaim (MTV2, college radio, and a large tour pending) with hopes of making their money on beer cuts, T-shirt sales, etc. Copyright is useless to them. They won't sign a contract to the various labels chasing them unless they are allowed to distribute their music in any way they want (including Torrent, free MP3 on their sites, etc).
What is optimal is a market that a producer and a consumer can both dictate what terms they want for a transaction. If an item has the chance to be infinitely available, the cost drops to zero. CDs can theoretically be nearly-infinitely available today. The cost should be close to zero. The time an artists can serve their fans is not infinitely zero (at least not in a live performance, face to face). This is where money can, and should, be made. That is optimal for all.
It sounds good -- use the force of the law to regulate businesses to provide unlocked devices "for the consumer's rights." But the idea of locking a device is irrelevant to this discussion, Mssrs. FCC, because it isn't the provision of locking a device that is anti-consumer.
The best situation for any consumer of a given market product is competition -- the ability for newcomers to a given market to try to provide better features at a lower cost and a higher quality. This gives consumers choice. Locking a device is the equivalent of removing a feature from a product, but the idea of locking a device may allow a manufacturer to offer better service because they won't have to pay for the support of third party hardware and software. In the print industry, I get significant breaks on same-day warranty service if I buy my toner and ink from the manufacturer (generally at a fairly competitive price, these are industrial machines).
So what is the anti-consumer situation here? Again, it isn't locking the device. The biggest anti-consumer provision in the communications market is also one that is anti-competition (amazing). It is called the Patent. In a market where almost every product is seemingly identical, we still see each product having patents or patents pending on the devices. Yes, the iPhone seems unique, but it really isn't. Apple just realized that the interface is more important than other features -- and they're proven correct so far in the short run. Yet the market is artificially disturbed because of the force of law (patents, copyrights, trademarks), and the FCC wants to patch the Congressional error by adding more regulation to the market?