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."
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!
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
Re:Take Control? (Score:3, Interesting)
Like the internet itself?
Re:Take Control? (Score:3, Interesting)
>>>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 arose. That extra profit was simply rolled-back into the public treasury for other uses. I don't see any harm in this - it means the program is successful. Certainly better for the USPO to be profitable, than to be in its current status (closing offices due to lack of funds).
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:3, Interesting)
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 freedom is restricted freedom, and it's highly desirable. But call a spade a spade. It's not literally "free"--quite the opposite. And that's a good thing. People should not be free without parameters, because it is a terribly chaotic and unfair way to live.
As soon as you say "the most freedom for everyone", you're no longer talking about freedom, but about equality of access or equality of opportunity, which is inherently not free. The free market is a simplified, elementary model--the economic equivalent of treating a falling cow as a frictionless sphere.
Re:In before... (Score:1, Interesting)
Better yet, just make it a public utility instead of letting transnational corporations siphon off a big chunk off the top in "profits".
Re:In before... (Score:3, Interesting)
You want government to fix a government problem by adding more government?
How else do you propose cable companies secure the right to lay cable across sufficient public and private property to actually provide the service?
Learn from the Mistakes of History - darn it!!! (Score:1, Interesting)
Canada is far ahead of the US in how far it has gone down this road - learn from it people!
In Canada, we too spend hundreds of millions by giving it to the telcos.
To see that telcos are doing the right things, we have a government oversight board called the CRTC.
The result:
- A duopoly between Rogers and Bell who own EVERYTHING.
- Broadband speeds are junk
- wireless costs are worse than that of places like Zimbabwe!
(how do a smartphone plans with 500Mb sound to you? No? Prefer the $0.03/Kb in normal plans? A mere $300 for 10 min of youtube! $180,000 if you dare use 6Gb of data. A bargain!)
So, how does this government panel (made up almost solely of ex-Bell and Rogers people) protect us - the public?
Well, they:
- recently ruled that throttling bittorrent is allowed as long as they give notice
- unlimited home Internet plans could be killed for small ISPs that lease their lines.
and about a hundred other rulings.
The answer to your problem, America, is not to copy our failure, but to regulate the companies into forcing them to sell access to their lines to wholesale customers at wholesale prices, and increase competition.
While net neutrality, as a concept is a good thing, I'm sure that any Bill the congress writes will just codify the desires of the Telco lobbyists by entrenching their monopolies into law. I don't trust any of them with any kind of Internet bill - remember the DMCA?
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:In before... (Score:3, Interesting)
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 all the streets whenever someone wants to start an ISP is a big hassle for the residents. And that's why you may not be allowed to do it, or may have to jump through some really big hoops to get permission to do it.
But if you want to start an ISP that operates over the air, you can, and it's a lot cheaper. There are a lot of ways to do it, and products you can buy to make it happen. But it's still a tough business to get into, because you're competing with companies that already have existing infrastructure. You have to take away their customers, not just find new customers.
But what's really frustrating about this article is that the authors make it sound like the FCC is trying to regulate the web, when in fact the genesis of this whole discussion was Comcast forging RST packets in TCP streams when it thought you were running bitstream. The FCC, I think very rightly, came down on them like a ton of bricks for doing that. Then the Supremes decided they couldn't do that unless they regulated ISPs as telecommunications providers (which, as it happens, is what they are). Then the FCC decided to regulate them as telecommunications providers. There's nothing underhanded going on here. The FCC is just doing its job.
Re:In before... (Score:3, Interesting)
"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 clearly treat a system which allows slavery as a system which allows forced labor... such systems, traditionally, do not view slaves as people, but rather as property. Fleshy robots. Slaves are a product, a commodity, to be purchased or sold or manufactured. Barring slavery does nothing to make a market freer, it is a purely social rule.
"You'd think folks like you could come up with an actual example, but I suppose you're just saying this for the echo chamber (which put you up to +5)."
An example of what? The free market not being so great? I'd give one, or two, or more, but they'd be shot down as being failures of something else, "not enough deregulation" is the most common. The Great Depression, the Great Recession, the Gilded Age, the Reconstruction Period (see: The Jungle). Or do you mean an example of the free market creating slave labor? North Korea's Kaesong Industrial region, where South Korean firms hire cheap North Korean labor, but tender their pay directly to the DPRK government, for one.
Maybe, rather than assume that I'm some sort of ultra-leftist commie, you could move the window back from psycholand where the Becks and Limbaughs of the world have pushed it, and consider that maybe, just maybe, not everyone to the left of Friedman is a lunatic. I know that's a "radical" thing to propose, but really, it's for the best.