McCain on Net Neutrality, Copyright, Iraq

An anonymous reader writes "Sen. John McCain kicked off the All Things Digital conference Tuesday night with some interesting comments about net neutrality among other things. His take: there should be as little government regulation of broadband as possible. The market should be allowed to solve the Net-neutrality issue: 'When you control the pipe you should be able to get profit from your investment.'"

What does Iraq have to do with all things digital?

[Paradoks]

Finally a technology conference where there's a presidential candidate present, and it's quite reasonable to grill him about all the pressing topics of interest to the Slashdot crowd, and half the article is about Iraq?

Geez. I know it's important, but McCain has answered the exact same questions hundreds of time. And this article is the first time I've heard a question that involved copyright. Why, oh why, do we have to read the same answers about Iraq in every situation, despite it being wildly off-topic?

Re:Ahhhh The Free Market

[MightyMartian]

The government's job is to assure that the market actually functions correctly. In a situation where you have a small number of large carriers who basically hold both consumers and content producers in their grips, you do not have a functioning market. Since no one is really advocating cutting the big pipe holders down, the only other reasonable alternative is the big R; Regulation. In a perfect marketplace, the government would have little or no role at all, but come on, living just a few years after a century which saw huge monopolies and markets that simply were nonfunctional in the laissez-faire notion of a well-functioning marketplace.

If there were a thousand independent large pipe providers in the US, then net neutrality wouldn't even be an issue. But because the large bulk of it is concentrated, they can get away with what can only be seen as extortion; give us money or we'll strangle your bits. That's clearly predatory and monopolistic behavior, and a properly observant government would lay it on the line "Fuck with a market that you already have too much power over, and we will make sure your powers are greatly reduced". All it would require is Congress to even mutter this, and I think you would see the market corrected in a fashion that is to the consumer's benefit. After all, the whole point of the market is consumers, and they should be the prime concern of both the government and the players big and small.

But the FCC has already broken the free market...

[kbonin]

As long as the FCC props up access "right of way" monopolies, the free market cannot function. Between DSL distance constraints, spectrum auctions to the highest bidder, everybody overselling bandwidth, [nearly] everybody traffic shaping, unlimited service provider consolidation, and [nearly] every access provider requiring strict "you will be a consumer only" contracts, where is the free market? Net neutrality is just a bastion against unconstrained traffic shaping. The government has already sold off most of our other rights...

Own the pipes or the content, but not both

[JeffL]

None of the companies would ever let the lawmakers do it, but I think the regulation that is needed is something to disentangle the ownership of the actual wires, fibres, spectrum, etc. that carries data from the data itself.

Companies who carry the data, and deliver it to all kinds of end users (home users, businesses, etc.) would be required to be completely agnostic as to what the data is they carry. They would be like the post office, who don't own the mail they deliver, they just deliver it. Perhaps even completely transparent non-neutral prioritization of traffic (like the post office, with airmail, first class, media rate, etc.) would be acceptable. Any VOIP provider could agree to pay the tariff for high priority packets, and Verizon (for example) couldn't block their traffic because they compete with Verizon's local phone service.

Separating the data carrier and the content provider is just my thought for preventing vertical monopolies. Time Warner owns your cable line, and forces their traffic on you, and only lets in their and their "partners" VOIP or video on demand traffic, for example (they don't do this now, but I'm sure they'd love to if given the opportunity).

Simply, you can own the wires or the data, but not both.

Re:Who controls the pipe?

[corbettw]

Government exists to protect the rights of The People, not business masquerading as an individual via Incorporation.

One of those rights is the right to own property, and to do with it what you want. And since corporations are owned by people, and corporations own property, by extension the owners/share holders of the corporation own that property. So when you start regulating what a business can do, you're trying to regulate what people can do with their own property.

If you can't understand that, you'll never understand liberal thinking from the 18th century to the mid-20th (when the definition changed), and you're not anything close to being a libertarian. This goes to the "libertarian" who replied to you, too.

Re:Ahhhh The Free Market

[The One and Only]

I think the government has other, far more important work to do than simply maintain competition--protect and keep track of property rights, prevent fraud and violence, and maintain physical infrastructure, for instance, are important too.

Re:Ted Stevens?

[Copid]

Eh, I just saw that as depressing pandering to the religious nutjobs that make up a huge portion of the Republican base.
I gave up on him after his little trip to Baghdad in which he endangered American soldiers by making them act as his personal armed guard so he could safely go to a market to show us how safe(!) it is. Anybody who has lost friends to war and can still bring himself to unnecessarily endanger soldiers for the sole purpose of tricking Americans into keeping them at war will never, ever have my respect as a human being, much less my vote.

The man is nuts

[iminplaya]

To even give him a second thought is ludicrous and a complete waste of time, and really quite a shame. It's more than obvious it will be business as usual. And his non-answer on copyright was exactly that. Nice cop out! As if I should expect any different from him. My translation on that and immigration, We must reform the institution of slavery, at the same time respecting the owners' property rights. I'm for allowing slaves to become citizens, but not the runaways. They must follow procedure. We can't just let them cut in front of the line of those who have. Note that we have moved the plantations outside the borders. That's the only difference between then and now. Slavery is alive and well. On the republican side, Ron Paul is all there is, but he doesn't get my vote either for the same reason.