161–170 of 452 posts
The major critique quoted here comes from David Farber of Carnegie-Mellon, who worries that classifying Internet access under Title II will allow it to be taxed. If that's the worst thing you can think of, we're in good shape.
The worst part is involving the FCC at all.
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Comparing Title II utilities to water and electricity is silly. How happy are you with your landline telephone and cable TV services? You know, the ones that everyone hates and is replacing with internet-carried alternatives?
My landline telephone is very satisfactory. I've never encountered any service disruptions with it. In fact, I can't think of a single time in my entire life where I've picked up the phone and not had a usable dialtone on the other end, or where I've placed a call (to another landline) and received a bad connection. The single time I had a problem with how it was billed, I called the state regulator who worked with m…
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You are restating exactly what you already said. Maybe you didn't understand. Taxation implies increased tracking and auditing of the good being taxed, in this context surveillance could be justifiable. Perhaps you're unable to imagine these consequences, but your claim that they have nothing to do with one another is just ignorant.
Our Internet traffic is already heavily surveilled without this entirely hypothetical Internet tax you're proposing. The phone system is a utility, and it's certainly not the fact that it's taxable that makes the TLAs interested in wiretapping it.
What I'm proposing is that regulation is one way of legitimizing the role of surveillance. The government has a reason to be involved by virtue of the fact that it's made regulations.
I did a bad job in conveying that idea above. It's certainly possible my analysis is utterly incorrect as well.
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The worst part is involving the FCC at all.
I'll have to agree to this. Electricity is electricity, water is water, natural gas is natural gas. But Internet traffic isn't a homogenous substance.
That will be a sad day. Internet technology still has a lot of room to improve before the government steps in and kills all market forces that encourage those improvements. If you don't like your current service levels now, just wait until the government gets involved.
From all I have heard, places with better-regulated ISPs or even municipal broadband (gasp!) tend to have better service. You seem to be grinding a political axe rather than considering what the evidence says about the real-world effect of this particular change. The simple fact is, getting approval to put your network somewhere is not only really expensive, but already heavily regulated, and this grants a de facto r…
Very true. How does adding more regulation make things better? Are you telling me that the new FCC ruling will make all those existing regulatory problems go away? If so, that might help.
But if we agree the problem is regulation, I would hope we agree the solution can't be more regulation.
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It's worth noting that these "unelected bureaucrats" are nominated by a President for limited terms and confirmed by the Senate, and that all powers they have are bestowed upon them by Congress and can be revoked, and that their regulations have to fit within restrictions that are defined and may be revised by Congress. It's certainly not pretty, but it's not unaccountable, and it seems to be moving things in the gen…
>> their regulations have to fit within restrictions that are defined and may be revised by Congress This is only notionally true, and history is replete with examples of federal agencies declaring their own authority over things which were obviously not envisioned so. While congress could act to change that, they don't, so power collects.
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>Why would a lack of service by an internet provider be comparable to a utility pumping sewage? I work partly from home and, while not quite "utility pumping sewage" level of crisis, a badly-timed internet blackout at my apartment can be a serious problem for the whole team.
I agree entirely, it is comparable to a power outage (, which happens quite often both at my residence and place of work).
I think the radio analogy is spot on, and I really believe that the endgame to all this government interest may very well be the same sort of regulatory control that the FCC now imposes in radio stations and content via the [1] Communications Act of 1934. This can easily been seen as a power grab by plutocrats who want to start filtering and controlling the money making and informational aspect of the web, and while…
Radio works by beaming signals all over their coverage area. those signals are pushed to everyone. Whereas, a website isn't just sending its html to every IP and port it can find, it waits for a request and responds accordingly.
This seems to be a fundamental distinction to me, but one that would likely be easily obscured by politicking and misinformation campaigns if that were the ultimate goal.
Interesting thought though, as we do see the UK beginning to move towards this more hands-on internet regulation all of a suddden
I have had good and bad internet service in my life. The least reliable was at my somewhat rural childhood home from TWC.
The best is my current connection from that most reviled of companies, Comcast. I have had no service interruptions, and I get a reliable 50Mbps at all times of day (I check regularly with speed tests and checking Torrent activity).
The reason my internet service (and customer service experience) has been so good here is that I have two viable alternative providers, a high speed DSL carrier offering similar speeds and rates in the city, and a local fiber provider (recently introduced 10Gbps connection - yes you are reading that correctly).
While I would prefer to have no rate limiting based on usage or content, I don't view this as some inalienable right. There is a price I'm willing to pay for that service, but there is also a price low enough where I'm happy to accept rate limiting. I'd like to have the choice.
The problem seems to be that the competition which gives me the service I'm happy with and the regulation regarding whether I am even allowed to reason about my preferences as in the above paragraph keep getting tied up with one another.
To me the biggest benefit comes from having multiple options in providers. A legal monopoly who can't do rate limiting can still give me awful service. Many providers who can rate limit will most likely give me service I'm happy with, even if the plan is rate limited.
The history of utility regulation is rife with cases of legally enforced monopolies.
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>market forces that encourage those improvements. Like a Comcast monopoly? You mean those market forces?
Most municipalities grant monopolies to cable providers based on the theory that it's the only way to get someone to build and maintain the cable infrastructure. Granted monopolies do not allow for market forces...
It's just not profitable to lay a second or third network. It's a natural monopoly.
In fact, it's a coincidence that we have two networks in teh US. The telecom and the cable company.