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The Internet Should Be a Public Good

jacobinmag.com

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Re: The Internet Should Be a Public Good

#31

Post by [deleted] »

borkborkbork wrote: post #29
tptacek wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want your Internet service to be as responsive to customers as your gas and electric service is today, I supposed you could declare the experiment "failed". As I pointed out, I'm happier with an Internet I can watch movies and make phone calls on than I am with the one that repeatedly netsplit in the 90s. Incidentally: ISDN was widely available everywhere where there were modern phone-switching networks, becau…

Comparing the internet you have in 2016 to the internet that existed in the 1990's is a bit unfair, don't you think? The idea that only markets are capable of delivering innovations or necessary services to the public is debatable. For example, the U.S. government, through DARPA, created countless valuable networking innovations that private companies, such as AT&T, didn't want to touch even when given the opportunit…

[deleted]

Re: The Internet Should Be a Public Good

#32

Post by borkborkbork »

tptacek wrote: post #30
borkborkbork wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing the internet you have in 2016 to the internet that existed in the 1990's is a bit unfair, don't you think? The idea that only markets are capable of delivering innovations or necessary services to the public is debatable. For example, the U.S. government, through DARPA, created countless valuable networking innovations that private companies, such as AT&T, didn't want to touch even when given the opportunit…

I think if you read the comment carefully you'll see I'm not simply saying "the 'public' EU backbone provided rural ISDN", but rather that I'm making a more subtle point than that, about the nature of ISDN. There's a reason an ISDN BRI provides the rate it does, and a reason why each of its B-channels is 64k: the digital phone network was already channelized that way.

Actually I was replying to your original comment before you edited. The idea that a publicly run internet would not have been able to produce the innovations necessary for Netflix is debatable and betrays a certain political persuasion on your part.

Re: The Internet Should Be a Public Good

#33

Post by toss1941 »

borkborkbork wrote: post #29
tptacek wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want your Internet service to be as responsive to customers as your gas and electric service is today, I supposed you could declare the experiment "failed". As I pointed out, I'm happier with an Internet I can watch movies and make phone calls on than I am with the one that repeatedly netsplit in the 90s. Incidentally: ISDN was widely available everywhere where there were modern phone-switching networks, becau…

Comparing the internet you have in 2016 to the internet that existed in the 1990's is a bit unfair, don't you think? The idea that only markets are capable of delivering innovations or necessary services to the public is debatable. For example, the U.S. government, through DARPA, created countless valuable networking innovations that private companies, such as AT&T, didn't want to touch even when given the opportunit…

He's saying the task to deploy ISDN in the 1990's was minuscule compared to what is required to roll out fiber to everyone today. It's like comparing government oranges to private Teslas.

Re: The Internet Should Be a Public Good

#34

Post by ancap »

gioele wrote: post #26
tptacek wrote: post #10

This rosey view of the public-funded Internet ignores the reality of the network at the time. As recently as the mid-1990s, the entire Internet could netsplit , like a badly-run IRC network; there was a run of a couple days where commercial sites (like Ripco, my first ISP) couldn't reach any .EDU sites. Telecom companies like Comcast and Verizon "own" the backbone because they built it. Not just the backhaul connecti…

> Telecom companies like Comcast and Verizon "own" the backbone because they built it. In Europe most of the backbone has been built by state-run public companies with public money. Only with the wave of privatization in the 90s the EU backbone has become privately owned (for various weird definitions of "privately owned"). However. When the backbone was publicly owned the "broadband" of the time (ISDN) was available…

Can you tell me more about this "human sense"? If I build a home on Mars should I be entitled to have some third party provide me with "water, gas, phones and electricity"?

A lot of the decisions I personally make are decided by economic factors, even if it is not the primary factor.

Re: The Internet Should Be a Public Good

#35

Post by Kalium »

> In return, the government demanded nothing: no compensation, and no constraints or conditions over how the Internet would take shape.

This isn't true. The US gov can and has put its thumb on the scale and used its position in the past. The .xxx TLD springs to mind.

As is so often true, Jacobin ignores history as experienced by the rest of us in favor of their preferred narrative.

Re: The Internet Should Be a Public Good

#36

Post by [deleted] »

gioele wrote: post #26
tptacek wrote: post #10

This rosey view of the public-funded Internet ignores the reality of the network at the time. As recently as the mid-1990s, the entire Internet could netsplit , like a badly-run IRC network; there was a run of a couple days where commercial sites (like Ripco, my first ISP) couldn't reach any .EDU sites. Telecom companies like Comcast and Verizon "own" the backbone because they built it. Not just the backhaul connecti…

> Telecom companies like Comcast and Verizon "own" the backbone because they built it. In Europe most of the backbone has been built by state-run public companies with public money. Only with the wave of privatization in the 90s the EU backbone has become privately owned (for various weird definitions of "privately owned"). However. When the backbone was publicly owned the "broadband" of the time (ISDN) was available…

[deleted]

Re: The Internet Should Be a Public Good

#37

Post by borkborkbork »

toss1941 wrote: post #33
borkborkbork wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing the internet you have in 2016 to the internet that existed in the 1990's is a bit unfair, don't you think? The idea that only markets are capable of delivering innovations or necessary services to the public is debatable. For example, the U.S. government, through DARPA, created countless valuable networking innovations that private companies, such as AT&T, didn't want to touch even when given the opportunit…

He's saying the task to deploy ISDN in the 1990's was minuscule compared to what is required to roll out fiber to everyone today. It's like comparing government oranges to private Teslas.

Government has been responsible for the largest undertakings in human history. Space flight, nuclear weaponry and energy, particle colliders, etc.

Re: The Internet Should Be a Public Good

#38

Post by damptowel »

wonder_er wrote: post #24
zdw wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly right. Most services that lend themselves to a natural monopoly (because most people only really need one power/water/phone/internet line to their house/business) should be implemented as a publicly run infrastructure with value added ISP's on the end. The current vertical integration of internet providers impedes any new competition. Arguing for integration is like saying that all roads should be own…

> The current vertical integration of internet providers impedes any new competition Wouldn't the government owning the service be the ultimate impediment to new competition? I'm not defending ISPs, but lets not too quickly throw them under the bus. Also, your casual throw-away comment: > Most services that lend themselves to a natural monopoly ... should be implemented as a publicly run infrastructure Requires the g…

> Requires the government forcibly taking over quite a few large companies. That's a weighty request, and would be exactly the opposite of what we should want to see in the world.

Yet this is exactly what happened in developed countries in the 20th century, now many of these are again privatized with the predictable loss of efficiency and increased bureaucracy (supporting frameworks, arbitrage, watchdogs, etc...).

In my country the privatization of public transit and energy companies has been a total disaster. I remember when I could get things done without being pingponged between 12 different parties, things that used to take a day now take weeks.

Re: The Internet Should Be a Public Good

#39

Post by tptacek »

borkborkbork wrote: post #32
tptacek wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you read the comment carefully you'll see I'm not simply saying "the 'public' EU backbone provided rural ISDN", but rather that I'm making a more subtle point than that, about the nature of ISDN. There's a reason an ISDN BRI provides the rate it does, and a reason why each of its B-channels is 64k: the digital phone network was already channelized that way.

Actually I was replying to your original comment before you edited. The idea that a publicly run internet would not have been able to produce the innovations necessary for Netflix is debatable and betrays a certain political persuasion on your part.

No, it doesn't. You've fallen victim to the fundamental attribution fallacy, and it's led you to generate a rude remark.

Re: The Internet Should Be a Public Good

#40

Post by falcolas »

wyager wrote: post #21

Internet is a public good => government claims general regulatory powers over what goes through the Internet. No thank you.

As compared to a private company claiming regulatory powers with no oversight?

If Facebook owns the internet, Facebook decides what is on the internet.

If icann owns domain registration with no regulation, icann decides who gets a domain (as well as the power to strip domains from their current owners).

And who can stop them? Some other company offering competing root DNS servers? I don't see how that could ever work. For better or worse, the internet operates strongly on the concept of a central root authority. Root DNS servers. Root Certificates. Centralized distribution of IPs.

If those central authorities have no regulation or oversight, they can and will shape the internet to their whims.

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