In the case of the phone companies, the only justification that I'm aware of for taxing them is that they're a monopoly. If the situation were different and did not lend itself to the monopolized environment that we currently have, we simply would not *need* any governing agency to fund. Competition, all by itself, will fill demand. Need stable service, someone who comes up with an idea will provide it. Need E911 service, competition will figure out a way to provide it.
But that's not the situation we're in. We've got a monopoly on the cables. And rightly so. The alternative is too messy. *BUT* in lieu of competition to ensure that the provider is reasonable, we need a governing body to govern the monopoly, and that governing body needs funds. Lose the monopoly and you lose the need for the body to govern it. Lose the body, and it no longer needs funding.
The thing that the phone company has a monopoly on is the cables. I don't really understand why you would dispute this. Every CLEC in the country knows who owns the cables and who's been granted monopoly ownership of the right to lay cables in a particular municipality. No one else is allowed to lay cheaper cables. No one else is allowed to go in and repair the cables. Consequently, if someone figures out a cheaper way to distribute phone service over cables, no one else is allowed to implement it. And frequently, the ILEC has no motivation for do it. The ILEC has a state granted monopoly on the rights to lay cables. The ILEC is required to *share* access to those cables, but they own them and no one else is allowed in.
And that's a problem, because new and more efficient methods have little or no chance to get implemented unless the ILECs agree with it. It doesn't matter if the customer demand is high, and a competitive business is willing to make a different profit margin than the ILEC. If the ILEC doesn't like it, nobody gets it. This problem is cleverly avoided by VoIP, since their service doesn't rely on laying cables. So yes, the VoIP providers compete with the ILECs on one level - they are a phone company. But they don't compete with them on another level - they do not run competitive cabling throughout the municipality. In fact, they're not legally allowed to compete with them on that level.
However, if you operate a PBX, you cannot sell a "PBX service" line to somebody else.
Really? There are tons of businesses that do just this. Go look into office leasing companies. They will sell you a room with a door, a lock, a desk, a chair, and (included in the price) a phone with your very own number that you get to advertise in the phone book as the number of your office. Or you can look at extended stay hotels which do basically the same thing (except for publishing the phone number). Or you can look at large brokerage firms that lease out access to their technical infrastructure (e.g. market data feeds, internet access, etc) to small brokers who need to have access to that stuff. And, of course, as part of the package you get a phone and you're very own number. The large brokerage firms lease out all of this stuff to their customers.
In each of the above cases, this is implemented using a PBX. Those phone lines are resold to customers without having any regulatory agencies coming down and criticizing the businesses for not charging tax or USF on those lines. Why? Because, of course, the tax and USF is already paid for by the business who owns the PBX and leases the trunks that plug into it. The rest of it goes over a seperate infrastructure that has absolutely nothing to do with the phone company.
In the case of VoIP, it's practically identical with a small difference. That difference being that the connections to the handsents go out over the internet. But even so, there are two possibilities for how those connections get from (e.g.) Vonage to the user:
The traffic travels the internet over the PSTN (e.g. DSL, T1, etc), for which USF and taxes are already collected, or
The traffic travels the internet over something other than the PSTN (e.g. cable modem, wireless, etc) for which there is NO justification for taxation and fee assessment like it's the PSTN. If the PUCs want to start taxing cable modem lines, that's a different story altogether. But as of now, they've been left alone - at least where I live (*).
In either case, applying a tax or assessing a USF fee Vonage (et al) is just inappropriate. Either because the money has already been collected, or because it's running over an infrastructure that isn't part of the PSTN and is outside the current taxation/governance of the PUCs. It's a much more compelling argument, to me, that we talk about regulating and charging USF on cable modems, because in that case we're talking about taxing something that (just like the phone company) has a natural monopoly. There, I can see justification for applying a tax. But not at the VoIP level. That's just data. And once we start deciding to tax data, we're going to get into a situation where we have to decide what data does and doesn't get taxed. And more importantly, we have to figure out a mechanism for monitoring all of the taxable data types. IMHO, this is not effective.
(*) Ironically, my state is getting sued by DirecTV and Echostar due to the fact that they do NOT assess tax on cable companies. They argue that the taxes that are assessed on DBS TV systems (Dish & DirecTV) is discrimantory.
Vonage is trying to claim they're not a phone company, yet advertising themselves as "The Broadband Phone Company."
Vonage very much *is* a phone company. But we don't regulate phone companies just because they're phone companies. We regulate them because they've been given exclusive use of something that belongs to the public: physical access to public lands to lay cable (in the case of local & LD providers) or spectrum (in the case of cellular providers). In return for that exclusive access, they are required to maintain certain standards as a consequence of the grant of their monopoly. But in the case of VoIP, there is no public resource that VoIP providers are given exclusive access to which justifies the need for regulation or sta
Ok. So when a company gets themselves a PBX and connects 100 seperate lines to it for their employees, they should, by your argument, not only pay the USF and regulatory fees for the trunk that they plug into their PBX, but also for every single line that they extend to their employees? If not, can you explain how it's different with VoIP? Vonage (et al) already pay USF on the lines that are connecting them to the PSTN. They then, just like a PBX, extend those lines further.
If you feel justified in taxing/regulating VoIP, then you probably need to also tax every corporation with a PBX or phone switch. I don't really think that's going to happen. I don't really think it should.
If the regulatory fees assume a particular level of technology in order to be relevant, then that's indication that the regulation was short sighted. Continuing to enforce such a regulation can only create problems down the road. Especially when innovative new technology skirts the need for those regulations. The impact will be to hold our country at a particular level of technology and enslave us all to it's inefficiencies. Or put another way, if VoIP is saddled with taxes and regulations that were designed for a LEC, and those regulations prevent VoIP from being utilized, the impact will be to kill a cost effective and in demand technology and empower the incumbant technology. Why would anyone ever switch? Which means that we'll effectively saddle ourselves, as a country, to a less efficient technology with no real hope of getting off of it since the precedent for killing competitors will have been set.
The reality is that VoIP is a better mouse trap. It's smarter. It's more efficient. It's not a monopoly. We should NOT apply taxes and regulations to it that were designed for a completely different technology.
The VOIP in these cases are companies that tie into real telephone networks.
As I've said in another post, the lines that connect VoIP to the PSTN are already regulated and taxed. That tax is paid for by the company who leases access to those lines. This situation is EXACTLY the same as a company who owns a PBX that connects out to the rest of the PSTN. The company is not required to tax every line that they plug into their PBX, only on the line that connects them to the PSTN.
How is this situation different than VoIP? So far as I'm aware, Vonage (et al) already pay taxes on the lines that connect their network to the PSTN. So why should vonage customers pay taxes that are already being paid?
A call originating on IP eventually meets up with the Plain Old Telephone System, wherein any number of regulations apply.
Correct. And the line(s) that connect VoIP to the PSTN are already regulated and taxed. Why should it be taxed twice when shared access to the line is resold to me?
Or think of it this way. My company has a PBX. My company pays the regulatory fees and taxes on the T1 that gets piped into the PBX. They then turn around and run lines out of the PBX to all of our desks. Should my company be paying taxes on all of the lines that they run to all of the desks? If not, why is this situation any different than VoIP?
True, but there are certain freedoms, the exercise of which, are considered to be unreasonable. So much so that we've created laws forbidding it. For example, we have laws in the US that forbid you from hiring based on race, religion, sex, etc. You may very well beleive that one race or another is inferior to the race you'd like to hire, but you're not allowed to exercise that freedom because we (collectively as a nation) have said it's not fair. So if you want to be an employer in this country, you can't exercise a freedom you might very much like to exercise.
Well, what's being said in this particular case is that it's completely unreasonable for a security company, who's job it is to identify and address security concerns, to fire an employee for doing just that. If Geer had said something untruthful, or done something contradictory to the purpose of the company, then you could argue that he's got it coming. But he did none of that. He, in fact, was furthering the explicit purpose of the company by what he did. To be fired over that should be considered an exercise of fraud by the company. When a company claims to provide objective security analysis and then fires an employee for doing that, the claims really ought to be brought into question. Perhaps fraud is taking it too far, but wrongful termination might not be.
What? I don't recall that being described back when I took Macro Econ in college. The primary role the government plays in money is as the official issuer of it. The value of money is set by every individual who makes a transaction. Which is why I might consider a $300k house to be expensive in Charlotte but inexpensive in Boston.
Moreover, American money has value outside of the US. Those people don't pay taxes into our government and still our money has value to them. Yes, that confidence in our money is a result of our stable economy. And yes, the government plays a huge role in maintaining that stability. But mostly people assign a value to money based on their own assessment. The government does not, nor do we need it to, assign a value to our money. It has value because we all give it value.
The government has a number of influences on the economy. But, by far, the biggest influence is the amount of spending that the government does. This puts an enormous amount of money into the economy. But this money can be put into the economy in drmatically more efficient way: by not taking it out of the economy in the first place.
Oh sure it is! All I have to do to get rid of that service is to get rid of my phone service altogether. When I no longer have dialtone from the telco, I also no longer have 911 service.
So, why is 911 a voluntary decision in one case (no phone service at all), but involuntary in the other (no phone service from a LEC)? If 911 is involuntary, then it should be a tax collected by the state, and the telco should be required to provide dialtone to every house, no matter their ability to pay. But it doesn't work that way. 911 only works if you're paying for phone service from the telco.
Until 911 is non-voluntary across the board, it is (by definition) voluntary. And as such, it should be completely within my own discretion to opt out on a service by service basis.
Here's the problem, not being able to partispate in E911 is not an excuse that should get you out of paying for the 911 services... it's a reason why you should be charging your customers a much higher "E911 compliance fee" because you're going to be spending a lot of money getting your system into compliance.
How exactly a company bills its customers is a business decision for that company. It's not up to the government to legislate that decision. Its also a business decision for a company if they decide NOT to become compliant, at which point it becomes the consumer's decision as to what services he/she wants to live with/without. So long as every customer is NOT MISLED about the differences, then no harm is being done by that company. I think Vonage is doing a good job of making its customers aware of the difference between their 911 service and what's provided by a local telco.
Vonage is not as reliable as traditional phone service in such emergency communicaton situations, but some people are declaring that Vonage is good enough for them and they are canceling their traditional phone service.
On this I agree.
This is an erosion in our communication infrastructre that we should not allow to grab hold.
On this, I disagree. It's not an erosion in our communication infrastructure. It's a value judgement on the part of each individual consumer. It's no more an erosion of the internet if everyone who has broadband decides that the price isn't worth it and switches back to dialup. That's an individual choice for what's good enough for the consumer. And the government has no business legislating it, even if the 911 service was built on the assumption that it would forever be sustained through an easily taxable monopoly. That just means that the assumption was poor, and we can criticize those who made it. But to punish innovation because of someone else's bad assumption is not appropriate in our society, and generally speaking I don't think it should be appropriate in any society.
Destruction of the E911 system we have spent so much money creating.
That VoIP doesn't participate fully in the 911 system does not mean that they're destroying it. While you're right that Vonage does offer a 911-type service, it's NOT the same thing. If any VoIP service ever offers the exact same 911 services that traditional telcos provide (including priority call routing to the emergency call center - not to the call center's regular phone) then I would agree with you that they should be required to provide the same location services and then pay for access to those services. But AFAIK, Vonage is the only one who offers anything like this, and they are very clear in their descriptions that it is NOT the same thing. So since Vonage is not using the same 911 service, one should not expect them to have to pay for it!
Until VoIP providers are fully participatory in the 911 services, they need to remain completely clear that these things are not the same, so that their customers can make informed decisions as to the value proposition: pay for a telephone service which provides full 911 services, or pay less but run the risk of not having full access to 911.
Refusal to comply with universal service
Universal service is required of traditional telcos because they've been granted a monopoly on the wire running to the house! Of course they're going to be required to provide universal service! If they don't provide the wires to schools or the poor, no one else is legally allowed to do it! VoIP providers have no state enforced monopoly,
and should not be regulated as if they did.
IMHO, you haven't yet justified why all VoIP should be taxed like a phone company. You've provided possible justification for taxing 911 services as soon as they become available to VoIP users.
Uhm, no. Telcos are in part regulated because of their monopoly status, but celluar companies also have to comply with similar regulations and they aren't a monopoly. See, in many industries there are laws that require that the goods or services they provide must be of a minimum quality in order to be legal. You can't sell tobacco products without a warning label. You can't serve uncooked meat at a restaurant. If you're gonna provide phone service. You've gotta give very special treatment to the 911 system. Those are the kind pesky regulations that Vonage needs to get itself into compliance with.
With the exception of the celluar industry, in every example you provide the industry is regulated due to a threat of harm to society. With the cellular industry the justification goes something like this: those unsightly cell towers that you have to install everywhere are an eyesore. Pay us taxes in order to alleviate our having to suffer your ugly towers. In the case of the telco's the threat of harm stems from their monopoly. Can you name a single industry that is regulated "just because"? Can you name the threat of harm that VoIP poses to society that justifies its regulation?
Phone service is taxed because, uhm, well, nearly everything is taxed. What the states are affraid of is that Vonage and similar companies will be able to wipe out the telco industry, and therefore wipe out the tax base that industry provides. If they do, the states want to be able to replace such taxes with equal taxes against Vonage's services...
I understand what the states want. But I want 2 million dollars so that I no longer have to worry about my financial independance. Just because the states want something does not justify thier getting it. If VoIP wipes out the tax basis provided by the telcos the state has to come up with some sort of justification for taxing Vonage. The justification can not possibly be the same justification used to tax and regulate traditional telcos who were granted a state enforced monopoly. It's fine to tax VoIP if justification can be provided. But so far I see none.
And frankly I think that the US Congress was well aware of VoIP when they wrote the bill that just got through the House. They want to encourage more and more businesses to use the Internet as a tax-free haven, in order to expand its usage and, consequently, create more technology jobs! Vonage and VoIP aside, this is a bill that every single geek in the US should be supporting, regardless of party affiliation. That it also sticks a jab in the entrenched telcos doesn't hurt my feelings at all.
Some want to write an exception clause in this new bill so that VoIP will still be taxable. The end result of this is that it will deplete any viable business for VoIP. And hence any of the jobs that were created to support a truly innovative technology will disappear. If this exemption is given, what's the next cool cost effective technology that won't get developed or deployed for fear of falling into this exact same problem? If you build a better mouse trap, more cost effectively, you SHOULD not be saddled with having to worry about how the state is going to maintain it's tax basis. That's the state's problem.
Hooray to the US Congress for having some forsight. Hooray to the US Congress for encouraging technological developement. IMHO, all US geeks should be supporting this bill.
Why does VoIP's phone service deserve an exemption?
I think you're asking the wrong question. Traditional telcos are regulated and taxed the way that they are due to the fact that they've been granted a monopoly on the last mile to a house. So really the question is this: In a free society, by what justification do you think a non-monopoly should be regulated exactly the same as a state enforced monopoly? I don't think there is any justification and until some is provided, VoIP providers should be free to do their thing without regulation.
I expound on this more in a journal entry that I wrote just yesterday. It's got comments enabled... so please comment.
What always seems to be forgotten in this equation is the reason for the local telephone companies being regulated and thus being charged regulatory fees. The local ILEC has been granted a monopoly, and in an effort to protect consumers from monopoly abuse, that monopoly is regulated. So certain requirements are made of the ILEC: universal service, number portability, etc. Why is the ILEC granted a monopoly? Well because the only alternative is to allow almost anyone to run wires to your house. Before regulation, this created a HUGE mess. So we have regulation.
In what way are VoIP providers like that? In what way does the situation with VoIP providers require the same type of regulation as a state enforced monopoly?
Companies should NOT be regulated because of the product they produce. They should be regulated based on their ability to harm society. In the case of the local telco, a monopoly is harmful to society. What harm to society do you see that VoIP inflicting that justifies regulation? You see it's not that they're a phone company that justifies regulation. It's that the traditional phone companies have a state granted monopoly that justifies regulation. That justification does NOT exist with Vonage or Packet8 or any other VoIP provider.
Ok. To sum up: you don't like the article. You think there's a better article. Fine. That's not my point. My point is that the guess of something being a myth is just a guess until subtantiated with evidence. And that guess may be a reasonable guess until it comes into opposition with the testimony of an eye witness, at which point the guess is exposed for what it is: a guess.
And as far as what Courtney says in that speech, she says that she's a service provider who works on tips. And that napster is an effecient distribution mechanism for getting her closer to her audience. Who, when comparing the sound quality of an MP3 with what she can provide them, will choose to leave her a tip in order to get the better quality. She's NOT afraid of napster. She's rallying against the real pirates: the RIAA who, not only have taken her songs without paying her for them, but they're making an enormous profit off of that theft.
What? So basically you're saying that the anecdotal evidence being the ONLY evidence is insufficient? If there were evidence to the contrary, I'd agree with you. But without any evidence to the contrary, the eye witness evidence trumps your hypothesis. No matter how well educated of a guess it is, it's still a guess. When it doesn't match the eye witness account of someone who's been in the system, then you have to throw your guess out.
And to that end I provide for you the eye witness account of a musician who's been part of the RIAA: Courtney Love
As an embarrased Linux zealot who uses Microsoft Money to manage his budget, it's nice to see that I'm finally going to get some benefit out of it to pay for all of the humiliation that I've had to take because I actually like that piece of software.
So how do you like me now? I got a street legal Porsche coming to me! HAH! No more embarrassment for me. Soon as I get that Porsche in my driveway I can hang my head high. Yessiree. Just waiting for the Porsche. Soon as I read this article and figure out how to pick mine up.
I don't understand how the set top box being open source is supposed to have anything to do with piracy. Piracy is the theft of information. Every company in the world is worried about the theft of their information. The fact that they use open source software does not impact that. What impacts that is how well they secure that software and protect the information that they don't want stolen.
For the case of the cable company the issue is this: get the encryption done correctly, and it won't matter if the software processing the encrypted stream is open source or proprietary. What will matter is if the end user has the right key. Which, presumably, will be distributed on a tamper-resistant smart card which is programmed not to release the key.
Perhaps it's just an accident on your part, but you seem to be suggesting that there's some sort of implicit relationship between open source software and piracy. If it's an accident, then ok. But if you really believe such a relationship exists, you need to back it up because I don't seen any such relationship.
Yes, true. But by indicting Roper, and juxtaposing his position as following God, with More's position of following man, it identifies Roper with Christianity. IMHO, it's an indirect indictment of Christianity. Unfortunately, it's indicting a strawman version of Christianity, not the real thing. The real thing, I think, stands up much more strongly.
I think you have some good thoughts, although I don't agree with them. I like them because you're clearly thinking about this stuff, and I think that puts you one step ahead of most of the world which doesn't seem willing to look very deeply for other meaning.
However, as I said, I don't agree with all of your conclusions. In particular, I don't agree with you when you say that God and the Devil are one in truth. This is a very eastern philosophy that is frequently described as Yin & Yang. I would love to take a huge amount of/. database space and expound on the problems with that particular philosophy, but I'd rather refer you to someone who does a *MUCH* better job than I could.
I strongly encourage you to read "Mere Christianity" by CS Lewis. It's an absolutely stellar description of what Christians believe. And the best part is that Lewis is not expecting his readers (as non-believers) to believe him. He's simply laying out what Christianity teaches. You're free to believe it or not as you see fit. Here's a quote (somewhat out of context) that expresses this:
I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of the evidence is against it.
So, anyway, I recommend you read that book. You're also welcome to hit me in email if you want to discuss this more.
Ironically, Roper is not a very good Christian when he says that he would tear down all man's law in order to get to the Devil. Christianity upholds man's authority to have been ultimately ordained by God, and therefore, a good Christian *must* follow man's authority.
Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience. This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, who give their full time to governing.
- Romans 13:1-6
When Roper says that he'd cut down every law in Englend, he's actually being disobedient to God's law. So while this particular quote from the play indicts the common misperception of Christianity, real Christianity supports the same behavior More upholds.
NOTE: The above Bible passage is often misinterpreted to suggest that it empowers tyrants, etc. For example, some would say that the citizens of Nazi Germany were required, by the Bible, to support Nazi-ism. But that ignores a rather large, and obvious fact of life: Just because God ordains a person to a position, does not prevent that person from abusing their position or using their position improperly. God does not condone any authority that contradicts His own. So if you are trying to determine whether or not you should obey man's authority, the answer is yes, unless it contradicts God's laws as described in the Bible. If you're confused as to what those are, here's a good start.
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In the case of the phone companies, the only justification that I'm aware of for taxing them is that they're a monopoly. If the situation were different and did not lend itself to the monopolized environment that we currently have, we simply would not *need* any governing agency to fund. Competition, all by itself, will fill demand. Need stable service, someone who comes up with an idea will provide it. Need E911 service, competition will figure out a way to provide it.
But that's not the situation we're in. We've got a monopoly on the cables. And rightly so. The alternative is too messy. *BUT* in lieu of competition to ensure that the provider is reasonable, we need a governing body to govern the monopoly, and that governing body needs funds. Lose the monopoly and you lose the need for the body to govern it. Lose the body, and it no longer needs funding.
The thing that the phone company has a monopoly on is the cables. I don't really understand why you would dispute this. Every CLEC in the country knows who owns the cables and who's been granted monopoly ownership of the right to lay cables in a particular municipality. No one else is allowed to lay cheaper cables. No one else is allowed to go in and repair the cables. Consequently, if someone figures out a cheaper way to distribute phone service over cables, no one else is allowed to implement it. And frequently, the ILEC has no motivation for do it. The ILEC has a state granted monopoly on the rights to lay cables. The ILEC is required to *share* access to those cables, but they own them and no one else is allowed in.
And that's a problem, because new and more efficient methods have little or no chance to get implemented unless the ILECs agree with it. It doesn't matter if the customer demand is high, and a competitive business is willing to make a different profit margin than the ILEC. If the ILEC doesn't like it, nobody gets it. This problem is cleverly avoided by VoIP, since their service doesn't rely on laying cables. So yes, the VoIP providers compete with the ILECs on one level - they are a phone company. But they don't compete with them on another level - they do not run competitive cabling throughout the municipality. In fact, they're not legally allowed to compete with them on that level.
Really? There are tons of businesses that do just this. Go look into office leasing companies. They will sell you a room with a door, a lock, a desk, a chair, and (included in the price) a phone with your very own number that you get to advertise in the phone book as the number of your office. Or you can look at extended stay hotels which do basically the same thing (except for publishing the phone number). Or you can look at large brokerage firms that lease out access to their technical infrastructure (e.g. market data feeds, internet access, etc) to small brokers who need to have access to that stuff. And, of course, as part of the package you get a phone and you're very own number. The large brokerage firms lease out all of this stuff to their customers.
In each of the above cases, this is implemented using a PBX. Those phone lines are resold to customers without having any regulatory agencies coming down and criticizing the businesses for not charging tax or USF on those lines. Why? Because, of course, the tax and USF is already paid for by the business who owns the PBX and leases the trunks that plug into it. The rest of it goes over a seperate infrastructure that has absolutely nothing to do with the phone company.
In the case of VoIP, it's practically identical with a small difference. That difference being that the connections to the handsents go out over the internet. But even so, there are two possibilities for how those connections get from (e.g.) Vonage to the user:
In either case, applying a tax or assessing a USF fee Vonage (et al) is just inappropriate. Either because the money has already been collected, or because it's running over an infrastructure that isn't part of the PSTN and is outside the current taxation/governance of the PUCs. It's a much more compelling argument, to me, that we talk about regulating and charging USF on cable modems, because in that case we're talking about taxing something that (just like the phone company) has a natural monopoly. There, I can see justification for applying a tax. But not at the VoIP level. That's just data. And once we start deciding to tax data, we're going to get into a situation where we have to decide what data does and doesn't get taxed. And more importantly, we have to figure out a mechanism for monitoring all of the taxable data types. IMHO, this is not effective.
(*) Ironically, my state is getting sued by DirecTV and Echostar due to the fact that they do NOT assess tax on cable companies. They argue that the taxes that are assessed on DBS TV systems (Dish & DirecTV) is discrimantory.
Vonage very much *is* a phone company. But we don't regulate phone companies just because they're phone companies. We regulate them because they've been given exclusive use of something that belongs to the public: physical access to public lands to lay cable (in the case of local & LD providers) or spectrum (in the case of cellular providers). In return for that exclusive access, they are required to maintain certain standards as a consequence of the grant of their monopoly. But in the case of VoIP, there is no public resource that VoIP providers are given exclusive access to which justifies the need for regulation or sta
Ok. So when a company gets themselves a PBX and connects 100 seperate lines to it for their employees, they should, by your argument, not only pay the USF and regulatory fees for the trunk that they plug into their PBX, but also for every single line that they extend to their employees? If not, can you explain how it's different with VoIP? Vonage (et al) already pay USF on the lines that are connecting them to the PSTN. They then, just like a PBX, extend those lines further.
If you feel justified in taxing/regulating VoIP, then you probably need to also tax every corporation with a PBX or phone switch. I don't really think that's going to happen. I don't really think it should.
If the regulatory fees assume a particular level of technology in order to be relevant, then that's indication that the regulation was short sighted. Continuing to enforce such a regulation can only create problems down the road. Especially when innovative new technology skirts the need for those regulations. The impact will be to hold our country at a particular level of technology and enslave us all to it's inefficiencies. Or put another way, if VoIP is saddled with taxes and regulations that were designed for a LEC, and those regulations prevent VoIP from being utilized, the impact will be to kill a cost effective and in demand technology and empower the incumbant technology. Why would anyone ever switch? Which means that we'll effectively saddle ourselves, as a country, to a less efficient technology with no real hope of getting off of it since the precedent for killing competitors will have been set.
The reality is that VoIP is a better mouse trap. It's smarter. It's more efficient. It's not a monopoly. We should NOT apply taxes and regulations to it that were designed for a completely different technology.
Rather than repeat what's already been said, I'll simply ask you again to explain how the situation with VoIP is different than a company with a PBX?
How is this situation different than VoIP? So far as I'm aware, Vonage (et al) already pay taxes on the lines that connect their network to the PSTN. So why should vonage customers pay taxes that are already being paid?
Or think of it this way. My company has a PBX. My company pays the regulatory fees and taxes on the T1 that gets piped into the PBX. They then turn around and run lines out of the PBX to all of our desks. Should my company be paying taxes on all of the lines that they run to all of the desks? If not, why is this situation any different than VoIP?
True, but there are certain freedoms, the exercise of which, are considered to be unreasonable. So much so that we've created laws forbidding it. For example, we have laws in the US that forbid you from hiring based on race, religion, sex, etc. You may very well beleive that one race or another is inferior to the race you'd like to hire, but you're not allowed to exercise that freedom because we (collectively as a nation) have said it's not fair. So if you want to be an employer in this country, you can't exercise a freedom you might very much like to exercise.
Well, what's being said in this particular case is that it's completely unreasonable for a security company, who's job it is to identify and address security concerns, to fire an employee for doing just that. If Geer had said something untruthful, or done something contradictory to the purpose of the company, then you could argue that he's got it coming. But he did none of that. He, in fact, was furthering the explicit purpose of the company by what he did. To be fired over that should be considered an exercise of fraud by the company. When a company claims to provide objective security analysis and then fires an employee for doing that, the claims really ought to be brought into question. Perhaps fraud is taking it too far, but wrongful termination might not be.
Moreover, American money has value outside of the US. Those people don't pay taxes into our government and still our money has value to them. Yes, that confidence in our money is a result of our stable economy. And yes, the government plays a huge role in maintaining that stability. But mostly people assign a value to money based on their own assessment. The government does not, nor do we need it to, assign a value to our money. It has value because we all give it value.
The government has a number of influences on the economy. But, by far, the biggest influence is the amount of spending that the government does. This puts an enormous amount of money into the economy. But this money can be put into the economy in drmatically more efficient way: by not taking it out of the economy in the first place.
Dan Geer's name was pretty well respected before this. Somehow I suspect that all of this publicity will not leave him unemployed for long.
Oh sure it is! All I have to do to get rid of that service is to get rid of my phone service altogether. When I no longer have dialtone from the telco, I also no longer have 911 service.
So, why is 911 a voluntary decision in one case (no phone service at all), but involuntary in the other (no phone service from a LEC)? If 911 is involuntary, then it should be a tax collected by the state, and the telco should be required to provide dialtone to every house, no matter their ability to pay. But it doesn't work that way. 911 only works if you're paying for phone service from the telco.
Until 911 is non-voluntary across the board, it is (by definition) voluntary. And as such, it should be completely within my own discretion to opt out on a service by service basis.
How exactly a company bills its customers is a business decision for that company. It's not up to the government to legislate that decision. Its also a business decision for a company if they decide NOT to become compliant, at which point it becomes the consumer's decision as to what services he/she wants to live with/without. So long as every customer is NOT MISLED about the differences, then no harm is being done by that company. I think Vonage is doing a good job of making its customers aware of the difference between their 911 service and what's provided by a local telco.
On this I agree.
On this, I disagree. It's not an erosion in our communication infrastructure. It's a value judgement on the part of each individual consumer. It's no more an erosion of the internet if everyone who has broadband decides that the price isn't worth it and switches back to dialup. That's an individual choice for what's good enough for the consumer. And the government has no business legislating it, even if the 911 service was built on the assumption that it would forever be sustained through an easily taxable monopoly. That just means that the assumption was poor, and we can criticize those who made it. But to punish innovation because of someone else's bad assumption is not appropriate in our society, and generally speaking I don't think it should be appropriate in any society.
That VoIP doesn't participate fully in the 911 system does not mean that they're destroying it. While you're right that Vonage does offer a 911-type service, it's NOT the same thing. If any VoIP service ever offers the exact same 911 services that traditional telcos provide (including priority call routing to the emergency call center - not to the call center's regular phone) then I would agree with you that they should be required to provide the same location services and then pay for access to those services. But AFAIK, Vonage is the only one who offers anything like this, and they are very clear in their descriptions that it is NOT the same thing. So since Vonage is not using the same 911 service, one should not expect them to have to pay for it!
Until VoIP providers are fully participatory in the 911 services, they need to remain completely clear that these things are not the same, so that their customers can make informed decisions as to the value proposition: pay for a telephone service which provides full 911 services, or pay less but run the risk of not having full access to 911.
Universal service is required of traditional telcos because they've been granted a monopoly on the wire running to the house! Of course they're going to be required to provide universal service! If they don't provide the wires to schools or the poor, no one else is legally allowed to do it! VoIP providers have no state enforced monopoly, and should not be regulated as if they did.
IMHO, you haven't yet justified why all VoIP should be taxed like a phone company. You've provided possible justification for taxing 911 services as soon as they become available to VoIP users.
With the exception of the celluar industry, in every example you provide the industry is regulated due to a threat of harm to society. With the cellular industry the justification goes something like this: those unsightly cell towers that you have to install everywhere are an eyesore. Pay us taxes in order to alleviate our having to suffer your ugly towers. In the case of the telco's the threat of harm stems from their monopoly. Can you name a single industry that is regulated "just because"? Can you name the threat of harm that VoIP poses to society that justifies its regulation?
I understand what the states want. But I want 2 million dollars so that I no longer have to worry about my financial independance. Just because the states want something does not justify thier getting it. If VoIP wipes out the tax basis provided by the telcos the state has to come up with some sort of justification for taxing Vonage. The justification can not possibly be the same justification used to tax and regulate traditional telcos who were granted a state enforced monopoly. It's fine to tax VoIP if justification can be provided. But so far I see none.
And frankly I think that the US Congress was well aware of VoIP when they wrote the bill that just got through the House. They want to encourage more and more businesses to use the Internet as a tax-free haven, in order to expand its usage and, consequently, create more technology jobs! Vonage and VoIP aside, this is a bill that every single geek in the US should be supporting, regardless of party affiliation. That it also sticks a jab in the entrenched telcos doesn't hurt my feelings at all.
Some want to write an exception clause in this new bill so that VoIP will still be taxable. The end result of this is that it will deplete any viable business for VoIP. And hence any of the jobs that were created to support a truly innovative technology will disappear. If this exemption is given, what's the next cool cost effective technology that won't get developed or deployed for fear of falling into this exact same problem? If you build a better mouse trap, more cost effectively, you SHOULD not be saddled with having to worry about how the state is going to maintain it's tax basis. That's the state's problem.
Hooray to the US Congress for having some forsight. Hooray to the US Congress for encouraging technological developement. IMHO, all US geeks should be supporting this bill.
I think you're asking the wrong question. Traditional telcos are regulated and taxed the way that they are due to the fact that they've been granted a monopoly on the last mile to a house. So really the question is this: In a free society, by what justification do you think a non-monopoly should be regulated exactly the same as a state enforced monopoly? I don't think there is any justification and until some is provided, VoIP providers should be free to do their thing without regulation.
I expound on this more in a journal entry that I wrote just yesterday. It's got comments enabled... so please comment.
What always seems to be forgotten in this equation is the reason for the local telephone companies being regulated and thus being charged regulatory fees. The local ILEC has been granted a monopoly, and in an effort to protect consumers from monopoly abuse, that monopoly is regulated. So certain requirements are made of the ILEC: universal service, number portability, etc. Why is the ILEC granted a monopoly? Well because the only alternative is to allow almost anyone to run wires to your house. Before regulation, this created a HUGE mess. So we have regulation.
In what way are VoIP providers like that? In what way does the situation with VoIP providers require the same type of regulation as a state enforced monopoly?
Companies should NOT be regulated because of the product they produce. They should be regulated based on their ability to harm society. In the case of the local telco, a monopoly is harmful to society. What harm to society do you see that VoIP inflicting that justifies regulation? You see it's not that they're a phone company that justifies regulation. It's that the traditional phone companies have a state granted monopoly that justifies regulation. That justification does NOT exist with Vonage or Packet8 or any other VoIP provider.
Exactly. Enter $1000. You're still in the top 50% of the richest people in the world. But at that rate, you can't afford to eat anywhere in the US.
Ok. To sum up: you don't like the article. You think there's a better article. Fine. That's not my point. My point is that the guess of something being a myth is just a guess until subtantiated with evidence. And that guess may be a reasonable guess until it comes into opposition with the testimony of an eye witness, at which point the guess is exposed for what it is: a guess.
And as far as what Courtney says in that speech, she says that she's a service provider who works on tips. And that napster is an effecient distribution mechanism for getting her closer to her audience. Who, when comparing the sound quality of an MP3 with what she can provide them, will choose to leave her a tip in order to get the better quality. She's NOT afraid of napster. She's rallying against the real pirates: the RIAA who, not only have taken her songs without paying her for them, but they're making an enormous profit off of that theft.
What? So basically you're saying that the anecdotal evidence being the ONLY evidence is insufficient? If there were evidence to the contrary, I'd agree with you. But without any evidence to the contrary, the eye witness evidence trumps your hypothesis. No matter how well educated of a guess it is, it's still a guess. When it doesn't match the eye witness account of someone who's been in the system, then you have to throw your guess out.
And to that end I provide for you the eye witness account of a musician who's been part of the RIAA: Courtney Love
So how do you like me now? I got a street legal Porsche coming to me! HAH! No more embarrassment for me. Soon as I get that Porsche in my driveway I can hang my head high. Yessiree. Just waiting for the Porsche. Soon as I read this article and figure out how to pick mine up.
Nevermind
I don't understand how the set top box being open source is supposed to have anything to do with piracy. Piracy is the theft of information. Every company in the world is worried about the theft of their information. The fact that they use open source software does not impact that. What impacts that is how well they secure that software and protect the information that they don't want stolen.
For the case of the cable company the issue is this: get the encryption done correctly, and it won't matter if the software processing the encrypted stream is open source or proprietary. What will matter is if the end user has the right key. Which, presumably, will be distributed on a tamper-resistant smart card which is programmed not to release the key.
Perhaps it's just an accident on your part, but you seem to be suggesting that there's some sort of implicit relationship between open source software and piracy. If it's an accident, then ok. But if you really believe such a relationship exists, you need to back it up because I don't seen any such relationship.
Yes, true. But by indicting Roper, and juxtaposing his position as following God, with More's position of following man, it identifies Roper with Christianity. IMHO, it's an indirect indictment of Christianity. Unfortunately, it's indicting a strawman version of Christianity, not the real thing. The real thing, I think, stands up much more strongly.
However, as I said, I don't agree with all of your conclusions. In particular, I don't agree with you when you say that God and the Devil are one in truth. This is a very eastern philosophy that is frequently described as Yin & Yang. I would love to take a huge amount of /. database space and expound on the problems with that particular philosophy, but I'd rather refer you to someone who does a *MUCH* better job than I could.
I strongly encourage you to read "Mere Christianity" by CS Lewis. It's an absolutely stellar description of what Christians believe. And the best part is that Lewis is not expecting his readers (as non-believers) to believe him. He's simply laying out what Christianity teaches. You're free to believe it or not as you see fit. Here's a quote (somewhat out of context) that expresses this:
So, anyway, I recommend you read that book. You're also welcome to hit me in email if you want to discuss this more.When Roper says that he'd cut down every law in Englend, he's actually being disobedient to God's law. So while this particular quote from the play indicts the common misperception of Christianity, real Christianity supports the same behavior More upholds.
NOTE: The above Bible passage is often misinterpreted to suggest that it empowers tyrants, etc. For example, some would say that the citizens of Nazi Germany were required, by the Bible, to support Nazi-ism. But that ignores a rather large, and obvious fact of life: Just because God ordains a person to a position, does not prevent that person from abusing their position or using their position improperly. God does not condone any authority that contradicts His own. So if you are trying to determine whether or not you should obey man's authority, the answer is yes, unless it contradicts God's laws as described in the Bible. If you're confused as to what those are, here's a good start.
$.02.
Yes, but that's my problem isn't it? And considering that not all of my neighbors have broadband it seems a significantly unlikely scenario.