New Internet Infrastructure Coalition Reminds Us That Internet Infrastructure Goes Beyond Just Telcos
from the good-to-see dept
One of the more frustrating things in watching policy debates concerning the internet is the assumption that "internet infrastructure" means the telcos (and, to some extent, the cablecos). There are a lot of other players who really build the nuts and bolts of the internet, and their views do not always match with AT&T's and Verizon's. So it's great to see the launch of a new trade group, called the Internet Infrastructure Coalition, made up a bunch of those "other guys." That includes web hosting firms, domain registrars, and tool providers for those infrastructure providers (like cpanel). The coalition came together out of a group of companies like this who helped fight against SOPA and PIPA, knowing that such laws were bad for infrastructure providers (AT&T and Verizon, in the meantime, remained mostly quiet on SOPA and PIPA). At the very least, having these players stand up and speak out about how the internet infrastructure is made up of a bunch of players beyond the big telcos would be good. Too often those guys drive the discussion, often at the expense of other important players...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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Filed Under: infrastructure, innovation, policy, trade associations
Companies: i2 coalition, internet infrastructure coalition
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Mike, why don't you call them out on their made up numbers and slippery "direct and indirect" logic?
Oh wait, you support them, so you won't question them.
Carry on!
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Oh, wait, that would require work and critical thinking!
Carry on!
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You don't care about one sided stuff? You don't feel like perhaps you are being a little mislead around here?
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In the UK, for example, British Telecom is the sole provider of backbone infrastructure: however, as part of the funding of the expansion, it will be made to allow others on for the cost of providing the backbone plus pennies on the Gigabyte.
And for what it's worth, I also heavily disagree on using indirect contributions to the economy.
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But Mike was talking about the jobs that the Internet creates. Think of how many jobs would be affected if you just killed off Softlayer, UK2, RackSpace and ServInt... that number would be hard to calculate, but it would be ridiculously high if what affected them affected all hosted service providers, which is what this coalition aims to work against--laws and policies that are damaging to the Internet's SMBs.
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...
Oh wait! It wasn't!
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No, I am not missing the point. Rather, I am doing exactly what Mike does when "the other side" puts out a report, makes statements, or forms a group like this. I am ignoring the valid points and information, and I am going right to the place where there puff up their importance and pointing at it.
In Mike's world, this is more than enough to discredit the entire organization and it's goals, because clearly if they cannot figure out their own worth in the economy in a manner that passes Mike's personal test, then they are clearly full of it.
See, it really, really sucks ass when Mike's standards are applied evenly. Suddenly both sides of the discussion appear to be full of shit.
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