FCC Vote Marks Effort To Take Greater Control of the Web 323
GovTechGuy writes "The FCC voted today to open an inquiry into how the broadband industry is regulated, the first step in a controversial attempt to assert greater regulatory control over Internet service providers. In a 3-2 vote the Democratic members of the Commission voted to move forward with the FCC's proposal to reclassify broadband as a telecom service, increasing the regulation it is subject to. The move also has large implications for net neutrality, which FCC Commissioner Julius Genachowski has made a focus under his watch."
Take Control? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, the headline on this one is a bit sensationalist. The FCC is for prevention, not takeover.
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Re:Take Control? (Score:4, Insightful)
And it's not like the current administration has talked about installing kill switches for portions of the Internet.... just to protect the internet right, not to control it...
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And even if they did install them (unlikely) they would be sued into oblivion the first time they were used. Especially if it blocked a foreign embassy or other diplomatic presence. Besides, the economic hit would mean political suicide to whomever was responsible for the switch being flipped.
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Re:Take Control? (Score:5, Informative)
A few months ago Congress did pass a law giving the sitting president power to "kill switch" the internet
No they didn't. The bill hasn't even gone to a vote of the full Senate. What you were reading about was a Senate panel passing it. The two aren't synonymous.
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You need to dins someplce beside /. to get your information.
Kill switch. please.
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And it's not like the current administration has talked about installing kill switches for portions of the Internet.... just to protect the internet right, not to control it...
That's not the "current administration", that's one nutty congresscritter who's been trying to do that for a while now.
Re:Take Control? (Score:5, Informative)
I guess checking Google News for Internet Kill Switch [google.com] is too much trouble.... this reply is at least as much for the person who said to get news from somewhere other than Slashdot, but it's been proposed and talked about by more than one Congressman. There are multiple bills mentioned in the below quote alone [cnet.com]:
News about the Leiberman Senate bill has been in the mainstream press recently, and they've had hearings on it:
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Some have, most don't.
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You know, I hear this a lot.
Name... Five.
I mean, go ahead and call me a troll, but I just want to know what government programs started with good intentions (besides perhaps, wars) have made things worse.
I'm sure there are some, I'm just ignorant to what they are.
Re:Take Control? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know about five, but how about the CIA
Re:Take Control? (Score:4, Insightful)
A little bit, but it's too big for me to type a post that can encompass it all.
The CIA has a long history of organizing all the terrible things that no president actually wants his name attached to. Basically if you're brown and live in a third world country you likely have been subjected to death squads, bribery, torture, or disinformation for the sake of assholes in Washington meeting their own goals. William Blum's Killing Hope can fill you in on the details.
Re:Take Control? (Score:4, Informative)
Prohibition
War on Drugs
Japanese Internment Camps
National Security Letters
Register for Sex offenders
Hmm, I'm sure someone could object that one or perhaps all of these programs didn't cause any abuse... but that's just from atop of my head, and I'm not even American (as you can no doubt tell from my spelling).
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Take Control? (Score:4, Interesting)
Funny, considering how much /.'s like guns, explosives, and the bill of rights, you'd think /.'s were right wing.
Well, except for actually liking logic, technology, science.
Can we start using a different political axis?
Re:Take Control? (Score:4, Informative)
But to get more on-topic, here's my problem with the FCC action: what problem, exactly, are they solving? I've read lots here about net neutrality and all the horrible things it's supposed to prevent, but have any of those horrible things actually, you know, happened? If not, what's the rush? Why not wait to see exactly what the abuses are, so that we can know what problems the government is supposed to be fixing?
Re:Take Control? (Score:5, Informative)
I've read lots here about net neutrality and all the horrible things it's supposed to prevent, but have any of those horrible things actually, you know, happened?
Comcast has been caught actually dropping certain types of traffic. High-up ISP corporate officers have been publicly claiming that they should have a right to charge the sites that their customers visit.
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Re:Take Control? (Score:4, Insightful)
Your second example is still only talk, so it doesn't count.
Yeah, except the talk started soon after the regulations were relaxed in 2005.
Why should we wait for them to make good on their threats?
What was the problem with the regulations before 2005?
What benefit have we seen from those regulations being dropped?
Re:Take Control? (Score:5, Insightful)
Once the broadband net is no longer neutral, the case to argue about keeping it neutral is already over. Right now the broadband net is theoretically neutral, so it makes sense to treat it like other neutral networks (e.g. telephone).
Once broadband is not carrying mostly neutral traffic, but paid-partner traffic the argument that is should be treated like a neutral network becomes much harder to argue. That is why the FCC wants to make this move now.
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Frankly, I'm happy for the FCC to step in. Why? Because business-as-usual isn't cutting it.
I live in a major metropolitan area, and my broadband access is *abysmal*. I have two basic choices:
DSL from AT&T (perhaps resold) and cable from Time Warner. Both are horrible. Exactly how horrible depends from year to year.
Currently, I'm on Time Warner, and my experience is oh... 50% of the time its just fine. 20% of the time, it doesn't even work at all for an hour or two. As for the rest, its slow. These bad t
Re:Take Control? (Score:5, Insightful)
But that's incidental to the real problem... for this industry, are we better off with government regulation, or with service providers self-regulating through market forces? I think you'd have to be heavy on the Austrian side to think that market forces can properly regulate an industry that is dominated by local monopolies.
IMO, even IF the 'teh gubbermint' can't do anything right, it's still a better bet than having people whose interests are directly opposed to ours in charge of regulating themselves via market forces in an uncompetitive market.
Re:Take Control? (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is, how did the market become "uncompetitive" in the first place?
Oh yeah, Government interference. First by creating and enforcing local monopolies rather than simply selling right of way space to anyone that wanted it, and second by scooping up several billion in taxpayer money and just GIVING it to the big telcos to create and infrastructure.
If the government had just stayed the hell out, we wouldn't be having this discussion today as the Internet would likely already be far more built-out and with way more players in the market, each of them significantly smaller than the giant megacorps we have involved right now.
The BEST thing the government can do is to eliminate local monopoly legislation,(along with any other regulation making the barrier to entry so damned high) and demand a full refund of the money we wasted on the megacorps. Then give that money back to the taxpayers.
And before some "hair on fire" leftist comes along and tries to beat me with the "You don't want ANY regulation!" straw man argument; OF COURSE I want SOME regulation. I want the absolute MINIMUM amount of regulation possible, and ONLY those regulations put in place by elected officials. Unelected bureaucrats should not be allowed to create regulation and any regulation created by them should be summarily deleted from the record. PERIOD.
Re:Take Control? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the government had just stayed the hell out, we wouldn't be having this discussion today as the Internet would likely already be far more built-out and with way more players in the market, each of them significantly smaller than the giant megacorps we have involved right now.
Uhh, history teaches us the opposite... not with earlier internets of course, but with roads, plumbing and all kinds of infrastructure that suffers if forced to pay off quickly. The situation is greatly improved if there is an organisation willing to invest huge sums _for the good of the people_ without monetary return in prospect. This has always been a government in the past.
Building for profit from ground up doesn't get equal access to everyone, but equal and neutral access is something our society, you and me _extremely_ profit from in hindsight.
With an internet built on private money only, we'd have a fragmented mess of incompatibility.
For a somewhat related example, just look at the OS platform market today. The OS is just infrastructure, the applications are what matters.
Now we might not see the long term benefit of everyone having the "same" OS to run the applications form. But if this happened "magically"*** today, people in twenty years would say how silly we were back then not to realise this obvious improvement.
Has happened with currency (you know, when each city had it's own coinage), rail track standardisation, trading tolls, etc.
*** I don't care which OS, just that it enables everyone to run all applications. Obviously this is not realistic anyway because of very practical reasons, i.e. multibillion dollar companies having some objections there.
Re:Take Control? (Score:5, Informative)
Nice attempt at revisionist history. Ma Bell became a regulated monopoly after they were sued under antitrust law in 1913. They were sued because AT&T started buying up all the competition in 1907. They became "uncompetitive" all by themselves by functionally eliminating competition and purchasing as much right-of-way as possible to prevent new competitors from entering the market.
Monopolies make markets uncompetative. (Score:4, Insightful)
Without regulation, those with the most wealth have the best chance of making even more wealth. Markets are not necessarily closed systems, but you can't just throw "growth" at the issue of wealth migrating into the hands of a few.
So your very first statement, which seems to put all blame for 'uncompetitive' markets on government regulation, sounds simplistic and even a bit troll-like.
Re:Take Control? (Score:5, Informative)
Why do you insist on repeating this as if it were truth? Do you still not recognize the existence of natural monopolies? Even the Austrians recognize the existence of natural monopolies.
That has little to do with the creation or reason for existence of the telco monopolies. They existed prior to that, and would exist even without it. Massive fixed costs for providing telco service ensure the existence of those monopolies.
That is just about the funniest thing I've read today. Market actors consolidate due to economies of scale, in any market where economies of scale exist.
The elephant in the middle of the room you so clumsily step around is that the massive capital required to achieve economies of scale in the telco world is a bigger barrier to market for would-be entrants than anything the government adds. Without the guaranty of monopoly, there wouldn't *be* a telco provider in a lot of areas. No one wants to sink millions in up-front costs when they can't be sure of having customers.
That's a recipe for disaster. The people writing the regs would have even less understanding of the industries they are regulating. So we'd have even MORE regulations written by lobbyists for the industries that are supposed to be regulated.
Re:Take Control? (Score:5, Insightful)
What would be best would be local municipally owned wires leased to ISPs, perhaps multiple ISPs.
It's good enough that companies will sue to stop it, like TDS did.
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Emmm, all government programs by definition cost money. It is not a business. It is not supposed to make money. It is there to provide services needed to society in a way that business would not provide, because it would not be profitable. However it does make economic sense, because it gives a greater benefit to the society as aa whole than the money invested into them.
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>>>Emmm, all government programs by definition cost money
Yes but when the government programs are spending more than they are taking-in, like Greece, then there's a serious problem. It's called debt and when the debt can't be repaid then it's called "default" or bankruptcy. That's the state where all the programs I listed are on the verge of entering.
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>>>It is not supposed to make money
Why not? The US Post Office made money throughout most of the 80s and early 90s, until the internet a
Re:Take Control? (Score:5, Insightful)
Clearly your knee jerk idiot that doesn't actually study what he spouts off about, but sometime I indulge fools. Here you go:
- US Post Office (nearly bankrupt)
This has in no way made things worse. It's the best postal system in the world.
- The Sedition Act (jailed reporters/protesters for simply saying "We shouldn't be involved in the Great War.")
It was repealed on December 13, 1920.[ SO while it was a dick move, that very same government removed it.
- Social Security (upside down - more checks sent out than cash coming in)
Laughable. Social security is fine, stop buying into to the republican crap. read the papers written by the people that actually study it for a living. Yes, it occasionally needs modification, no it's not going to 'bankrupt' us. and it has in no way made anything worse.
- Medicare (ditto)
(ditto)
- Amtrak (nearly bankrupt)
How did the government intervention make this worse? The were going bankrupt well before the government intervened.
- Pelosicare (the CBO just announced it will add $110 billion to the debt, every year; not deficit neutral as advertised)
Did you read the report? or did you jsut drink Glen Becks tears? twit.
A quick sum up:
A) The Current health policy(prior Health care reform) will costs the federal government a fucking lot.
B) Health care reform wont reduce it to zero. but it will reduce it.
a quote:
"CBO also estimated that the legislation will reduce budget deficits by about $140 billion during the 2010-2019 period and by an amount in a broad range around one-half percent of gross domestic product (GDP) during the following decade"
If you didn't read the report, do you even read the CBO directors blog? No? YOU yes YOU are a fucking nitwit. Educate yourself and stop listening to liars, or get the fuck out.
People like you who keep themselves INTENTIONALLY ignorant, and still spout of opinions as if they have and real weight are the only people I would not defend with my life to say what you want. That junk in the alley way down town? I'd defend him. YOU are a fucking plague on society and can rot.
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- Social Security (upside down - more checks sent out than cash coming in)
Laughable. Social security is fine, stop buying into to the republican crap. read the papers written by the people that actually study it for a living. Yes, it occasionally needs modification, no it's not going to 'bankrupt' us. and it has in no way made anything worse.
- Medicare (ditto)
1. By design, Social Security requires an unsustainable population growth. When it was enacted, it was sold on the idea that one Social Security pensioner would be supported by sixteen working adults. That means that for every Social Security pensioner there must be a combination of sixteen first generation immigrants or births. Thankfully we're down to three working adults for one pensioner so it at least we don't need a ludicrous immigration or birthrate to support the program.
2. By law, any surplus reven
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>>>>>- US Post Office (nearly bankrupt)
>>
>>This has in no way made things worse. It's the best postal system in the world.
Yeah if you ignore FedEx and UPS and the Internet, all of which provide me with better, faster, cheaper mailing service than the Government service does. So yeah you're right. USPS is the best in the world - if you ignore the ones that are better. ;-)
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>>>>>Sedition Act was repealed on December 13, 1920. SO while it was a dick move, that very same
Re:Take Control? (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah if you ignore FedEx and UPS and the Intenet, all of which provide me with better, faster, cheaper mailing service than the Government service does. So yeah you're right. USPS is the best in the world - if you ignore the ones that are better. ;-) .
Show me how UPS or FedEx can afford to send a letter across the country for $.44. Yeah, didn't think so. And don't get me started on the "but UPS and FedEx can't deliver first class mail". Even if they could, they can't do it for $.44.
A private company would eliminate unprofitable lines that lack customers (like how Circuit City disappeared), but government keeps foolishly running lines that are losing money. That needs to stop. ----- Also in my personal opinion, Amtrak's time has passed. Passenger trains are an old 1800s technology that should disappear like the wagon train disappeared, other than for limited usage in cities (metros, subways, etc). Trains are fine in heavily-populated cities, but when going long distance most people would rather travel by car or bus, not train. Let's give them want THEY desire, rather than run mostly-empty trains that they don't desire. .
You're detached from reality. The Acela line in the northeast is in heavy use and ridership has been increasing over the past few years, with 27 million people riding it in 2009. It's be in more use if Amtrak was able to get priority on the lines, but private industry owns the rail lines and thus Amtrak has to work around CSX's schedule to get you from point A to B. As for amount of money, the FAA got $14 billion dollars in 2009. Amtrak got $2 billion. How expensive do you think airflight would be if the FAA had to be self-funded? How well could Amtrak do if they got $14 billion?
Better or cheaper : Pick one (Score:3, Insightful)
- Government School/Dept of Education (indoctrinates rather than educates - also very money-inefficient compared to private alternatives that d a better job with half as much cash, or an equal job with one-quarter as much cash)
There is precious little evidence that private schools can do the job cheaper AND better. Seriously. I defy you to find credible evidence to support your claim. I've looked and it simply does not exist. There are little successes here and there but there is no evidence that schools can be privatized on a mass scale and still succeed. It's a worthy idea but no one has figured out a way to make it work.
Taxpayer funded public schools have to take every child, not just the ones they want. I went to a priva
Re:Take Control? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because letting corporations run completely amok has never caused grave economic consequences.
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Like the internet itself?
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Yeah, this is a terrible argument. I'm sorry, but it just doesn't make sense. Essentially you're implying that the government should do nothing because *some* government programs have had problems. It's not really any smarter than suggesting that we should outlaw all profit-generating companies because some of them have caused economic damage.
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Also it's not about the web specifically, it's about the infrastructure that brings the entire internet (including the web) to the american people.
In before... (Score:2, Insightful)
In before the right wingers start ranting about how net neutrality violates the principles of the free market. (FYI, it doesn't)
Re:In before... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't be silly, of course it does. And so do prohibitions on human slavery. The Free Market just isn't nearly so great as people make it out to be.
Re:In before... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok, well first off I have to apologize. My OP was a little flame-baitish because I didn't really know how to get started on my point. :-)
The point that I want to make is that the free market, to the extent that we think of it, has limits, or at least limits to where it's beneficial to society, something a lot of people fail to recognize. Note that I didn't say net neutrality doesn't violate the free market, only that it doesn't violate the principles of the free market, which are that free and open trade between parties produces a net benefit.
The reason it doesn't violate those principles is because the current state US broadband exhibits one of the primary market failures, which is a lack of adequate competition to keep producers from gouging their customers.
Re:In before... (Score:4, Insightful)
An even bigger reason is because all the ISPs they're trying to regulate only managed to get so powerful because the government gave them public money and allowed them to put wires up all over the place ignoring property rights, thus effectively setting them up as monopolies. Of course companies that use public funds and get special privileges from the government should be regulated.
Re:In before... (Score:4, Insightful)
You do know that it's government keeping only a few Cable providers available don't you? (ie: I can't start up my own cable company tomorrow and offer service to my neighborhood without going through my local government.) They also sign deals with cable companies to have exclusive rights to areas for certain periods of time (effectively granting a monopoly to said company.)
You want government to fix a government problem by adding more government?
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You want government to fix a government problem by adding more government?
How else do you propose cable companies secure the righ
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Yes.
What you seem to be asserting is that the source of the problem cannot be the source of the solution, which is not only ridiculous, it's backwards. I create problems every day that I have to solve. I lose my keys. I piss somebody off. In many cases, nobody else will fix the problem; in others, nobody *can*. The source of the problem is the first and best source of the solution. It's only when the source cannot or will not fix itself, and those problems are harming self or others, that external inf
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This is a bit unfair, since the reason this situation exists is that the cable and telco operators lobbied for it. It's illegal in many states for a municipality to start an ISP in competition with any commercial operator. And it's not illegal for you to start your own ISP, contrary to your assertion. It's just expensive, and you may not be able to use the public rights of way to do it. Why? It's expensive because you have to dig up every street in a city to put in your cables. And digging up al
Re:In before... (Score:4, Insightful)
You do know that it's government keeping only a few Cable providers available don't you? (ie: I can't start up my own cable company tomorrow and offer service to my neighborhood without going through my local government.) They also sign deals with cable companies to have exclusive rights to areas for certain periods of time (effectively granting a monopoly to said company.)
You want government to fix a government problem by adding more government?
Municipal government != state government != federal government. While in general, governments at the lower levels are better at serving the interests of their citizens, it's not a hard-and-fast rule. As an example, "fix[ing] a (municipal and state) government problem by adding more (federal) government" was exactly how we got rid of Jim Crow laws. The monopoly status of cable providers, and the power it gives them over the internet in the age of broadband, is a problem which clearly is not going to be resolved at the municipal or state level, nor is the free market going to invisible-hand it away. If you've got a better alternative than the proposed very mild federal intervention, feel free to present it.
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Don't be silly, of course it does. And so do prohibitions on human slavery. The Free Market just isn't nearly so great as people make it out to be.
You have a funny definition of free market. Giving one person the freedom to walk all over other peoples' freedoms is less free, not more. A system that maximizes freedom must necessarily regulate bullies, monopolies, tyrants, and the likes of Comcast. ...and I think that's easily as great as people make it out to be.
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You have a funny definition of free market. Giving one person the freedom to walk all over other peoples' freedoms is less free, not more. A system that maximizes freedom must necessarily regulate bullies, monopolies, tyrants, and the likes of Comcast.
No, you're the one with a funny definition.
"A system that maximizes freedom" by forced redistribution of power or wealth isn't a free market. It may be a "fair" or "equitable" or "egalitarian" or an "open" market, but any system that imposes restrictions on the actions of some or all parties is inherently less free than one imposing fewer or no restrictions. The perfectly free market, in other words, must by definition be totally unregulated. But unlimited freedom is not a virtue unto itself.
Orderly free
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Well it depends on what you mean by a "free market". Is a "free market" simply one that has not government control or regulation? Or is it one where the people buying/selling/trading on that market have free and open choice between many alternatives? I think a lot of people intend the former when they say "free market", but the theoretical economic benefits that people talk about (e.g. the "invisible hand") come from the latter.
In the latter sense, the idea of having a "free market" is incompatible with
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"We've been over this, but for you and the rest of the slow-learners..."
Ad hominem, dismissed out of hand.
"Free market principles have are antithetical to slavery, where you get (virtually) free labor out of a human. Free markets do quite well at pricing labor. Forced labor is outside of that realm."
Says who? When? Historically speaking, the less we regulate labor markets, the cheaper labor becomes; whatever theories you may have to the contrary, empirical evidence pretty much trumps them. Furthermore, you
Re:In before... (Score:5, Insightful)
But Comcast (or Cox or Cablevision or.....) isn't a free market. It's government-created monopoly and therefore the government needs to regulate the monopoly to ensure it doesn't abuse its power. Just the same way electric monopolies or natural gas monopolies are regulated.
I'm a right winger and I support Net Neutrality as necessary.
And yes I approve this message.
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Well if you're just going to make my argument for me it's no fun.
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You could add that internet providers should be regulated the same as phone companies.
I wonder if these pseudo-conservatives are old enough to remember Ma Bell.
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Okay well here's something you'll probably disagree with:
- I think the existence of modern technology (fiber) means there's no longer a need for a monopoly. Let the government run 100 fibers under the street, and lease each one to a different company (comcast, cox, apple, google, time-warner, etc).
Then let each homeowner decide which fiber he wants to tap into. True competition.
Re:In before... (Score:4, Interesting)
But but... that means the government has a monopoly on pulling cable!
Seriously I agree with you, but the typical pro-business free-market thinker will tell you that you are a big-government liberal who wants to take over or put out of business the local cable and telephone companies by assuming government ownership of last-mile fiber.
Instead we should let each and every company with a few billion dollars to spend come along and tear up every street to lay their own fiber. (And no, we can't pull another line in the same conduit. Either the company that owns the conduit shouldn't be forced to host their competition, or the conduit itself is a government monopoly that must be abolished!)
Were I a land developer, and if the local government didn't force me to let the local cable and telcos run lines to every house in my new subdivision, I'd tell them both to GTFO, pull my own fibers from each new house to my own CO (fibers owned and managed by the HOA or each homeowner), and then encourage any and every company wanting to service my neighborhood to run a trunk to my CO.
Someone would do it - heck I bet Google would do it - and then the local cable and telephone companies would scramble to do it, too.
Re:In before... (Score:4, Insightful)
>>>Do you think a fiber bundle to every door is something that just happens? That's a massive government project.
So is war but the government doesn't seem to have any problem organizing that. And besides it doesn't have to be done all at once. Start with one city (say Baltimore), see how it works, and then do another city. And another. And another. It took 30 years to finish paving the last mile of Eisenhower's original interstate project, but it was still worthwhile.
How does this relate to the recent court ruling? (Score:2, Interesting)
The implications of this for net neutrality are important so I'm wondering how this effects the recent court ruling that stated the FCC didn't have the power to regulate them http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_15160454 [mercurynews.com] Does this coming out of committee start the process that will allow a new law which will make the court ruling moot? If so, then hooray!
Re:How does this relate to the recent court ruling (Score:5, Informative)
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The law gives the FCC several categories to put things in, and gives them different powers over each category. That ruling said they were trying to use powers from category A on ISPs while ISPs were in category B. So now they're trying to move ISPs into category A.
More to the point - in the early 2000s the FCC moved ISPs from Category A to Category B, now they are trying to move them back to where they were originally.
The first (erroneous IMNHO) move to category B (aka 'information service providers') was finalized by the NCTA v Brand X [wikipedia.org] scotus ruling that said the FCC has the authority to determine which category an ISP falls into.
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Corporations against freedom (Score:3, Insightful)
1 out of 10 government systems fail, and of course they will. The government puts out a lot of ideas per year. Medicaid was the one that worked. Social Security was one of the ones that didn't.
I find it amazing that corporations are overstepping their bounds and people complain that net neutrality with negate the ability for companies to regulate your internet. In short, they want to take away your freedom unless you give them more money.
Why is it people think the government doing absolutely anything is infringing upon rights but when a corporation does it then it's okay?
Re:Corporations against freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
If Government's success rate is around 90%, with 1 in 10 failing, I have way more faith in my Government than any corporation or business.
Re:Corporations against freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
Social Security's biggest problem is that it's money constantly gets raided.
It's like a corporate retirement plan that gets abused by the CEO and underfunded.
Well, it's not like we didn't see this one coming. (Score:5, Interesting)
With the FCC being smacked down with regards to "lol you can't regulate us" the first step has been done to regulate the industry, not because of some wild-eyed's bureaucrat's fantasy, but because it needs to be done.
The days of the mom-and-pop ISP are over and done with. The lack of regulation let these thrive, but the large telecoms and cable companies have gobbled up every single one of these since the dot-bomb. They are gone, never to be seen again.
Now everyone is left with either a local monopoly or at best a duopoly of broadband providers, who are increasingly out to screw the customer, like Comcast has been shown to do. Comcast wanted to play hardball. Well, here it is, guys, the big-time. Don't say we didn't warn you.
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BMO
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Just curious - What do you think of recent comments from Obama's employee Cass Sunnstein, that the FCC should mandate equal representation? i.e. If democrats.org has a posting about some political event, then they must also insert a popup window that links to republicans.org. Like a Fairness Doctrine for the web?
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That's because he's lying.
It's not recent.
It's from 2001. 9 bloody years ago.
Go read the other message in the thread that demonstrated this.
Seriously, this is why you stay the fuck away from prisonplanet, because it's conspiracy lunacy, with shit taken out of context and presented in a manner designed to frighten you. Because fear sells.
Jesus Christ.
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BMO
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Now everyone is left with either a local monopoly or at best a duopoly of broadband providers
One of the proposals that always sounded good to me: Forbid the company that provides the physical infrastructure from offering any service. So for example, if Verizon builds the FIOS network, then they can sell access to ISPs (and voice/television providers) but they cannot act as provider themselves. Further, make it so that they cannot negotiate special/exclusive deals with anyone, but have to offer the same terms/prices to all comers.
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They did well when everyone used dialup, because as ISP was basically no different from any other company with lots of phones.
I think they also did OK when there were line-sharing regulations, so the phone company was required to rent phone line loops to them at cost. But not as well as in the age of dial-up, since the phone companies could generally get away with providing horrible service, taking weeks to do things that they'd do in a day or two for lines going to their own customers.
Now you have to eithe
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"Weren't the mom-and-pops thriving under the original rules, back when broadband was classified as a telecom service and hence subject to regulation?"
No, the mom-and-pops were never classified as telecom carriers. They sure as hell weren't classified common carriers. They fell under the information provider rules.
I'm guessing you're talking about the deregulation of the pricing rules for the "fat pipe" telecoms that the mom-and-pops bought bandwidth from where previously the telecoms couldn't price them o
"the Web" is not "the Internet" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Incredibly misleading headline (Score:5, Insightful)
This headline and summary blow and are almost exactly contrary to the facts. The FCC's position, as outlined here [broadband.gov] is that the FCC is identifying *only* the transmission component of broadband as a telecom service. In practical terms, this means precisely that they will *not* pursue net neutrality-based oversight at this time, and will ignore content-related matters in favor of simple access and transmission oversight.
In other words, the "web" itself is exactly the thing they are not trying to take greater control of.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Incredibly misleading headline (Score:4, Informative)
moving us closer to socialism and the end of The American Way of Life.
Yeah, I know! That would be so horrible!
Instead, you'd have socialism, where your ability to get a good education and a good job doesn't depend on how much money your parents have but how skilled you are at what you do. When you get sick, you get cured instead of gouged. When you buy a cell phone, you get serviced by well-regulated telephone companies---you don't get gouged*.
(* seriously---you're on the hook for 2 years?? I'm on the hook for 6 months, paying 10$/mo. for internet on my N900. My operator doesn't care whether I tether, use skype, or run my landline through asterisk on my laptop via the internet onto my cell; they just give me 1 gig / mo. and 0.10$/minute; and once I'm off the expensive contract, I'm back to getting 50 free minutes and 50 texts per month. That's *free*, zero charge).
I'm not really sure why it works, but Danes are the happiest people on earth (or were in 2007): http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=4086092&page=1 [go.com]
One good thing from all of this... (Score:2)
I suspect that a large part of this was due to their desire to go after and shut down providers that peddle spam, child porn, warez, and other services that aren't legal. I'm all for that. To be honest, the net has been a little too free and "wild west" like - to the point where the bandits and claim-jumpers have all but taken over.
And it's not like they don't scan and know everything already that you or I do online anyways. This just gives them the means to regulate the service providers and force them t
What the FCC is trying to do... (Score:2)
ABOUT TIME! It IS a TELECOM technology! (Score:2)
Verizon (Score:5, Insightful)
Reading the article, I see that Verizon is against this, so I'm probably for it.
I especially grimaced when I read this part:
That's more transparent than usual, isn't it? In case it's not, I'll translate: "How are we supposed to have free reign to let America's infrastructure steadily decay, if regulation comes from someone other than the politicians we bought?"
Is this from a telecom patsy or something? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, regulating telecoms does not equal controlling the web.
The reason we want net neutrality is so that network carriers do not control the web, just offer their service without unreasonably interfering in the way a customer uses the network. Reasonable limits could be throttling heavy users WHEN there is high demand in order to more reasonably share network traffic, or when a user is using the network in a criminal way.
For example, without neutral networks, we could have a far-fetched hypothetical situation where an ISP limits the availability or performance of services from competitors, and gives preferential treatment to their own services.
I know that the web becoming more of a high-bandwidth place tossing around videos is pretty far-fetched. I know that it would be pretty crazy for ISP's to start competing with video on demand and telephone providers. I know that it would be ludicrous to expect some cable monopoly, such as Comcast, to manage to come along and snatch up some media outlet, say NBC, around the same time that they push for bandwidth caps and tiered pricing. Certainly they would never do something like make those limits apply to other media outlets, but not apply those limits to their own content.
Furthermore, nobody could imagine that they could manage to produce astroturf movements to gain sympathy from the average Joe so that not only can they get away with it, people will be begging the big bad government to stop interfering with their plans.
It would never even get this far, so we don't even have to worry about the unthinkable future possibilities, such as ISPs giving network priority and affect the actual network performance of their own content, compared to their competitors. We won't have to worry about ISPs extorting money from websites in order to give them enhanced performance (at the expense of the non-paying sites). We don't have to worry about them rerouting traffic, or trying to limit criticism by controlling the web.
Really, they couldn't even get halfway there without a lot of protest, right?
It's not like they were allowed to become a monopoly through the help of our government anyway.
Re:Bad Title (Score:5, Informative)
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most of the people who don't live in an area where cable or other broadband is available already probably live way, way too far away from a telephone CO for signal attenuation not completely destroy any notion of broadband via DSL being usable.
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You don't have to have all the DSLAMs in the CO. You can run fiber out to a remote point and put a DSLAM wherever you want. Yes, it costs money to do this. Maybe they should try using that Universal Service Fund for something real.
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>>>way too far away from a telephone CO for signal attenuation not completely destroy any notion of broadband via DSL being usable.
Central Office -> Fiber Optic --> DSLAM (which hooks into the already-existing phone lines). That's how my neighborhood is wired up and we have 12 Megabit/s available here.
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The FCC should mandate that the phone company provide DSL to every customer that requests it.
That would be stupid. Requiring that they provide Internet access of at least some minimum speed (1Mbps maybe?) might be reasonable, but mandating a particular technology is not.
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Just provide a country wide free WiFi/WiMax service paid for by a federal tax on all computers and devices with WiFi/WiMax receivers. Provide strict QoS on this network so that P2P traffic does not drown out VOIP and Web traffic and ... you're done. Now all private companies will need to really stretch their legs to provide a much better service than that if they want to stay in business.
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>>>mandating a particular technology is not.
Good point.
I suppose the law could be written, "The phone company must provide DSL (or similar broadband alternative) to every customer that requests internet." - Then the companies would have a choice: DSL, FiOS, or some other technology. BUT let's be honest - DSL is the cheapest route because the wires are already laid-down under the earth, or on top of poles. I suspect 99% of phone companies would choose the DSL to hook-up Farmer Joe in Nowhere W
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There's a hell of a lot of people that do not have a POTS phone anymore.
Re:Tyranny (Score:5, Insightful)
The Internet is one of the last few bastions of freedom left in the world...
...and since you only have one or maybe 2 ISPs to choose from, the Evil Corporations can steal that freedom pretty much however they want. Unless the FCC tells them not to, which is what this is.
Re:Tyranny (Score:4, Informative)
Because its prohibitively expensive to be a physical plant provider for the last mile when there is already an established player?
Yeah its called a Natural Monopoly
Re:Tyranny (Score:4, Insightful)
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Tyranny always rears its head under the guise of national defense, war or some sort of civil protection from the bad, ugly guys out there. The Internet is one of the last few bastions of freedom left in the world...too bad the Statists out there cannot see the Federal Government for what it truly is.
And remember when those damned abolitionists reared their ugly heads and took slavery from the free market? They really showed how much they love freedom then, didn't they? Damn Federal government! Damn them and all those who question capitalism!
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So let me get this straight... in some bizarre way you find ANY moral equivalence between... ownership and enslavement of human beings... and an ISP being able to give preferential treatment to customers based on how much they pay?
Riiight.
Why not try to relate net neutrality to what the actions of Hitler while you are at it? It would be about as ridiculous.
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But individual rights trump the right to trade. For example you can't buy a bunch of computers and then store them in your neighbors' basement. That's infringing upon his individual rights. Nobody is so stupid as to think "free market" trumps the rights of the individual.
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This is all about power and control. You have to ask yourself, what percentage of my life do you want the some wire monopoly to control.
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Just make a regulation that all fees for this service must be itemised from this list. Oh and if they are really bad, then the government can actually force a monopolic or duopolic service provider to provide fixed services to fixed regions at fixed costs with fixed service quality levels. I don't know if that has ever been done in US. but it has been done elsewhere. Another alternative is simply for the government to provide their own baseline service, such as city wide WiFi and have the private sector com