FCC Commissioner Urges, Don't Regulate the Internet 343
Brett Glass writes "In an op-ed in today's Washington Post, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell makes a case against government regulation of the Internet, opining that 'engineers, not politicians or bureaucrats, should solve engineering problems.' With state governments pressuring ISPs to pull the plug on Usenet, and a proposal now in play for a censored public Internet, McDowell may have a very good point." McDowell is one of the two FCC commissioners who did not vote with the majority to punish Comcast for their BitTorrent throttling.
It's a right. The chairman is a regulator. (Score:4, Interesting)
Because you own the spectrum and there's no longer a valid technical reason to grant it exclusively [reed.com]. Government granted monopolies on spectrum is a primary internet regulation someone that believes in free markets should oppose.
Laying cable and fiber in other people's back yards and public property is a privilege. Those granted that privilege must accept public regulation in return for the public servitude. Think about that for a while and you realize that the Internet is already highly regulated but the regulations do not always serve the public interest. Common carrier and net neutrality is the least the public can ask in return for exclusive use of public property. The public can and should also demand competition in wired service. Someone who believes in free markets would lower barriers to entry and use of wired networks.
Re:It's government or corporate, choose your devil (Score:3, Interesting)
Like the Bill of rights... Maybe Net Neutrality shouldn't be a regular law, maybe it should be an ammendment.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
The only regulation that we need for BOTH "internet" and "phone" should be total separation of content from service.
Cell phone companies can sell bandwidth and for chrissake quite counting each individual text message.
Untie the ringtones and make them like any other sound that you can download.
Internet providers should be held to the same "regulation".
If you provide bandwidth in any way at all it should be neutral to all content, uncensored, unfiltered, etc.
The law could be a very simple one: If you provide any sort of bandwidth for sale you are prohibited from messing with any content whatsoever.
You are also prohibited from partnering with any business that does "mess with" content. End of law.
I don't even think Comcast or whoever should be allowed to have a "Start Page" on the internet. It's anti-competitive bundling. It's bad. Everyone knows it.
I'm sure of the above, but truth be told I don't think (not sure) bandwidth service should even be a part of the free market. It's a utility. Just like electricity and heat.
We all know how well anti-trust efforts and deregulating the phone companies worked out: http://youtube.com/watch?v=I6nuwQmhrZ8 [youtube.com]
If it's going to be just 1 or 2 giant companies screwing us over, removing our ability to vote with our dollar, then I'd rather it just be government run, so we can vote with ballots.
Re:Cinas "Golden shield" now copied in USA and Swe (Score:4, Interesting)
The USA isn't censoring Usenet... it's encuraging ISPs to drop an area that has become too much of trading point for illegal files. The ISPs are complying willingly because it's not been profitable for them to run, and most users won't miss it.
Still, services like Google Groups and EasyNews are still up and running. There's no threat to those as of yet.
Engineers? (Score:1, Interesting)
FTA: "Each time, engineers, academics, software developers, Web infrastructure builders and others have worked together to fix the problems"
Simply but, this is no longer the case as there is profit to be had. There is some benefit in creating artificial scarcity. They have absolutely no reason to allow the most bandwidth possible, because as simple economics would tell you, if supply goes to infinity than the price goes to zero. In most cases I would even argue that they want to not meet demand fully.
Just like the California "Energy Crisis". If you consider the scenario that if you provide enough power for everyone they will pay $1/kW, but if I only provide 90% they will suddenly pay $10/kW. I just found a way to increase my profits by 10x and actually reducing my costs.
Re:The liberals and right wing extremists (Score:3, Interesting)
Liberals are generally for freedom of expression (and hence will want little regulation with the internet) and Conservatives are for freedom of market (and hence will want little regulation with the internet). No reasonably popular political view when taken as a whole would back heavy internet regulation. (No, fascism isn't reasonably popular).
The problems arise from politicians (hiss, boo) who have something to gain from pushing for such regulation and either don't understand the repercussions or don't care. It really does not matter what label they've slapped on themselves. It does not matter what party you're from, Saving The Children is usually viewed as a Good Thing, and directly opposing it is political suicide.
I know, I know, don't feed the trolls. Sorry.
Not all regulation is the same (Score:3, Interesting)
I used to think that any kind of government regulation of the Internet would be a bad thing, according to the "slippery slope" principle. Now, after reading about the concept of "net neutrality", I've decided that some regulation is probably a good thing, and that there's a difference between regulating speech and regulating utility.
I want the FCC to keep out of other people's business with regard to content, but I also want them to ensure the internet remains "neutral" with regard to protocols and routes.
Re:Hmmm (Score:2, Interesting)
Access to the internet is as much a privilege as driving on public streets.
The only difference is that most people seem to take it for granted that the government ought to pay for the upkeep and construction of roads, whereas there's debate about the government paying to maintain and lay the wires for the internet.
Re:McDowell gets it! (Score:3, Interesting)
I think we may have differing definitions of troll. To me, submitting a story appealing to nntp users, well-meaning libertarians, and freedom of speech and expression advocates, while having an agenda that is, in fact, at cross purposes with those groups, seems a bit trollish.
It seems like your agenda is to give ISPs the right to block the services and software that most of us here on /. depend on every day in our careers. If you didn't mean it, I don't know why you said it in your letter to the FCC or in your testimony. Your words seem unambiguous...
Your vitriol towards "lobbyists" also seems strange, as the person you are praising was the vice-president and assistant general counsel to a FCC lobbyist group directly before his appointment.
I'm totally willing to listen to your explanation. I'm really not a troll.
Deregulation does not mean engineers make decision (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem is that when you let ISPs decide what is good, it will not be engineers deciding, but managers and marketing people. The only way to have engineers deciding about the future of the internet is for the FCC to ask a lot of engineers for their opinion and then make a regulation from this opinion .