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
I think trying to make slippery slope arguments or huge assumptions about this or that are premature. Will they try to squeeze more money out? Probably. So what? Only having one choice for broadband is an ephemeral factor. This can and will change if the demand is there. Remember basic economics, supply is a factor of price and demand. If the government holds down prices (net neutrality) your supply will be limited implicitly. I personally would enjoy watching the likes of Google/Amazon/Netflix/etc. take on the ISP corps. I strongly believe the tech companies would absolutely dominate them, probably to the point of bankrupting them. Most of the ISP's are horrible companies (in my opinion). I go out of my way to avoid Time Warner. Luckily in my area I have U-Verse which is a decent service, but I will take DSL over Time Warner service all day long as well. Where we get into trouble way way down the road, is if the tech companies start colluding with the ISP companies. At that point we need the government to step in and regulate things a bit. But they got to be forced to compete first.
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Squeezed out? How? If I drive at 90 mph on the motorway, does that mean you are being squeezed out when you (continue) to drive at 60? Is anybody honestly claiming that if I burn the fuel to drive at 90, I should also pay for everybody else to go that fast too? The internet is not a zero-sum game. Extra speed leads to extra routes/roads/lanes, paid for by the money these 'privileged' customers pay. Look, my boss has a Lamborghini and a £30 million house, because he built the company from nothing. Does anybody think I should automatically get a Lamborghini upgrade at zero cost, plus a mansion, simply because I drive on the same roads and live in the same county?
We all already pay for Internet services with our monthly access fees. There is no business need to charge anyone more than what they are already paying. It is the consumer that initiates Internet activity, so the charges are presently where they ought to be. They should be able to charge for bandwidth, not content. That is what neutrality is all about. If they can charge based on content or who is providing the content, big providers may be able to pay or fight the charges, but anyone wanting to start a business will not be able to without finding big investors. I have a number of websites which may or may not take off. Without net neutrality, I could not do that. Google and Netflix and Amazon all relied on net neutrality to get started. For a while, Verizon blocked Google Maps on cell phones, only allowing their own Navigator on their network, in spite of it not performing as well. I had no choice except to refuse to use any mapping service at all and to call and send emails to complain. I could not move to another carrier, because the other carriers' signals did not serve all of the places where I needed to get and receive calls. If they did, I would switch in a heartbeat. The Internet has become too necessary for communication. It needs to be treated as a utility.
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We all already pay for Internet services with our monthly access fees. There is no business need to charge anyone more than what they are already paying. It is the consumer that initiates Internet activity, so the charges are presently where they ought to be. They should be able to charge for bandwidth, not content. That is what neutrality is all about. If they can charge based on content or who is providing the content, big providers may be able to pay or fight the charges, but anyone wanting to start a business will not be able to without finding big investors. I have a number of websites which may or may not take off. Without net neutrality, I could not do that. Google and Netflix and Amazon all relied on net neutrality to get started. For a while, Verizon blocked Google Maps on cell phones, only allowing their own Navigator on their network, in spite of it not performing as well. I had no choice except to refuse to use any mapping service at all and to call and send emails to complain. I could not move to another carrier, because the other carriers' signals did not serve all of the places where I needed to get and receive calls. If they did, I would switch in a heartbeat. The Internet has become too necessary for communication. It needs to be treated as a utility.
I sincerely wish you every success with your websites. And when they do, I will claim that 'they are a utility'.
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Don't get me wrong, I don't trust the average corporation further than I can throw an obese and mildly agitated warthog. That said, this is a slippery slope. Industry a suddenly gets governed by new laws that strip it of its property rights. Maybe that's a good thing, maybe it's not, but now we have industry A asking why every other industry isn't subjected to the same draconian practices, at which point people begin to wonder if or where it will end - should governments take over all businesses? Mostly playing devil's advocate here, but "just make it the law" is the beginning of a dangerous game.
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
Almost the entire mass media in the United States has been taken over by a few conservative owners who severely restrict what is allowed to be presented to the public in what manner. People who rely on mass media for information are screwed, and way too many of them do not even know it. The Internet is the only way we can have anything close to open and free public discourse in democratic society, and losing network neutrality would put an end to that.
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You're speaking, I believe, two two separate issues. An unhealthy monopoly is certainly a fair conversation to have in this context. Roads, however, are built and maintained (here in America) by tax dollars, not for-profit companies. If we want to use our taxes for Internet infrastructure, that's also a fair conversation to have, but at present it's the private and public corporations who have invested time and money building this infrastructure, which is where I start wondering about the right to take control of someone's property.
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
The same thing applies to telephone companies, which were eventually and rightly considered utilities. The Internet has become a necessary means of public communication, and the providers are frequently local monopolies. To give over control of information to private corporations is the second step to fascism. The first step has already been taken by the few owners of the mass media in the United States.
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And I guess the root of that issue is whether or not ISPs and underlying infrastructure are considered a public service company or just a regular for-profit concern.
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
Exactly; I'm a free market advocate, but I'm also an advocate that federal and state governments should provide infrastructure (roads being the most common example). That's not from an idealist perspective; I just don't see why we should have wasted resources of 3 or 4 lines going over the poles that are doing the same thing, just for different companies. I think it's safe to say that internet connection has become part of the infrastructure of the US and other developed countries. My $0.02: net neutrality is an important concept, and the barriers to entry for ISPs are way too high to encourage startup competition (not just capital investment, but also regulatory concerns), so I'm not convinced that the US version of the free market is adequate to address this dilemma. It sucks, but that's the reality we're in. I think at this point, while far from perfect, one solution would be service providers bidding on service areas, and those companies would have to meet certain standards (pricing, speed, uptime, etc.).
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Don't get me wrong, I don't trust the average corporation further than I can throw an obese and mildly agitated warthog. That said, this is a slippery slope. Industry a suddenly gets governed by new laws that strip it of its property rights. Maybe that's a good thing, maybe it's not, but now we have industry A asking why every other industry isn't subjected to the same draconian practices, at which point people begin to wonder if or where it will end - should governments take over all businesses? Mostly playing devil's advocate here, but "just make it the law" is the beginning of a dangerous game.
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
In most cases these "property rights" are monopolies granted by various levels of government. I live in an AT&T monopoly area. If I want internet access, I must buy it from AT&T. When it comes to internet access, most people simply want a fast connection to the internet, just like any other commodity. ISPs and the various backbone providers are effectively commodity providers and they don't like that. It costs them the same to send a byte from Point A to Point B whether that byte is part of an email, a video, a VOIP call, or an IM. They want to use their monopoly power to make even more money. For example, several years ago the FCC had to smack down a small Telco/ISP because they were blocking all VOIP calls coming into their network unless they were going to a customer of their VOIP product. These companies will do all they can to protect their monopoly power. Just take a look at municipal Wi-Fi. When these monopoly companies were dragging their feet on providing municipal Wi-Fi, some cities got fed up with it and decided to build their own. These monopoly companies immediately went to the State government and in many cases, managed to get laws passed prohibiting cities from building their own Wi-Fi because, they claimed it was unfair competition. Imagine that, a monopoly complaining about unfair competition. Edit: removed extra word.
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I sincerely wish you every success with your websites. And when they do, I will claim that 'they are a utility'.
Before something can be classified as a utility, it has to meet some rules, as Internet service has already met. If my websites ever become such a basic necessity to life and a free democratic society as to qualify as a utility, I won't mind. I will be playing the piano and gardening after you take them over.
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You're speaking, I believe, two two separate issues. An unhealthy monopoly is certainly a fair conversation to have in this context. Roads, however, are built and maintained (here in America) by tax dollars, not for-profit companies. If we want to use our taxes for Internet infrastructure, that's also a fair conversation to have, but at present it's the private and public corporations who have invested time and money building this infrastructure, which is where I start wondering about the right to take control of someone's property.
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
You are forgetting that in most cases, these corporations have been given monopoly power by the government, guaranteeing them a profit. In return for this guarantee, they must accept some regulation by the government. It's not like another company can come along and put in their own infrastructure and compete with them.
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Before something can be classified as a utility, it has to meet some rules, as Internet service has already met. If my websites ever become such a basic necessity to life and a free democratic society as to qualify as a utility, I won't mind. I will be playing the piano and gardening after you take them over.
I don't need no rules man. I'm the gubberment.
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Squeezed out? How? If I drive at 90 mph on the motorway, does that mean you are being squeezed out when you (continue) to drive at 60? Is anybody honestly claiming that if I burn the fuel to drive at 90, I should also pay for everybody else to go that fast too? The internet is not a zero-sum game. Extra speed leads to extra routes/roads/lanes, paid for by the money these 'privileged' customers pay. Look, my boss has a Lamborghini and a £30 million house, because he built the company from nothing. Does anybody think I should automatically get a Lamborghini upgrade at zero cost, plus a mansion, simply because I drive on the same roads and live in the same county?
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A better analogy would be airline travel. The net neutrality supporters want everyone forced to fly coach. They don’t want anyone being allowed to upgrade to better service like business or first class. After all, travel is a public right...
"After all, travel is a public right..." Quite. A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Unless you'd rather pay for a flight. Oddly, overall Concorde was a commercial success. Just. But it lost money when flights were first charged at cost. People didn't like bog-standard service on a supersonic flight. It was only when BA made it a premium service with all the bells and whistles at a greatly increased price, that passenger numbers rose and money was made. Somewhat non-intuitive. :^)
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I would be curious if Verizon owned the land upon which their networks travel or are they offered easements by the government. In this case the market would not be entirely free.
That is a particularly good question. If the government offers the telecom/power/cable companies special protection/access, then there is a question of if that creates a further societal requirement for those industries.
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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 see ISPs as merely a physical connection from my house to the internet, they are akin to a router or a switch. For some reason they want to be considered "content providers" ... that idea is laughable. They are more like network operators. I think most would agree, they don't want anyone doing deep packet inspections and getting between their machine and the web servers or other peers they are trying to access. This is an endpoint to endpoint issue with the least amount of interference between the bits from one end getting to the other end, and nothing more. Treat all bits equally, provide them the fastest transport possible, AND AT THE LOWEST COST (without raping anyone).:suss:
David
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Squeezed out? How? If I drive at 90 mph on the motorway, does that mean you are being squeezed out when you (continue) to drive at 60? Is anybody honestly claiming that if I burn the fuel to drive at 90, I should also pay for everybody else to go that fast too? The internet is not a zero-sum game. Extra speed leads to extra routes/roads/lanes, paid for by the money these 'privileged' customers pay. Look, my boss has a Lamborghini and a £30 million house, because he built the company from nothing. Does anybody think I should automatically get a Lamborghini upgrade at zero cost, plus a mansion, simply because I drive on the same roads and live in the same county?
I think you got your facts wrong. A better analogy would be: Your electricity provider suddenly deciding to stop providing electricity to your freezer unless you pay a "freezer fee" because they struck a deal with the local fast food chain in delivering them more business. That's where the ruling stands, and enables verizon to do, and that's what net neutrality is trying to prevent - Unrestricted access to your desired content/destination .. over the subscribed service (at the bought speeds) As for speed, well so much for the free market here in the US. We've been paying providers premium fees for "high speed" connection which in fact are limited to cable speeds back in the 90s.. sure I might have 20Mbps down, BUT with only 700kbps for upload, this connection becomes useless for anything else than mild browsing and consuming video content. Backups are impossible for example, and online gaming becomes horrible, since you have to UPLOAD quite a lot of data to the other ends. And to why we don't have better? Well, a couple of years ago, verizon struck an exclusivity deal with the local county which bars other providers to run cooper for the next 20 years.. Even better, if you look at the NYC area, you will notice that verizon and comcast have a mutual love.. where you have verizon, comcast refuses to run cooper and vice verse.. Time Warner (the only other smaller provider) is going bankrupt for not having capacity to compete with the other two... And the others, jack up the prices as they see fit. In cases as such, government regulation is a must.
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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
"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." This is a red herring. As long as there is due process a company needs to comply. I cant get out of a speeding ticket because it took time for the police officer time to write out a citation can I?
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Ah yes.. maybe so. but do you use google? The way the net neutrality was written would prevent your browser from EVER GOING TO GOOGLE or probably bing or any other site that has a reference to a copyrighted image that could be downloaded and used in a school project by your kids - who didn't pay the copyright fee. The bill is SCARY. It should not be allowed. The copyright laws are enough. Net Neutrality will put us all in an Orwellian society (assuming you dont think that the governmnet's little project in Utah that captures EVERYTHING YOU DO ON THE ITERNET into a GIANT DATAWARHOUSE for analysis and datamining has not already done so. The thought police are living with us today and this just gives them more power than ever. Net Neutrailty is a VERY VERY SCARY thing. KILL THE BILL!
You're thinking of SOPA, not Net Neutrality. NN is pretty much the polar opposite.
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Don't get me wrong, I don't trust the average corporation further than I can throw an obese and mildly agitated warthog. That said, this is a slippery slope. Industry a suddenly gets governed by new laws that strip it of its property rights. Maybe that's a good thing, maybe it's not, but now we have industry A asking why every other industry isn't subjected to the same draconian practices, at which point people begin to wonder if or where it will end - should governments take over all businesses? Mostly playing devil's advocate here, but "just make it the law" is the beginning of a dangerous game.
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
"now we have industry A asking why every other industry isn't subjected to the same draconian practices" The phone companies are. The oil companies are. Gas companies are. Electric companies are. Water companies are. You can't ask why other industries aren't subject to practices when other industries ARE subject to these practices. If phone companies are subjected to these "draconian practices", why aren't the other telecoms?
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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:
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?
What happens if you want to create your own search engine. And google has contracted with every single provider in the country to allow cheaper access to google. So for anyone to use your search engine they will have to pay a fee every time they use it. Is that fair to the start up? Is that fair to the consumer?
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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