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from the so-long,-interwebs,-it-was-nice-knowing-you dept.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission next month is planning a vote to kill Obama-era rules demanding fair treatment of web traffic and may decide to vacate the regulations altogether, according to people familiar with the plans.
The move would reignite a years-long debate that has seen Republicans and broadband providers seeking to eliminate the rules, while Democrats and technology companies support them. The regulations passed in 2015 bar broadband providers such as AT&T Inc. and Comcast Corp. from interfering with web traffic sent by Google, Facebook Inc. and others.
[...] Pai plans to seek a vote in December, said two people who asked not to be identified because the matter hasn't been made public. As the head of a Republican majority, he is likely to win a vote on whatever he proposes.
[...] The agency declined to comment on the timing of a vote. "We don't have anything to report at this point," said Tina Pelkey, a spokeswoman for the commission.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @08:20PM (18 children)
Fiber runs over land which must be seized by the government using eminent domain. Without seizing property, at least partially (easements), it is not realistic to run fiber. Somebody would refuse to sell, or would demand a silly price. Spending a $billion to get property from 100,000 people is going to fail if enough of them demand a $million.
It's likewise with spectrum. We sure don't want companies competing for spectrum by cranking power to drown each other out. We let the FCC allocate things and even take things back.
So, having taken government control, why should we then hand control over to a corporation for their private benefit? Simple: we shouldn't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @08:42PM (6 children)
If your solution is "Get the men with guns to say what's what!", then I submit your solution is probably a very bad one; if you have a good solution, then it should be anti-fragile enough to work around obstinate property owners, if not convince them to participate willingly.
On a similar note, the FCC is a government-sponsored monopoly; we know that it's wise to be wary of monopolies, especially ones that arise from imposition (men with guns) rather than market success (this is especially true when such a monopoly's behavior is tied to subjective politics, rather than objective resources).
There is profit in agreement, so I dispute that it's not possible for individuals (and their organizations) to produce order without there being a government-mandated agency to control everything. After all, a distributed systems as complex as the World Wide Web works, despite the fact that there has never been a government agency designing how it should work.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @10:08PM
Your delusion is cute. Oh wait, I meant ugly. Like "you'd be better off walking upside down and backwards" ugly.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RamiK on Thursday November 16 2017, @10:50PM (3 children)
Then abolish property laws while you're at it. Policing is a government-sponsored monopoly. The market will correct itself towards rich people with lots of property paying more to field private police to guard it while everyone else will pay for the nice kids standing on the street corner to watch over their houses. It's also an auto-correcting market solution to unemployment and crime: If there's too little to do people will commit crimes until they'll be paid not to. If there's enough jobs, they'll prefer them over the dangerous business of stepping over some-other person's land and risking getting shot in the face.
Of course, this face-value logical argument (that I actually heard anarchists make) is idiotic. Right after having their own houses protected, the rich will extend their protection contracts to cover their employees. Soon enough, you'll have a couple of big security firms fighting over the market until one ends up as the natural monopoly we call government.
In the same way, what you're proposing for net-neutrality is equally silly: Letting content providers "compete" over better packet prioritization will end up with a monopoly of a single ISP as the wealthiest of the content providers will join hands only giving money to one provider and letting everyone know they should move to them. And it's not some academic argument. This is precisely what happened in most countries when communication infrastructure first entered the market. Telegraphs, phones, radio, television... Hell, utilities too. It's why we have those laws there in the first place.
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @03:50AM (2 children)
Got it.
By the way, a government that arises from free market enterprise is going to be a lot different than a government that arises from coercion at the very start.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday November 17 2017, @12:43PM (1 child)
But coercion is unavoidable when the resources are limited. Even if not right from the start, humans reproduction will out pace available resource. At that point, you're being coerced into joining one trade group or the next or risk getting killed. The Greek city-states have a fairly well documented stretch of about 500 years of this pattern repeating until Rome took over by force. And Rome wasn't a free market by any means. Quite the opposite, they had a very rigid property class system with a very rigid tax code cementing it. The most important of which was their equestrian aristocracy were allowed to hold so many lands and represent so many people in the assemblies and government only based on how many horses they fielded during war. It made a huge difference compared to the typical city-state since it gave huge benefits to growing military might even internally. If you look at Athens by comparison, their ruling class didn't really compete over military might internally. One representative could filed a dozen or so commanders. Another, a bit more or less. But they were all equals to the law. Ironically, that fairness and freedom ended up stagnating their military growth since it was more profitable for the families to focus on trade and political marriages then warfare.
Anyhow, similar pattern happened in China and India. So, you can sum it up with that even if you happen to have an ideal democracy and free market, your neighbors might not have one and there's a real possibility they'll focus on warfare like the Spartans did to the point they'll run you over.
In the end, it's all about balancing internal and external competition to match your neighbors military might first, and then allow the best possible growth second. And that act of balancing is the very definition of a non-free-market.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @07:40PM
It's impossible to have a conversation; we disagree vehemently on the meanings of the words "fair", "free market", "freedom", "property", "profit" and probably many others such as "law", "order", "self-interest", and so on.
I'll simply note that monarchists scoffed merrily at the ridiculous, patently absurd notion of a representative democracy of The People, and yet here we are today.
You are scoffing at libertarianism in the same way, because you cannot see past your own authoritarian paradigm; you refuse to envisage improvements in both culture and technology that would enable a shift in the organization of society. The monarchists were myopic, and so are you.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @10:56PM
You don't like the solution of men with guns. OK, so if my company bulldozes a path across your property for trucks and then digs a trench to lay fiber, you won't expect the government to help you? Good to know!
We'll be glad to do this without guns. Or, if you were going to bring your own non-government guns, my company can do likewise.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @08:48PM (6 children)
Or we could just allow any ISP to make use of the existing lines instead of allowing towns and cities to grant monopolies to specific ISPs. And allow municipal ISPs, of course.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @08:58PM (4 children)
At the very least, a municipal ISP would be a company that receives income by decree, rather than by agreement with customers.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Thursday November 16 2017, @09:40PM (3 children)
Yes, a good monopoly. Meaning, that the monopoly *could* be run by the state in a non-profit fashion. That can be muddied up a bit with providing private companies contracts to provide these monopoly services, but that is a different problem.
At this point, sending a packet is an important as a telephone call (they're nearly indistinguishable now), as important as electricity and water. It's become fundamental infrastructure no different than an interstate highway, and in the same way, has tremendous consequences with the economy. The interstate highways are what allowed our growth in the first place and fueled our economy, and the ability to send packets nearly instantaneously created the economy surrounding the Internet.
I'm absolutely for ALL municipalities being able to roll out fiber, wireless, whatever, to provide infrastructure for citizens to send packets to each other. Internet will be free to use for all who can connect up wirelessly, but rate limited. Enough to check email, use government websites, banking, etc., but not enough for HD video. Wired connections to residences and buildings will be paid for by taxes. All connections are rate limited, unless you want to pay extra to the city for more bandwidth. If you actually pay for Internet, you're really just paying for more Internet faster.
Since this is at a municipality level, there will be tremendous bargaining power with corporations. Netflix already behaves pretty well, and pioneered their own CDN to assist small ISPs with Netflix traffic. Most likely a slam dunk that Netflix would cooperate with the municipality and install enough CDNs to prevent costly traffic that transits out of the municipalities network. Same can go with other major service providers. The municipality will provide the connections and rack space, but the corporations provide their own equipment and maintenance.
At this point AT&T can kiss our fucking asses. We can eliminate their easements, and basically, kick them out of the municipality. If they want revenue, they can negotiate a city at a time to provide either local networks, or transit capability to other networks. We can negotiate with the big boys to provide transit for our packets outside of the municipal network. Nothing says we shouldn't have more than one either, or be multi-homed.
I would think Net Neutrality would exist at that point. Any ISP attempting to get their grubby hands on the packets and play favorites will find that they can't service the last mile anymore, and dealing with a city at a time and its bargaining power precludes them from traffic shaping, or price gouging for decent service. They literally have no power over the packets anymore.
Anywhere two adjacent cities can decide to create fiber between them, allows them to create cheaper peering and transit agreements.
I would love it if cities took over delivering packets.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @09:53PM (2 children)
There's no reason to suspect that a monopoly (especially one founded on income-by-decree and political whim) will perform well in the long run.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @10:11PM (1 child)
Lol, cause I sure LOVE all the innovation my current choice of ISPs give me. Ancient DSL or ancient cable, wheeee. Oh, and what about the billions we gave telecoms to put down fiber? Riiiiight, long live the private corps! *cough* I mean HAIL HYDRA!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @10:30PM
By making a municipal ISP, you're removing even the fantasy of some kind of responsibility to the market.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @11:01PM
In a normal town, most poles are owned by the electric power company. The phone company and cable company both get to run lines below that.
You want to "allow any ISP to make use of the existing lines instead of allowing towns and cities to grant monopolies to specific ISPs", but there are no lines without the ISPs. The town owns nothing. The ISPs own the lines.
You'd have to seize the lines, but then who would maintain them? The former owners will be uninterested in doing so!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @08:57PM (3 children)
Yes, how terrible it would be if someone actually wanted to make money. Only the rich should have that privilege.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday November 16 2017, @10:30PM (2 children)
Or one joker demands an exorbitant price, the government says, "Well, that exceeds our budget so I guess the whole project is dead."
Then they should post the name and address of said joker at town hall or something and gently encourage people to take it up with him. Perhaps recommend a good local hardware store where they sell agricultural paraphernalia that could be repurposed by an angry mob?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @12:03AM (1 child)
Could you really blame them? Not everyone wants to slave away for corporations until they are of old age, so the chance of suddenly making a lot of money could free them from that if they use it wisely enough.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday November 17 2017, @04:41PM
Typical "fuck you got mine" Republican attitude.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"