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An egalitarian internet?q

Geo Patric

Geo Patric

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Typo in the title....

A U.S. appeals court ruled Tuesday that the Federal Communications Commission overstepped when it cited cable-giant Comcast Corp. for slowing some Internet traffic on its network, dealing a blow to big Web commerce companies and other proponents of "net neutrality."

*snip*

The court's decision prompted calls Tuesday from Democrats and consumer groups for Congress to pass new legislation to give the FCC more authority to police Internet providers. "They may have won the battle only to face a larger war," said Rebecca Arbogast, a telecom analyst for Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. Inc.
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- Court Backs Comcast Over FCC - WSJ.com

Time to act? Or is it lost already?

geo.
 
So what exactly did Comcast do now that was illegal?
 
Re: An egalitarian internet?

Big TelComs, especially cable companies, want to be able to selectively throttle your internet access based on content. For instance, they slow down your access to NBC.com because they have a sweet deal with FOX or ABC, the goal is to get you to go to ABC or FOX instead.

Don't think for a second that this is about freedom of business or some other bull. It's about money. Here's why:

COMCAST Cable Packages!

Basic package: 29.99/month. You get email, yahoo, and the associated press news site at full blazing speed!* (*everything else throttled to 25k/sec)

PREMIUM News Package: Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, and more! Get blazing fast access* (*the same speed you get right now) to all these sites! +$3.99/month

Blogger-Addiction-Package: Get all your favorite blogs at SUPER high speed! +3.99/month

Pro-Searcher: Don't like Yahoo? Get access to MSN, Google, and AskJeeves at our highest speed! +$5.99/month

and so on and so forth.

They want the "freedom" to censor your content by throttling it, pushing you to other sites that they have a better contract with. Seeing as how cable companies are often localized monopolies, and a crapload of taxpayer dollars go to helping them lay all the expensive cable, I say they can piss off.
 
Re: An egalitarian internet?

And people ask me why I favor nationalizing and protecting our Internet infrastructure.
 
Re: An egalitarian internet?

So maybe the problem isn't that we need net nutrality but rather that we need to stop those monopolies of cable companies in localities. Why not allow multiple cable companies in one area?
 
Re: An egalitarian internet?

phattonez said:
So maybe the problem isn't that we need net nutrality but rather that we need to stop those monopolies of cable companies in localities. Why not allow multiple cable companies in one area?
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It's not that they aren't allowed, it's that it costs a ton of money to dig up every street and knock holes in the wall of every building you want to wire up. Hence all the subsidies for wiring up a city, especially more rural communities that would never be cost-effective to do it privately.
 
Re: An egalitarian internet?

Deuce said:
It's not that they aren't allowed, it's that it costs a ton of money to dig up every street and knock holes in the wall of every building you want to wire up. Hence all the subsidies for wiring up a city, especially more rural communities that would never be cost-effective to do it privately.
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"This report admits that in the days when cable was challenging airwave broadcasters, regulators "did not hesitate to grant exclusive franchises to cable operators"4. It speaks specifically of a long history of successful regulatory lobbying by the cable industry. This report claims that lobbying of regulators resulted in a variety of tactics to deter competition (p. 35). It claims that regulators protected and favored cable incumbents for years. Licensing policies have directly or effectively barred competition in many local markets (p. 44). Such practices are no longer official, but cable companies still succeed in enlisting the help of regulators to bar direct competition (p. 44). Incumbent cable companies have also gotten regulators to use "level playing field laws" to increase the costs of entering the cable market (p. 45). Cable companies have also saddled new competitors with disproportionate shares of subsidies for public education and government programming (p. 45). The cable industry has also succeeded in getting the FCC to quash new competitors with prices for leased access no competitor "could pay and remain commercially viable" (p. 47)."

"Actual experience with partial privatization indicated that the part of the regulatory structure that remained in place served to enable incumbent cable providers to raise their rates without fear of new competition. This is because cable services are typically granted special treated at the local level and work to saddle potential competitors with regulatory burdens."

The Question of the Cable Monopoly - D.W. MacKenzie - Mises Institute

Looks like the problem is companies taking advantage of regulatory practices rather than any "barrier to entry" problem.
 
Re: An egalitarian internet?

Deuce said:
Big TelComs, especially cable companies, want to be able to selectively throttle your internet access based on content. For instance, they slow down your access to NBC.com because they have a sweet deal with FOX or ABC, the goal is to get you to go to ABC or FOX instead.

Don't think for a second that this is about freedom of business or some other bull. It's about money. Here's why:

COMCAST Cable Packages!

Basic package: 29.99/month. You get email, yahoo, and the associated press news site at full blazing speed!* (*everything else throttled to 25k/sec)

PREMIUM News Package: Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, and more! Get blazing fast access* (*the same speed you get right now) to all these sites! +$3.99/month

Blogger-Addiction-Package: Get all your favorite blogs at SUPER high speed! +3.99/month

Pro-Searcher: Don't like Yahoo? Get access to MSN, Google, and AskJeeves at our highest speed! +$5.99/month

and so on and so forth.

They want the "freedom" to censor your content by throttling it, pushing you to other sites that they have a better contract with. Seeing as how cable companies are often localized monopolies, and a crapload of taxpayer dollars go to helping them lay all the expensive cable, I say they can piss off.
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There is a very simple solution. Just don't use Comcast, but use one of the many companies out there that provide DSL without throttling content. There are plenty of them. Some will throttle, some won't. But it's your choice. If Comcast loses too many customers, they will change their minds about throttling. If not, they will keep throttling. It's as simple as that. Your access to the internet is not decided by government, nor is it decided by Comcast. It is decided by you. Just change your provider.
 
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Re: An egalitarian internet?

danarhea said:
There is a very simple solution. Just don't use Comcast, but use one of the many companies out there that provide DSL without throttling content. There are plenty of them. Some will throttle, some won't. But it's your choice. If Comcast loses too many customers, they will change their minds about throttling. If not, they will keep throttling. It's as simple as that. Your access to the internet is not decided by government, nor is it decided by Comcast. It is decided by you. Just change your provider.
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That would be all well and good if you had choices in cable providers. But it's not very often that an area has two cable providers that directly compete. Pretty rare actually.

The answer is to let them directly compete.
 
Re: An egalitarian internet?

rivrrat said:
That would be all well and good if you had choices in cable providers. But it's not very often that an area has two cable providers that directly compete. Pretty rare actually.

The answer is to let them directly compete.
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How?

Use more taxpayer funds to lay a duplicate set of cable?
 
and, just to get a trifle abstract, many of us just like the idea of a purely egalitarian internet.

I favor a national, federal digital network. Which is not to say that the private cable/dsl etc companies cannot continue to operate.The Backbone is private and it is there that control really resides. Federal regulations that restrict restrictions, as throttling one path to speed up another, would prevent the Backbone providers from orchestrating who gets to do what and how fast at the behest of commercial providers (such as Comcast).

Many providers want to offer multi-tier service - some, as has been mentioned, already do. BUT... the providers have full throttle contol of traffic through their own servers. many local communities have WiFied their locales and provide low cost access with no content or traffic controls. We could use lots more and it would be worth it to use federal dollars to subsidize communities that do not have the tax base to do it themselves. Connecting these local nets via a national server/router would allow for everyone to compete on a equal basis. Movies and music, pictures and text will get to the user based on equal access capabilities.

If that is not good enough, fork out your own dollars for the ELITE service of private providers.

or, anyway, it seems reasonable to me.

geo.
 
Re: An egalitarian internet?

Deuce said:
How?

Use more taxpayer funds to lay a duplicate set of cable?
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No, lift the current regulations against them laying more cable. The answer to faulty current regulation is not MORE regulation.
 
Re: An egalitarian internet?

When they say "consumer groups", who are they talking about? It's awfully vague. I don't think any consumer wants their internet throttled.
 
Re: An egalitarian internet?

rivrrat said:
No, lift the current regulations against them laying more cable. The answer to faulty current regulation is not MORE regulation.
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Uhh, you know they have to basically tear up our roads and buildings to do this, right?
 
Re: An egalitarian internet?

Deuce said:
Uhh, you know they have to basically tear up our roads and buildings to do this, right?
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Yet the government right now basically makes it illegal. Did you know that FiOS is out there right now tearing up roads to do this?
 
Re: An egalitarian internet?

Deuce said:
Big TelComs, especially cable companies, want to be able to selectively throttle your internet access based on content. For instance, they slow down your access to NBC.com because they have a sweet deal with FOX or ABC, the goal is to get you to go to ABC or FOX instead.
Click to expand...

Does anything like this every actually happen? I have yet to see any evidence that it does.
 
Re: An egalitarian internet?

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa507.pdf

I wish I had the time to read through this, it seems to contradict a lot of the claims I've seen here. Posting it for anyone who's interested.
 
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