Net Neutrality Debate Again Descends Into Shouting, Farce
from the par-for-the-course dept
Net neutrality is a complex issue, but as tends to happen with most things these days, it gets boiled down into easily consumable, though not wholly accurate, ideological soundbites from both sides. And even when people try to have an open, even-keeled discourse about the issue, they still run into problems explaining things well. For the most part, debate on net neutrality has glossed over the fundamental, but perhaps less incendiary issues, and been characterized by intellectual dishonesty and propagandizing from activist groups on both sides. It was hardly surprising, then, to read about a panel at the Supernova conference descending into a shouting match between a Commerce Department official (ie the "anti-regulation" guy) and "pro-net neutrality" supporters in the audience. Really, it's an apt characterization of the whole debate: a bunch of yelling, very little exchange of useful information, and nobody really moves from their previously established ideology. All this means is that, in the end, it's very unlikely for the right, or even a good, solution to emerge. Instead, it will just come down to whichever side can muster the most political clout -- which is pretty much how things have gone in telecom regulation anyway.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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??
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Need more discussion here IF...
We do think, but it's up to the people to decide on a consensus. Post up at WeThePeopleThink.com for more on the subject.
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The problem is that political clout has become a function of money, rather than votes. It's much too difficult to replace an incumbent elected politician - also a function of money. Just listen to the news reporting about elections - it's all about the money.
Out goes legislation for the common good - in comes legislation for big money interests.
"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power."
Franklin D. Roosevelt
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impasse
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Common carrier
The bandwidth providers are local monopolies or duopolies and should be treated as common carriers - that is, they should be forced to set a transparent, fixed, pricing formula available to all which does not discriminate. If guaranteed low latency is part of the formula then so be it. Average power, peak power and power guarantees are all accepted elements in pricing for electricity and can be a basis for charging for bandwidth.
Google, eBay and Amazon appear to be the real targets of the carriers but those businesses do not have a high bandwidth to commercial value ratio, or a critical need for low latency, compared to, say, YouTube, Second Life, World of WarCraft or music sharing. The other possibility is that the real agenda of the telecoms is to discriminate against VOIP to the extent that VOIP is destroyed.
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Re: Common carrier
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It's about antitrust not NN
The issue of Neutrality is a symptom of the problem but not the problem itself. The problem is that we have a chimera called Telecom.
Easier to point to writings including First Square Mile and FTC Broadband Competition NOT. The basic problem is that telecom isn't a marketplace so you can't expect the marketplace to solve it but neither should we repeat the imposed solutions as in 1934.
Once we recognize that there is not really a telecom industry -- just transports controlled by privileged service provides the solution is obvious -- don't do that. The transport is like roads (but without the physical encumbrances) and it is not a profit center -- it's infrastructure. We must not give it all to privileged service providers who are allowed to take what they can in return for giving us a trivial amount of “free” “Internet” while preventing us from creating our own solutions. Assuring Scarcity demonstrates that they industry knows that they are acting to restrain trade and they do it because they would not exist if we had a real marketplace.
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Alternatives
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More than just big monopolies...
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Re: More than just big monopolies...
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Re: Re: More than just big monopolies...
What if Embarq decided that WebMD was not paying them enough?
Roadrunner concluded that suddenly decides that instead dealing with the possibility of being held liable for youtube uploads they just block it altogether?
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Re: Re: Re: More than just big monopolies...
Neutrality will help the little guy because then Microsoft can't pay $200,000 to roadrunner to get their website priority while degrading the connection to JoeSchmo.com (Not intentional by Microsoft but a likely outcome none the less.)
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Free Lunch
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