online.wsj.com — Technology may be changing faster than we can keep track, but we are well acquainted with the frailties and foibles of human institutions in Washington. Sometimes it's wiser for mortals to stand aside and leave technology to advance at its own pace. The Web has earned the benefit of the doubt.
Nov 2, 2009 View in Crawl 4
harsesusNov 2, 2009
Yah man, the government can't do anything right, o wait, they built the f**king internet, I forgot.
dauntless1Nov 2, 2009
@mintedmeadow""Net neutrality has always been an informal rule that the ISPs are now beginning to break in a quest for greater profits and control at the expense of end users."Could I please have some evidence of this?"Look up articles about bandwidth throttling, deep packet inspection tools, tiered or metered internet plans, and why all of the above have no good reason to exist.
mintedmeadowNov 2, 2009
@KahRahTay: Yes, they are synonyms; that does not mean that, depending on context, they are the same in meaning. "Disagreement" has more than one definition.@Dauntless1: From the article -"The mistake regulators and those who enable them continue to make is trying to micromanage individual technologies or applications," Mr. Downes writes. "The bottom line is simple. Encouraging infrastructure is good; micromanaging it is bad.""consumers have been done a great disservice by corporate interests on both sides of this fight, who have reduced a complicated business and technical problem into a sound bite. They've been told that net neutrality is nothing more and nothing less than a fight for the soul of the Internet.""The best defense against access providers' acting unreasonably is more competition." (This, especially, has been shown to be the case time and time again)"In highly regulated industries, regulations become barriers to entry. It's costly for new competitors to comply with the rules, which are designed for incumbents." (Same with this.)People may disagree with them, but they are still all valid points to make.
mintedmeadowNov 2, 2009
@appleseed1234:"You're essentially asking him to prove a negative. The internet is effectively neutral because until recently the ISP's weren't fiddling with content."So in other words, he's.. making things up?"Also, I believe it was your friend Reagan who demolished the Fairness Doctrine"This might completely shatter your worldview, but not liking the Democratic party doesn't make me a Republican."allowing the media to spin completely out of control, generating Fox News and the "liberal media" myth."First of all, the Fairness Doctrine did not apply to TV media, it applied to radio.Second of all, the "liberal media" myth did not come about as a result of the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine. There is a definite liberal media bias, just as there is a definite conservative bias, on all news sources. It simply depends on which one you look at it. Third of all, MSNBC and CNN have also been guilty, in the past, of bias and flat-out lying/misinformation just as Fox News. This is why I don't watch cable TV. It's not reliable. However, it doesn't bother or offend me if it's on the air. People should be able to view whatever they want. I don't want the government controlling the news.@Dauntless1: Thank you for this. I'll take a look into it.
dauntless1Nov 2, 2009
@mintedmeadow""The mistake regulators and those who enable them continue to make is trying to micromanage individual technologies or applications," Mr. Downes writes. "The bottom line is simple. Encouraging infrastructure is good; micromanaging it is bad."The micromanaging is being done on the part of major ISPs who are desperate to milk every dollar from customers who are starting to realize that the future is with VOIP and downloadable streaming media, not traditional phone or cable offerings. The "encouraging infrastructure" part? The major ISPs went to washington for a handout back in the late 90's. They said there was no way that their network could support the estimated requirements of the future. THe government decided that growth of the internet was neccessary, and granted the ISPs almost 900 billion dollars, to run fiber to the curb throughout America. This hasn't been done. The entire point of real net neutrality is not the government putting regulations on the internet, it's the government putting regulations on the ISPs prohibiting anti-consumer tactics such as bandwidth throttling, which is currently happening. (See Time Warner, Comcast)""consumers have been done a great disservice by corporate interests on both sides of this fight, who have reduced a complicated business and technical problem into a sound bite. They've been told that net neutrality is nothing more and nothing less than a fight for the soul of the Internet."In a sense this is the absolute truth. The "soul" of the internet has always been about freedom of information, and the ease with which a company can start from nothing. The internet is a major, if not THE major source for future growth and revenue in the coming years, and the current major ISPs would strangle that, as many of the coming technologies would gut their primary service offerings. Their solution is to blame bandwidth shortages on the consumer, certain that we have forgotten about their little 900 billion dollar taxpayer party a decade ago, when we in fact have not. Bandwidth throttling, deep packet inspection and metered internet access are all solutions to a problem that the ISPs artificially created to stifle future competition. This alone should be all the evidence anyone needs to understand the ISPs cannot be trusted with the responsibility of self regulation. (Additionally, the ISPs have been pointedly NOT increasing their infrastructure despite complaining about how strained they are, and despite having posted serious profits over the last few years. Even without the money from a decade ago, they have had ample time, evidence and money to make sure this problem never occured.)
Closed AccountNov 3, 2009
before broadband, ISPs generally offered service through phone lines and were regulated by common carrier laws because it sat on top of a telecommunications network - the internet was neutral by regulation (and as you say has worked just fine, thanks for arguing for net neutrality). this isn't the case anymore, and current net neutrality regulations are being proposed to address this new type of service. the reason we're hearing a lot about it now is because there has been controversy over whether or not internet distributions through cable and dsl could be considered telecommunications. since it's not, and ISPs are too concerned about profit over upgrading their poor infrastructure (despite being given government money for the specific purpose of upgrading their poor infrastructure and failing to do so), they're looking at non-neutral means to regulated customer usage. frankly, it needs to be stopped. innovation in internet based technologies will diminish greatly if people won't be able to freely have access to these technologies as they do now. remember, the government isn't regulating our use of or the content of the internet, they're regulating the manner in which the companies that provide internet service are able to run their distribution in regards to packet priority.
Closed AccountNov 3, 2009
tiered usage schemes aren't bad, but i'm wary of how they'll effectively be implemented. take comcast for instance. they offered 12mbps, but after quite a fiasco, implemented a 250 gig policy with the justification that less than 1 percent of their users used that much a month. a little math shows that 250gigs is the same as using 12mbps for approximately 46 hours straight. that's only approximately 6 percent of a month that they consider that you're allowed to use your internet for. the real problem is that they seemingly have no problem offering people over-priced service that they essentially do not use, and isn't in any way related to cost per unit of bandwidth or an average of such, but complain when someone still only uses a small percentage of the service they paid for that month. this makes me question the plans that will be proposed. presumably, they have someone in their company that isn't inept at math and will realize that the large majority of people are being taken to the bank, so to speak, with their current fixed rate plan, thus implementing the new plan will, again presumably, create even more revenue for them. this leads one to assume that the plan will likely be a greater ripoff than what it currently is.