Net Neutrality Seen Through the Telegraph 249
James McP writes "Ars Technica has a write-up on the unregulated telegraph of the 19th century, which gives a view into what could happen to an internet lacking any regulation mandating neutrality. The owners of the 'Victorian internet' used their control of the telegraph to prop up monopolies, manipulate elections, facilitate insider trading, and censor criticism."
Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you think certain groups are so pushing against it? Telcos, news networks... It's no coincidence that the ones pushing to abandon NN are also the ones dealing in information.
It doesn't matter who is violating your rights (Score:5, Insightful)
The bottom line is that you are being screwed. It's a mistake to interpret constitution as only giving us protection against federal government. Any entity with significant power over individuals must be prevented from restricting freedom of speech or any other basic rights that we consider important. ISPs must not be allowed to discriminate against any legal but unpopular content, or against use of particular protocols like BitTorrent. Companies must not be allowed to fire people based on private Facebook posts.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I think it's just because they see it as another revenue stream ( ie, Why should google make all that money from using our services, without paying us for the privilege. How can we charge them?)
I don't think the average telco exec is bright enough to see the myriad of ways that they can abuse the situation until they actually manifest. After all, being truly machiavellian is an art rarely practiced outside of government.
GrpA
The "free market" is "people"! (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of people seem to allow this to slip by, but the "free market" is composed of "actors", or PEOPLE.
When you remove law enforcement from an area people revert back to their "natural" state, robbing, pillaging, raping, and assaulting. For references, see looters in natural disasters, crime reports during blackouts, etc.
In the marketplace, without regulation, people with more power will perpetrate this in people with less.
People who provide internet services will abuse any way they can to gain more money, power, and control. (the same goes for software, medical insurance, mass media, commodities, you name it)
Re:It doesn't matter who is violating your rights (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't that extra payment what is done through paying extra for faster connections? If I pay, as I do, for a 20/2 connection, shouldn't I be able to get exactly 20/2 traffic, provided that the other end is up to the task?
Re:It doesn't matter who is violating your rights (Score:5, Insightful)
more bad analogies (Score:4, Insightful)
Two fiber optic cables carry twice the traffic of one while consuming virtually no more resources, and they can be upgraded without disrupting existing infrastructure.
Go ahead and try to double the capacity of a highway without consuming more right-of-way or disrupting existing infrastructure.
My ISP (Comcast) consistently delivers bandwidth far in excess of what they advertise.
Your car analogy is really falling apart because the Internet is FAR less congested than our roadways.
Re:It doesn't matter who is violating your rights (Score:5, Insightful)
Anything that I do during my personal, unpaid time and without claiming to represent the company is private as far as my employer is concerned. If I am software engineer, it should be as illegal for my boss to fire me based on a sex video s/he found on Internet as it would be to make me have sex with him/her as a condition of my employment.
Besides, where is the guarantee of authenticity? My friends could post any crap they want about me without my knowledge or permission, or someone may just happen to have the same name or similar appearance. Add the widespread use of Photoshop and we have an environment where anyone's job is in jeopardy just because any other random person happens not to like them, lacks discretion or feels like pulling a practical joke. Are you saying not regulating this at all is the best solution for public interest?
What do you think the government is? (Score:2, Insightful)
Uh, and just what the hell do you think the government is comprised of? Deities who are always neutral and never do anything wrong? It's made of people too, but they're privileged people who are making the laws, which makes them even more dangerous than the free market you so baselessly despise.
And are you seriously comparing an ISP's rightful regulation of its internet traffic to robbing, pillaging, raping, and assaulting? Give me a fucking break. I want sysadmins regulating their company's services--which they have every right to do--not bribed politicians who are above the law and will cater to every big financial donor's wishes. The internet isn't a right or a life necessity. It's a convenient service you pay for, like having a car or a television, and the free market keeps abuses in check because a company's livelihood depends on your dollar. A government, on the other hand, already forces you to pay it through taxes, and it makes its own special rules for itself so that it's not beholden to the law like the free market is. There's no incentive to please you as a customer. You're a citizen who will do what it says.
Could some of you stop giving the government so much power, please? We get it, you hate free markets and think government power solves absolutely everything by magic. Yep, history sure has shown how pure, fair, reliable, trustworthy, and incorruptible the government is. Uh-huh.
Worst argument EVAR (Score:4, Insightful)
Your whole argument depends on the premise that government regulation is always detrimental. This is untrue on the face of it. Government has a strong role to play in regulation, rule making, arbitration, justice, social justice, and defense.
OSHA regulations protect workers from dangerous work environments.
NTSB regulations protect travelers.
Our courts provide a venue to exercise our most important right, the right to redress of grievances.
Government regulation is a good thing because it provides the rules to which our society must adhere. Without these rules, a veritable free-for-all would occur. In a market with many players, this may be beneficial, but in a market of captive customers like we have in the American ISP market this can be very detrimental.
It's not even good enough to make the rules once and let things be. As we've seen countless times the rules need to be readdressed occasionally to adapt to new situations. Our founding fathers new this, and that is why we have the Constitutional Amendment process.
Historically, the only real "laissez-faire" founding father was Thomas Jefferson and pretty much all his contemporaries considered him a fraud and brigand. Government regulation has been the cornerstone of our country for almost two and a half centuries. To claim some sort of high moral ground because you oppose it in this one specific case is pretty sad.
No common sense (Score:5, Insightful)
"It's a service you pay for that an ISP can regulate however it wants."
No they are a regulated utility like the gas or the water. The gas company is required to pump gas through its pipes, they cannot pump salad oil or dishwater without getting into trouble.
"That you're actually arguing that an ISP has power over individuals is hysterical exaggeration."
I work from home and I need the Internet to connect to work. I have only one choice of ISP. My ISP has GREAT power over me. They can force me to MOVE OUT OF MY HOME or GET ANOTHER JOB if they decide that they do not want me as a customer.
"Somehow, people made do without the internet mere decades ago."
Somehow, that means that it does not require regulation? How does that follow? That argument can be used against the regulation of ANY technology.
Clueless about power (Score:5, Insightful)
The Internet and the gear that runs it is a source of Power to whoever runs it.
This power WILL be taken and abused by whoever controls it.
Take off your blinders and understand that our economic system and our society exist ONLY because there are government regulations to hold it together.
You speak of corporations acting freely but you fail to realize that it is the power of government that allows them to have this freedom in the first place.
You are INSULTING and WRONG to paint everyone who disagrees with you as hating free markets.
Again you FAIL to understand that free markets DO NOT EXIST without government regulation to keep them free.
Here let me fix one of your sentences for you:
"Yep, history sure has shown how pure, fair, reliable, trustworthy, and incorruptible corporations are. Uh-huh."
Re:The "free market" is "people"! (Score:4, Insightful)
In my view, regulation is not law enforcement, it is the initiation of force by government against people who have not (and are not reasonably predicted to) violated anyone's rights, with the intent of getting that individual or organisation to behave in a desired manner. Now this doesn't seem so bad, when it is applied to something like net neutrality which seems like a good idea, however the principle is appalling to me: using force to get what you want. This is especially true when you have a government known to be at least influenced (if not controlled) by a few powerful people and organisations.
Re:If you ever thought about learning Morse (Score:3, Insightful)
Its not really a written language anyway. It works with sound and pulses of light. I am glad I learned CW even though I never got my radio license. Who knows? One day I might be trapped in a sunken Russian submarine.
Re:Duh (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It doesn't matter who is violating your rights (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're experiencing problems with multiple active and time sensitive connections on your home internet connection, I strongly recommend you check your routing equipment before you blame your ISP. Online gaming has a pretty low bandwidth utilisation compared with the kind of traffic that ISPs hate (big downloads, P2P, torrenting etc.) and if you're an online gamer you're probably NOT torrenting at the same time to preserve your connection quality...
I have seen MANY people with what sounds like your usage patterns have problems with routers crapping out, either losing their NAT tables and rebuilding, or just simply hot-rebooting inexplicably... Many of the home/SOHO DSL/Cable router solutions have extremely crappy software that just cannot cope with more than a few simultaneous real time connections, especially to different internal IP addresses.
I'm by no means claiming your ISP is NOT interfering with your traffic, just suggesting that it's not the primary culprit...
how about the closest thing we have to accountable (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, and just what the hell do you think the government is comprised of? Deities who are always neutral and never do anything wrong? It's made of people too, but they're privileged people who are making the laws, which makes them even more dangerous than the free market you so baselessly despise.
except the government is bound by a constitution, and subject to at least SOME form of public accountability.
And are you seriously comparing an ISP's rightful regulation of its internet traffic to robbing, pillaging, raping, and assaulting?
OMG HYPERBOLE, obviously that means my point is invalid, and that people aren't really being stripped of their fundamental rights to privacy and choice, that theyre not being defrauded, that freedom of speech is not being abrogated.
Could some of you stop giving the government so much power, please? We get it, you hate free markets and think government power solves absolutely everything by magic.
No, I believe in the government stepping on corporate toes, and the the people stepping up to the ballot box to make sure the government doesn't go too far.
Yep, history sure has shown how pure, fair, reliable, trustworthy, and incorruptible the government is. Uh-huh.
Let's ask the millions of jobless about which they'd rather have: ANY government beurocrat or the CEO's of AIG; shall we?
Re:What do you think the government is? (Score:1, Insightful)
> Uh, and just what the hell do you think the government is comprised of? Deities who are always neutral and never do anything wrong? It's made of people too, but they're privileged people who are making the laws, which makes them even more dangerous than the free market you so baselessly despise.
More dangerous? I'd say both are equally dangerous, given the same amount of power. But even bad politicians can make good laws. And so long as they make good laws, we have nothing to worry about. If they make bad laws, we need to replace them. Seriously, although they do lots of things wrong, they don't screw up *every* law.
> And are you seriously comparing an ISP's rightful regulation of its internet traffic to robbing, pillaging, raping, and assaulting?
"Rightful" regulation? "Its" traffic!? It's MY traffic they're "regulating" dammit. If I need to vote for a law to make businesses stop pulling that crap, I will. I'd rather it not come to that, but they started this. They were going to start double-dipping and charging people who weren't even their customers. It's only you crazy libertarians (unlike the sensible ones) who get bent out of shape over this, and there aren't very many of you, given how terribly Ron Paul did in the polls. That, or you're too afraid of the government to vote.
> Could some of you stop giving the government so much power, please? We get it, you hate free markets and think government power solves absolutely everything by magic.
Nobody thinks that, although I've seen a few libertarians where you could just about substitute government and free market and make the same statement. Neither one is good and you need a balance of both. Either one alone can and will screw you.
But you wanted to go on a crazy libertarian screed, I guess. You might try posting those somewhere that people care. Though I'm not sure that such a place even exists.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
The internet isn't a right.
equal opportunity however is a right. Since even minimum wage jobs now require online application, and you will not be allowed at all to submit applications on dead tree material to any place without nametags on the dress code.
The internet is just as fundamental to modern society as a telephone or vehicle, both of which, by the way, require a court order to be hindered.
Re:It doesn't matter who is violating your rights (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What do you think the government is? (Score:5, Insightful)
The key difference between government and corporate power: governments are ultimately answerable to their citizens, whereas corporations are ultimately answerable to their shareholders. That means among other things that corporations can and will ruin the lives of their employees or residents of the surrounding area (via pollution mostly) if it increases their profits, can and will bilk their customers if they can get away with it, and don't really mind a large population of unemployed, broke, desperate people.
"Neutrality" and regulation (Score:3, Insightful)
> The owners of the 'Victorian internet' used their control of the telegraph
> to prop up monopolies, manipulate elections, facilitate insider trading,
> and censor criticism.
And it would have been so much better had the government done that instead.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
"being truly machiavellian is an art rarely practiced outside of government." ...and a million executives howled with laughter, patted each other on the back, and spoke their congratulations about the latest advertising campaign...
Re:As Humphrey Appleby said... (Score:5, Insightful)
There was a quote in TFA that caught my eye:
Our founding fathers understood that it is government that takes away people's freedoms, not individuals or companies
If they understood that, then they were shortsighted indeed, but history itself puts the lie to it. Government didn't hold slaves, corporations and individuals did. Including individuals in government. And they still do - ever hear the term "wage slave"? There are other things besides guns and whips that can make a person do your bidding.
A rebuttal (Score:3, Insightful)
And are you seriously comparing an ISP's rightful regulation of its internet traffic
No, I think your parent is more worried about the wrongful regulations.
I want sysadmins regulating their company's services
That's fine, as long as the company providing those services advertises truthfully what the sysadmins are actually doing to your packets.
And, of course, as long as the two internet providers in your zip code (only one of whom offers service to your house) don't collude and offer a deliberately neutered product (i.e. no bittorent, no streaming video, no voip, no [etc.]) when they could just as easily offer the better version just because the non-neutered version competes with their own video delivery service, telephony service, or other service.
the free market keeps abuses in check
Right. That works great, sometimes. Except for tragedy of the commons. And for providing law enforcement, emergency services, health insurance (so I hear), and in some other cases.
But the free market does keep some abuses in check. I think it would be wise to keep abuses in check in the highly non-free internet service market as well.
Could some of you stop giving the government so much power, please?
Could you stop giving large corporations so much power, please? Especially the ones having monopolies or duopolies...
We get it, you hate free markets and think government power solves absolutely everything by magic.
I get it. You hate government power and think free markets solves absolutely everything by magic.
Yep, history sure has shown how pure, fair, reliable, trustworthy, and incorruptible big business is. Uh-huh.
FTFY.
See? It's very easy to take what you say and turn it on its head. The bad thing isn't government power vs. corporate power, but the existence of concentrated power itself. Completely unregulated markets tend to concentrate power. Network effects help that along. It seems that we need even bigger power (in government) to break up concentrated power in the market. I don't think there is an easy solution. But blindly trusting concentrated power on one hand vs. another is a Bad Idea (TM).
Re:What do you think the government is? (Score:4, Insightful)
Uh, and just what the hell do you think the government is comprised of? Deities who are always neutral and never do anything wrong?
We are not arguing over who should be allowed to throttle internet traffic. We are arguing over whether anybody should be allowed to.
I want sysadmins regulating their company's services...not bribed politicians who are above the law and will cater to every big financial donor's wishes.
Not an option. The policies will be set by the people who run the company. They also happen to be the same people who are attempting to bribe politicians. Who do you trust more. The politician who may be getting bribed, or the guy who is definitely doing the bribery?
The internet isn't a right or a life necessity. It's a convenient service you pay for, like having a car or a television,
The car analogy is close to correct, because if you cannot find transportation of any kind, then you cannot go to work. The internet is much more than a luxury. It is something that many of us, myself included, must have as terms of our employment. It is also something that society as a whole needs to assure that the next generation of children will be competitive in the information-based economy that the first world is moving toward. (BTW, one person can get buy without internet access, just as one person can get by without electricity or running water. That does not diminish its' importance to society).
and the free market keeps abuses in check because a company's livelihood depends on your dollar.
There is no free market when it comes to internet access, in many, if not most, areas. Your choices are "broadband through one ISP. Take it or leave it".
A government, on the other hand, already forces you to pay it through taxes, and it makes its own special rules for itself so that it's not beholden to the law like the free market is. There's no incentive to please you as a customer.
Politicians can be voted out of office.
You're a citizen who will do what it says.
Could some of you stop giving the government so much power, please? We get it, you hate free markets and think government power solves absolutely everything by magic.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the free market. Not a damn thing. Until the cable companies stop respecting each others fiefdoms, and start competing for my business, this is not about capitalism, the free market, or any other pseudo-patriotic catch-phrase you can come up with.
Yep, history sure has shown how pure, fair, reliable, trustworthy, and incorruptible the government is. Uh-huh.
And history has shown that unregulated markets can be even more unfair, untrustworthy, and corrupt.
Re:What do you think the government is? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't get this worship of the "free" market. I encourage you to RTFA, it's an eye-opener.
I have no pull whatever over Comcast. If County Market pisses me off, I can go to a different grocery store. If Comcast pisses me off, I'm fuX0red. There is no competetion, and where there's no competetion the corporation is NOT beholden to its customers in any way, shape, or form. There is no free market when it comes to utilities!
My electrical utility is run by the city (and makes a tidy profit). If rates go up too far, or service declines, the Mayor will lose an election. They are beholden to their customers. As a public utility I can vote the CEO (Mayor) out. I can't vote Comcasts's CEO out, only its shareholders can do that. Comcast doesn't have to worry about me, the customer, at all.
Monopolies need FAR more regulation than, say, a grocery store, and even then, you need regulations to keep them from selling me poison food. Which, by the way, food suppliers get in trouble for this type of assault (people have died) and robbery all the time.
Government isn't the problem, our system of determining who governs is. For one, it's easy to bribe legally with only two parties. I've been pushing for some reforms (tilting at windmills) that willl never, ever happen.
Having campaigns publically financed would be even better, but that's even less likely to happen.
Re:The "free market" is "people"! (Score:4, Insightful)
Regulation keeps the local restaraunt from selling me poisoned food. OSHA regulations do, in fact, protect workers from violence -- my grandfather died because Purina was too cheap to put doors on its elevators (1959, long before OSHA).
Before the Clean Air Act, you could NOT drive through Sauget [wikipedia.org] with your windows down, even on a blistering hot summer day (they didn't put AC in cars back then). I would consider Monsanto's noxious fumes a direct assault on my person, and regulation stops that assault. Only government regulation keeps Monsanto from violating my right to travel through Sauget while breathing.
Yes, use as much force as you want to keep Monsanto from ruining my lungs, or a drug company form selling me drugs that contain impurities, or from selling poison peanut butter. [msn.com]
On the other hand, law enforcement tries to stop me from gambling, soliciting a prostitute, or smoking a joint. None of these activities harm anyone without their consent. You might want to rethink your position; you've been brainwashed by the corporatti who would love nothing more than to remove the regulations that keep them from assaulting you.
Re:If you ever thought about learning Morse (Score:3, Insightful)
My preferred way to learn morse is to install a keyboard clicker that taps out the morse equivalent of every keystroke I type. Every few years I look for such an app but haven't found one yet. Anyway... I am very interested in the meta-learning aspect of this. If I just have this tapping in the "background" of my daily computer life, how long will it take to sink in?