Net Neutrality
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One of the stories clogging my RSS feeds this morning was the court overturning the FCC's net neutrality stance. Let me first say that I have not studied this matter and don't know what the facts are on either side of the street. What I do know is that it caused the Internet to gnaw on its own ankle for the better part of the morning. So here's my question. Although I'm in favor of net neutrality conceptually, from a more pragmatic perspective it seems to me that the wires I get to use in order to interact with the Internet, at least in America, belong to companies. I get to use them because I pay them for the service, but it's their choice what service to provide and how much to charge. They bought the materials and paid to have them installed. Unless the government decides to take over an industry and seize the companies' assets, does it really have the right to tell a given company what it can do with the wires that it owns? Sure, it would be nice if we lived in a world where everyone played fair, and I'm in favor of such an idealized landscape. That said, telling a company how to run its business strikes me as unfair to the company. It's a complex issue with many points of view (and I have no interest in discussing partisan politics of any kind), but I was thinking about that this morning. The Internet howls that this is a travesty, but it seems to me that it's not really that simple. Was just wondering if I'm alone in considering how sovereign the property of a company is, as well as its business practices (providing it doesn't break any laws).
Christopher Duncan Author of Unite the Tribes: Leadership Skills for Technology Managers Have Fun, Get Paid: How to Make a Living with Your Creativity The Career Programmer
Christopher Duncan wrote:
how sovereign the property of a company is, as well as its business practices (providing it doesn't break any laws).
Christopher Duncan wrote:
telling a company how to run its business strikes me as unfair to the company.
And therein lies the paradox. The government (supposedly) enacts laws to protect the general population. Let's say you and I were the only makers of corn flakes (and let's assume the public needs to eat corn flakes in order to survive). Assuming a box of cereal cost $1.50 to manufacture and ship, we could privately agree to sell a box of cereal for no less than $5.50. This would ensure we rake in a very healthy profit, without incurring the wrath of the public who has no idea it really costs only $1.50 to make a box of the stuff. The FTC has laws against price fixing and collusion by manufacturers of products to prevent exactly this kind of thing from happening, ostensibly to protect the average Joe. For this reason, even though you and I may feel the government shouldn't interfere with the way we do business, we would be breaking the law. This is obviously an extremely simplistic example.
- Deregulation of services in the 80s was intended to give more freedom (and therefore theoretically increase healthy competition) between providers of services, by reducing the influence of government in overseeing pricing.
- On the flip side (and more recently), Apple has balked at the feds for appointing Mike Bromwich to investigate allegations of the company's alleged violation of anti-trust laws. Apple's management feels Bromwich is interfering with the company's day-to-day operations by requiring that he be permitted to conduct lengthy meetings with their top brass on an ongoing basis.
/ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
how sovereign the property of a company is, as well as its business practices (providing it doesn't break any laws).
Christopher Duncan wrote:
telling a company how to run its business strikes me as unfair to the company.
And therein lies the paradox. The government (supposedly) enacts laws to protect the general population. Let's say you and I were the only makers of corn flakes (and let's assume the public needs to eat corn flakes in order to survive). Assuming a box of cereal cost $1.50 to manufacture and ship, we could privately agree to sell a box of cereal for no less than $5.50. This would ensure we rake in a very healthy profit, without incurring the wrath of the public who has no idea it really costs only $1.50 to make a box of the stuff. The FTC has laws against price fixing and collusion by manufacturers of products to prevent exactly this kind of thing from happening, ostensibly to protect the average Joe. For this reason, even though you and I may feel the government shouldn't interfere with the way we do business, we would be breaking the law. This is obviously an extremely simplistic example.
- Deregulation of services in the 80s was intended to give more freedom (and therefore theoretically increase healthy competition) between providers of services, by reducing the influence of government in overseeing pricing.
- On the flip side (and more recently), Apple has balked at the feds for appointing Mike Bromwich to investigate allegations of the company's alleged violation of anti-trust laws. Apple's management feels Bromwich is interfering with the company's day-to-day operations by requiring that he be permitted to conduct lengthy meetings with their top brass on an ongoing basis.
/ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
Ravi Bhavnani wrote:
Deregulation of services in the 80s was intended to give more freedom (and therefore theoretically increase healthy competition) between providers of services, by reducing the influence of government in overseeing pricing.
Yeah... If you believed that BS I got a bridge for you. The recent water contamination in W. VA. shows us that. Crazy thing is this shite: http://www.paul.senate.gov/files/documents/EconomicFreedomZones.pdf[^] They play it up like they are "helping" these poor areas. ANd what do they do? They lift the very things protecting the people. So now the poor people in these areas are fed contaminated food, water, air etc. and it is perfectly legal and actually "helping" their community. IT IS TOTAL BS FROM THE RICH!
Computers have been intelligent for a long time now. It just so happens that the program writers are about as effective as a room full of monkeys trying to crank out a copy of Hamlet. The interesting thing about software is it can not reproduce, until it can.
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One of the stories clogging my RSS feeds this morning was the court overturning the FCC's net neutrality stance. Let me first say that I have not studied this matter and don't know what the facts are on either side of the street. What I do know is that it caused the Internet to gnaw on its own ankle for the better part of the morning. So here's my question. Although I'm in favor of net neutrality conceptually, from a more pragmatic perspective it seems to me that the wires I get to use in order to interact with the Internet, at least in America, belong to companies. I get to use them because I pay them for the service, but it's their choice what service to provide and how much to charge. They bought the materials and paid to have them installed. Unless the government decides to take over an industry and seize the companies' assets, does it really have the right to tell a given company what it can do with the wires that it owns? Sure, it would be nice if we lived in a world where everyone played fair, and I'm in favor of such an idealized landscape. That said, telling a company how to run its business strikes me as unfair to the company. It's a complex issue with many points of view (and I have no interest in discussing partisan politics of any kind), but I was thinking about that this morning. The Internet howls that this is a travesty, but it seems to me that it's not really that simple. Was just wondering if I'm alone in considering how sovereign the property of a company is, as well as its business practices (providing it doesn't break any laws).
Christopher Duncan Author of Unite the Tribes: Leadership Skills for Technology Managers Have Fun, Get Paid: How to Make a Living with Your Creativity The Career Programmer
Your thinking makes sense, but the basic problem here is that wires to your house and the right-of-way granted to lay those wires are severely limited resources, and of those two things the latter belongs to the government, not the companies. It is impossible to have true competition between Internet access providers for the same reason it is impossible to have true competition between telephone, electricity, water, or natural gas providers: such competition requires the absurd and impossible scenario where dozens or hundreds of different companies have, say, their own networks of pipes running natural gas through the city, each one with 100% coverage so that you as a homeowner have the option to turn on whichever one you want to buy from. Can't work. The channels are thereby limited to an extremely low number, making delivery of these things a natural monopoly. Economic and political theory in practice has for quite some time recognized not only a right, but a need to regulate naturally monopolistic markets and the companies in them, partly because otherwise the lack of a free market would put consumers at the mercy of the providers, and partly because in such cases the resources that are limited here are considered to belong to the people and their government anyway. The government was the one who granted (for instance) Comcast the right to put their wires on poles or underground across everybody's private and public property (including property of people who aren't even subscribers) in order to get their services to their customers. There's no reason to expect that a license to exclusively use a public right-of-way for profit ought to be free from interference or regulation. In other words, the wires may belong to the provider, but not the property they sit on, or the poles they are attached to, or the roads that get dug up when repairs are needed. Those things are being conditionally given to them, with the implicit recognition that this excludes other companies from using them for the same thing. There is no reasonable expectation that you can use up limited public resources without the public having any say in how you do so. The ideal solution to this would, in theory, be that the so-called "information superhighway" is maintained just like actual superhighways, that is, treated as public infrastructure, built and paid for by the public just like roads are. It's actually even occurred to me that this would, in the United States, be a potentially good fit for the future of the mission of the U.S. Postal
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Ravi Bhavnani wrote:
Deregulation of services in the 80s was intended to give more freedom (and therefore theoretically increase healthy competition) between providers of services, by reducing the influence of government in overseeing pricing.
Yeah... If you believed that BS I got a bridge for you. The recent water contamination in W. VA. shows us that. Crazy thing is this shite: http://www.paul.senate.gov/files/documents/EconomicFreedomZones.pdf[^] They play it up like they are "helping" these poor areas. ANd what do they do? They lift the very things protecting the people. So now the poor people in these areas are fed contaminated food, water, air etc. and it is perfectly legal and actually "helping" their community. IT IS TOTAL BS FROM THE RICH!
Computers have been intelligent for a long time now. It just so happens that the program writers are about as effective as a room full of monkeys trying to crank out a copy of Hamlet. The interesting thing about software is it can not reproduce, until it can.
Collin Jasnoch wrote:
Yeah... If you believed that BS I got a bridge for you.
I agree with you. The abysmal drop of the QOS of the banking, telco and airline industries (in the US) are prime examples of how this (supposedly) well-intentioned deregulation has hindered rather than helped the public. /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
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Your thinking makes sense, but the basic problem here is that wires to your house and the right-of-way granted to lay those wires are severely limited resources, and of those two things the latter belongs to the government, not the companies. It is impossible to have true competition between Internet access providers for the same reason it is impossible to have true competition between telephone, electricity, water, or natural gas providers: such competition requires the absurd and impossible scenario where dozens or hundreds of different companies have, say, their own networks of pipes running natural gas through the city, each one with 100% coverage so that you as a homeowner have the option to turn on whichever one you want to buy from. Can't work. The channels are thereby limited to an extremely low number, making delivery of these things a natural monopoly. Economic and political theory in practice has for quite some time recognized not only a right, but a need to regulate naturally monopolistic markets and the companies in them, partly because otherwise the lack of a free market would put consumers at the mercy of the providers, and partly because in such cases the resources that are limited here are considered to belong to the people and their government anyway. The government was the one who granted (for instance) Comcast the right to put their wires on poles or underground across everybody's private and public property (including property of people who aren't even subscribers) in order to get their services to their customers. There's no reason to expect that a license to exclusively use a public right-of-way for profit ought to be free from interference or regulation. In other words, the wires may belong to the provider, but not the property they sit on, or the poles they are attached to, or the roads that get dug up when repairs are needed. Those things are being conditionally given to them, with the implicit recognition that this excludes other companies from using them for the same thing. There is no reasonable expectation that you can use up limited public resources without the public having any say in how you do so. The ideal solution to this would, in theory, be that the so-called "information superhighway" is maintained just like actual superhighways, that is, treated as public infrastructure, built and paid for by the public just like roads are. It's actually even occurred to me that this would, in the United States, be a potentially good fit for the future of the mission of the U.S. Postal
Nicely said:thumbsup: Nice finishing touch too. Points out how we are screwed either way:~
Computers have been intelligent for a long time now. It just so happens that the program writers are about as effective as a room full of monkeys trying to crank out a copy of Hamlet. The interesting thing about software is it can not reproduce, until it can.
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One of the stories clogging my RSS feeds this morning was the court overturning the FCC's net neutrality stance. Let me first say that I have not studied this matter and don't know what the facts are on either side of the street. What I do know is that it caused the Internet to gnaw on its own ankle for the better part of the morning. So here's my question. Although I'm in favor of net neutrality conceptually, from a more pragmatic perspective it seems to me that the wires I get to use in order to interact with the Internet, at least in America, belong to companies. I get to use them because I pay them for the service, but it's their choice what service to provide and how much to charge. They bought the materials and paid to have them installed. Unless the government decides to take over an industry and seize the companies' assets, does it really have the right to tell a given company what it can do with the wires that it owns? Sure, it would be nice if we lived in a world where everyone played fair, and I'm in favor of such an idealized landscape. That said, telling a company how to run its business strikes me as unfair to the company. It's a complex issue with many points of view (and I have no interest in discussing partisan politics of any kind), but I was thinking about that this morning. The Internet howls that this is a travesty, but it seems to me that it's not really that simple. Was just wondering if I'm alone in considering how sovereign the property of a company is, as well as its business practices (providing it doesn't break any laws).
Christopher Duncan Author of Unite the Tribes: Leadership Skills for Technology Managers Have Fun, Get Paid: How to Make a Living with Your Creativity The Career Programmer
I don't agree and the reason is that if not regulated in some way there's a lot of greed involved and the big companies get together and decide how much they want to fix the price at no matter how fair it is to the consumer. You will probably say if you don't want to pay the price don't order the service but if all the companies set the price who are you going to go to for internet service? To me it's just like the Internet Sales Tax fiasco, it's not about being fair for the "Brick and Mortar" stores it's about more taxes for an already bloated government that instead of balancing the budget has to find a way to bilk more money out of the public. Another example is, remember when antifreeze used to be ~$1/gal? Someone bought up all the antifreeze which drove the price up and they made a killing and the price has never come down since. Sorry this turned into a rant didn't it?
VS2010/Atmel Studio 6.1 ToDo Manager Extension Relax...We're all crazy it's not a competition!
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As I mentioned, I haven't read up on the facts, but what you're saying was my gut feeling of what was going on. Not the court saying, "net neutrality bad, very bad" but rather them striking down a sloppy implementation of a law that was probably cobbled together by the FCC in a roomful of special interest groups. That's one of the reasons I haven't been too worked up beyond philosophical curiosity. My feeling is that no one has as of yet made a serious effort to decide this issue one way or the other.
Christopher Duncan Author of Unite the Tribes: Leadership Skills for Technology Managers Have Fun, Get Paid: How to Make a Living with Your Creativity The Career Programmer
Christopher Duncan wrote:
striking down a sloppy implementation of a law that was probably cobbled together by the FCC in a roomful of special interest groups.
That's exactly correct.
Christopher Duncan wrote:
no one has as of yet made a serious effort to decide this issue one way or the other.
The Verizons, AT&T's, and Comcast's are greasing plenty of palms to keep it this way, too. Unfortunately.
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I don't agree and the reason is that if not regulated in some way there's a lot of greed involved and the big companies get together and decide how much they want to fix the price at no matter how fair it is to the consumer. You will probably say if you don't want to pay the price don't order the service but if all the companies set the price who are you going to go to for internet service? To me it's just like the Internet Sales Tax fiasco, it's not about being fair for the "Brick and Mortar" stores it's about more taxes for an already bloated government that instead of balancing the budget has to find a way to bilk more money out of the public. Another example is, remember when antifreeze used to be ~$1/gal? Someone bought up all the antifreeze which drove the price up and they made a killing and the price has never come down since. Sorry this turned into a rant didn't it?
VS2010/Atmel Studio 6.1 ToDo Manager Extension Relax...We're all crazy it's not a competition!
Mike Hankey wrote:
I don't agree and the reason is that if not regulated in some way there's a lot of greed involved and the big companies get together and decide how much they want to fix the price at no matter how fair it is to the consumer. You will probably say if you don't want to pay the price don't order the service but if all the companies set the price who are you going to go to for internet service?
I really don't think it is about price fixing. While they could do it, they need not. Most areas it seems (maybe I am wrong, but from people I know around the country etc) have a single cable ISP and a single DSL ISP. Maybe some of the major metro's like LA and New York have at least some choice, but in general that is not the case. I was even talking with my brother who is in a burb of LA. He thought he had a choice, but then he realized it was as I said earlier. One is cable and one is DSL. Anyways, that is not really the point. Net neutrality is about the content delivered and how it is delivered. It was preventing ISPs from blocking specific content or throttling it. This has now been lifted. That means the ISPs (which are also the TV content providers) to outright block Netflix, Youtube etc. Now, they of course would not do that. That would be suicide. More likely what they do is look at your subscription and see you are buying only internet and see you are using the internet for mainly Netflix. They then throttle you down to the point of annoyance but not outright going postal in attempt to get you to subscribe to live TV that would not have those "nasty buffer issues". Oh you are paying them over $100 a month for everything including cable. Then they will likely let you do whatever you want with your internet content.
Computers have been intelligent for a long time now. It just so happens that the program writers are about as effective as a room full of monkeys trying to crank out a copy of Hamlet. The interesting thing about software is it can not reproduce, until it can.
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Mike Hankey wrote:
I don't agree and the reason is that if not regulated in some way there's a lot of greed involved and the big companies get together and decide how much they want to fix the price at no matter how fair it is to the consumer. You will probably say if you don't want to pay the price don't order the service but if all the companies set the price who are you going to go to for internet service?
I really don't think it is about price fixing. While they could do it, they need not. Most areas it seems (maybe I am wrong, but from people I know around the country etc) have a single cable ISP and a single DSL ISP. Maybe some of the major metro's like LA and New York have at least some choice, but in general that is not the case. I was even talking with my brother who is in a burb of LA. He thought he had a choice, but then he realized it was as I said earlier. One is cable and one is DSL. Anyways, that is not really the point. Net neutrality is about the content delivered and how it is delivered. It was preventing ISPs from blocking specific content or throttling it. This has now been lifted. That means the ISPs (which are also the TV content providers) to outright block Netflix, Youtube etc. Now, they of course would not do that. That would be suicide. More likely what they do is look at your subscription and see you are buying only internet and see you are using the internet for mainly Netflix. They then throttle you down to the point of annoyance but not outright going postal in attempt to get you to subscribe to live TV that would not have those "nasty buffer issues". Oh you are paying them over $100 a month for everything including cable. Then they will likely let you do whatever you want with your internet content.
Computers have been intelligent for a long time now. It just so happens that the program writers are about as effective as a room full of monkeys trying to crank out a copy of Hamlet. The interesting thing about software is it can not reproduce, until it can.
Collin Jasnoch wrote:
I really don't think it is about price fixing.
I guess the right words weren't price fixing but what would you call charging for various content. Oh you want to listen to music $5/mo, oh you want to watch YouTube $5/mo, oh you're a student and want to do research $5/mo.... It's just another way to extort more money out of the internet.
VS2010/Atmel Studio 6.1 ToDo Manager Extension Relax...We're all crazy it's not a competition!
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IMO, public service companies (*) should be forced into neutrality, as long as you pay for the service itself. In the case of Internet, if I pay for a service, I don't want the supplier throttling speed (or block) because I browse a website of a competitor, or download legal content that does not fit the "moral values" of the supplier. (*) water, electricity, gas, ... internet
I'd rather be phishing!
Exactly my point, well put!
VS2010/Atmel Studio 6.1 ToDo Manager Extension Relax...We're all crazy it's not a competition!
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
how sovereign the property of a company is, as well as its business practices (providing it doesn't break any laws).
Christopher Duncan wrote:
telling a company how to run its business strikes me as unfair to the company.
And therein lies the paradox. The government (supposedly) enacts laws to protect the general population. Let's say you and I were the only makers of corn flakes (and let's assume the public needs to eat corn flakes in order to survive). Assuming a box of cereal cost $1.50 to manufacture and ship, we could privately agree to sell a box of cereal for no less than $5.50. This would ensure we rake in a very healthy profit, without incurring the wrath of the public who has no idea it really costs only $1.50 to make a box of the stuff. The FTC has laws against price fixing and collusion by manufacturers of products to prevent exactly this kind of thing from happening, ostensibly to protect the average Joe. For this reason, even though you and I may feel the government shouldn't interfere with the way we do business, we would be breaking the law. This is obviously an extremely simplistic example.
- Deregulation of services in the 80s was intended to give more freedom (and therefore theoretically increase healthy competition) between providers of services, by reducing the influence of government in overseeing pricing.
- On the flip side (and more recently), Apple has balked at the feds for appointing Mike Bromwich to investigate allegations of the company's alleged violation of anti-trust laws. Apple's management feels Bromwich is interfering with the company's day-to-day operations by requiring that he be permitted to conduct lengthy meetings with their top brass on an ongoing basis.
/ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
Ravi Bhavnani wrote:
On the flip side (and more recently), Apple has balked at the feds for appointing Mike Bromwich to investigate allegations of the company's alleged violation of anti-trust laws.
Not defending Apple nor commenting on the verdict (I didn't follow the case very closely) but I do find it curious that Apple's e-book market share is TINY compared to Amazon's (who BTW instigated the DOJ investigation). Seems like the monopoly (Amazon) used the US DOJ & anti-trust laws against an upstart (Apple) to protects its own business model. No?
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. ~ George Washington
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You're probably right, but that's the way a free market works.
Christopher Duncan Author of Unite the Tribes: Leadership Skills for Technology Managers Have Fun, Get Paid: How to Make a Living with Your Creativity The Career Programmer
Yes, that's a free market and capitalism. But it's not always that simple. We (in the U.S.) have state laws that prevent gasoline from being sold too cheaply so other mom-and-pop stations can compete with the big boys. In many states it's illegal to sell items below cost in stores. This effectively prevents Wal-Mart from undercutting everyone in town until they are the only ones left. We see lawsuits against price fixing in books taken against Apple. There are dozens of examples like this. My point is that state and federal governments have many rules in place on what type of services can be provided, what must be included in those services, and also the price those services can cost. I see no reason they should not do the same to the Internet providers. That's just my $0.02.
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Ravi Bhavnani wrote:
On the flip side (and more recently), Apple has balked at the feds for appointing Mike Bromwich to investigate allegations of the company's alleged violation of anti-trust laws.
Not defending Apple nor commenting on the verdict (I didn't follow the case very closely) but I do find it curious that Apple's e-book market share is TINY compared to Amazon's (who BTW instigated the DOJ investigation). Seems like the monopoly (Amazon) used the US DOJ & anti-trust laws against an upstart (Apple) to protects its own business model. No?
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. ~ George Washington
That's certainly possible. There's so much that goes on behind the scenes in big business that the public doesn't get to see. :( /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
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Of course it is, but that game started a century ago (historians: feel free to provide a more accurate time), just look at the food industry, the drug industry, the adult industry, the alcohol industry, the amusement industry, the taxi industry, the financial industry, the telephone industry (which is of all of those examples the most closely related), holy crap this list never ends.
My recollection of the 70s is that the drug industry was largely unregulated. No, wait. Nevermind. Turns out I don't remember the 70s after all. :)
Christopher Duncan Author of Unite the Tribes: Leadership Skills for Technology Managers Have Fun, Get Paid: How to Make a Living with Your Creativity The Career Programmer
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
does it really have the right to tell a given company what it can do with the wires that it owns?
Absofreakinglutely. And here is the simple reason why. Monopolistic practices. I have no choice of my "wired" ISP. Nor will I get a choice anytime soon (this in itself is an issue as the ISP's have gone to various communities ensuring it is difficult for new ISP to come in. I have even seen cases where an ISP sued a city for attempting to provide WiFi to the city paid for by taxes, and yes the ISP won). So I am stuck with my ISP which also happens to make most of their money off of inflated cable packages. I do not want a cable package. I want internet. I want to use it for whatever my hearts content. I am given an advertized rate of XXMb/s and I want what I pay for. Why does it matter if I am consuming my paid bandwidth on something that competes with their crappy cable packages (e.g. Netflix and Youtube)? It shouldn't unless they are using their Monopoly on ISP to maintain their dominant video content distribution (i.e. Cable TV). IT IS UTTER BS! This is the year 2014 and we still are force fed crappy content because they package it that way. I said no more. I cut the wire. I want nothing to do with cable TV. These knitwitts don't get it. Every other month I get a call about giving me a great deal and saving money. "Oh is that right? You are going to save me money? Well I do not use cable TV nor do I have any reason to so I am not sure how you are going to save me money unless you are calling to inform me you are lowering my rate on your unrealiable sub-par internet connection that you are expoiting because you are the only game in town". Yeah, they give up then and move on to the next sucker. Anyway, your damn right the government has the right to force them to not throttle or block sites. I am not paying for XXMb/s on sites listed on pages 1-100 and xx/3MbX on all other sites. There was no list saying I can not view these sites. Them doing so IMO means they are false advertising. I am paying for a rate regardless of the site. If they start throttling and I can prove it I am suing for false advertisement.
Computers have been intelligent for a long time now. It just so happens that the program writers are about as effective as a room full of monkeys trying to crank out a copy of Hamlet. The interesting thing about software is it can not reproduce, until it can.
I think you said the magic word with "monopoly." Certainly an extenuating circumstance.
Christopher Duncan Author of Unite the Tribes: Leadership Skills for Technology Managers Have Fun, Get Paid: How to Make a Living with Your Creativity The Career Programmer
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There would not be confidentiality in writing if you take the position that mail is owned by whomever owns the mailbox.
Christopher Duncan wrote:
from a more pragmatic perspective it seems to me that the wires I get to use in order to interact with the Internet, at least in America, belong to companies.
They're not owned by the companies, regardless of those claims. If each company had to run it's own wire into your house, you could claim that it's "theirs".
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
I have DSL so the wire actually does run right up to my house. Unless, you know, the deer have chewed it up again. :)
Christopher Duncan Author of Unite the Tribes: Leadership Skills for Technology Managers Have Fun, Get Paid: How to Make a Living with Your Creativity The Career Programmer
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As far as I can tell, the ruling is not a ruling on net neutrality per se but whether or not the net neutrality rules recently imposed are applicable to a company who is in the business of providing a computer tranmission network is not classified as common carrier according to the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The problem was that the lawmakers of 1996 regarded the transmission of voice data to be deemed worthy of common carrier status and that the transmission of computer data as not worthy of common carrier status. This was incredibly shortsighted corrupt. Seems like the solution would be to classify the companies that provide internet services as common carriers. AmIright?
In a lot of cases the companies are, e.g. service provided by telcos, but I'm sure their lawyers have found sufficient wiggle room.
Christopher Duncan Author of Unite the Tribes: Leadership Skills for Technology Managers Have Fun, Get Paid: How to Make a Living with Your Creativity The Career Programmer
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
how sovereign the property of a company is, as well as its business practices (providing it doesn't break any laws).
Christopher Duncan wrote:
telling a company how to run its business strikes me as unfair to the company.
And therein lies the paradox. The government (supposedly) enacts laws to protect the general population. Let's say you and I were the only makers of corn flakes (and let's assume the public needs to eat corn flakes in order to survive). Assuming a box of cereal cost $1.50 to manufacture and ship, we could privately agree to sell a box of cereal for no less than $5.50. This would ensure we rake in a very healthy profit, without incurring the wrath of the public who has no idea it really costs only $1.50 to make a box of the stuff. The FTC has laws against price fixing and collusion by manufacturers of products to prevent exactly this kind of thing from happening, ostensibly to protect the average Joe. For this reason, even though you and I may feel the government shouldn't interfere with the way we do business, we would be breaking the law. This is obviously an extremely simplistic example.
- Deregulation of services in the 80s was intended to give more freedom (and therefore theoretically increase healthy competition) between providers of services, by reducing the influence of government in overseeing pricing.
- On the flip side (and more recently), Apple has balked at the feds for appointing Mike Bromwich to investigate allegations of the company's alleged violation of anti-trust laws. Apple's management feels Bromwich is interfering with the company's day-to-day operations by requiring that he be permitted to conduct lengthy meetings with their top brass on an ongoing basis.
/ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
It's the Golden Rule, man. Whoever has the gold gets to make the rules.
Christopher Duncan Author of Unite the Tribes: Leadership Skills for Technology Managers Have Fun, Get Paid: How to Make a Living with Your Creativity The Career Programmer
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Your thinking makes sense, but the basic problem here is that wires to your house and the right-of-way granted to lay those wires are severely limited resources, and of those two things the latter belongs to the government, not the companies. It is impossible to have true competition between Internet access providers for the same reason it is impossible to have true competition between telephone, electricity, water, or natural gas providers: such competition requires the absurd and impossible scenario where dozens or hundreds of different companies have, say, their own networks of pipes running natural gas through the city, each one with 100% coverage so that you as a homeowner have the option to turn on whichever one you want to buy from. Can't work. The channels are thereby limited to an extremely low number, making delivery of these things a natural monopoly. Economic and political theory in practice has for quite some time recognized not only a right, but a need to regulate naturally monopolistic markets and the companies in them, partly because otherwise the lack of a free market would put consumers at the mercy of the providers, and partly because in such cases the resources that are limited here are considered to belong to the people and their government anyway. The government was the one who granted (for instance) Comcast the right to put their wires on poles or underground across everybody's private and public property (including property of people who aren't even subscribers) in order to get their services to their customers. There's no reason to expect that a license to exclusively use a public right-of-way for profit ought to be free from interference or regulation. In other words, the wires may belong to the provider, but not the property they sit on, or the poles they are attached to, or the roads that get dug up when repairs are needed. Those things are being conditionally given to them, with the implicit recognition that this excludes other companies from using them for the same thing. There is no reasonable expectation that you can use up limited public resources without the public having any say in how you do so. The ideal solution to this would, in theory, be that the so-called "information superhighway" is maintained just like actual superhighways, that is, treated as public infrastructure, built and paid for by the public just like roads are. It's actually even occurred to me that this would, in the United States, be a potentially good fit for the future of the mission of the U.S. Postal
Public infrastructure probably makes sense in this case, but there's waaaay too much money for these corporations to give up without a fight.
Christopher Duncan Author of Unite the Tribes: Leadership Skills for Technology Managers Have Fun, Get Paid: How to Make a Living with Your Creativity The Career Programmer
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I don't agree and the reason is that if not regulated in some way there's a lot of greed involved and the big companies get together and decide how much they want to fix the price at no matter how fair it is to the consumer. You will probably say if you don't want to pay the price don't order the service but if all the companies set the price who are you going to go to for internet service? To me it's just like the Internet Sales Tax fiasco, it's not about being fair for the "Brick and Mortar" stores it's about more taxes for an already bloated government that instead of balancing the budget has to find a way to bilk more money out of the public. Another example is, remember when antifreeze used to be ~$1/gal? Someone bought up all the antifreeze which drove the price up and they made a killing and the price has never come down since. Sorry this turned into a rant didn't it?
VS2010/Atmel Studio 6.1 ToDo Manager Extension Relax...We're all crazy it's not a competition!
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Sorry this turned into a rant didn't it?
Sounds like a reality check to me. :)
Christopher Duncan Author of Unite the Tribes: Leadership Skills for Technology Managers Have Fun, Get Paid: How to Make a Living with Your Creativity The Career Programmer