Net Neutrality Seen Through the Telegraph

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."

Re:Duh

[hitmark]

also, cable tv wants to use internet as a value additive, while not cutting into their existing services.

telcos wants to become cable tv, via that other cable...

in either case, sites like youtube provides for free, what the wants to be payed by view...

Re:It doesn't matter who is violating your rights

[BadAnalogyGuy]

The highways of our great country are paid for communally. We all pay a little in taxes and we all get the right to drive on them.

But some vehicles must pay extra. There are weigh stations on our highways to make sure that those drivers who cause extra damage to the roads pay their fair share to help keep the roads in pristine condition. Since they weigh more, they must pay extra fees.

A user who is constantly maxing his connection is doing much the same thing. There is only finite bandwidth available to everyone and one guy in his parents' basement can slow traffic for everyone else. This forces the ISPs to need to replace their cables more often due to the increase in average use. Shouldn't these users be forced to pay more for their extra usage or at least be throttled to the point they aren't causing physical damage to the entire system?

Cry about "unlimited bandwidth plans" and the like all you want. It's completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. The issue is whether people whose usage habits affect others should have their activities curtailed to create a more balanced environment for everyone.

Net neutrality is a clever way of rephrasing "bandwidth abuse".

Re:The "free market" is "people"!

[Anonymous Coward]

Luckily most firm's and consumers hold a marginal amount of market power. Hence we would model the market closer to perfect competition that we would monopoly. In the case of a natural monopoly, the market structure you're suggesting, there is a fair amount of debate about what it's state is, as it can act as either. However, most of the markets for internet access around the world are closer to an oligopoly, where the firms are given special privileges which swing more power their way, on top of being a monopoly.

Deja Vu.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-Line Pioneers [amazon.com]

Re:It doesn't matter who is violating your rights

[Psaakyrn]

If then, the issue is not about privacy, but biasedness. It's the same issue of how past "accused" tends to be discriminated without good reason. (Especially when one has been proven innocent, but the mark is already left)

government regulation

[wuji]

It's interesting enough that according to that article, the reason for the existence of "monopolies" on the telegraph was the government itself. Because there are no monopolies unless the government can protect those monopolies. And that is exactly what this is about. Somebody decides that someone should regulate the whole Internet because otherwise it will be abused by the powerfull entities inside it. And the best solution that that "Somebody" can come up with is to hand it over to the government? That government will establish monopolies to control parts of it, somehow all the "freedoms" will go away and in the end that "Somebody" will praise the regulation because without it, it would have been much worse. Since, as the experience shows, once the government takes control of the communication channels, it is for the freedom and protection of it's users. Just look at China how well that regulation works there.

Remember the wire?

[Old Flatulent 1]

As a direct result of the lack of regulation, criminals ran things from behind the scenes with bribes and even worse tactics even later on in history. Things were much worse in the early part of the 20th century. A fellow with the nick name of "Dutch Schultz" easily created a gambling and money laundering communications empire by thoroughly corrupting the industry from within. His shtick was so slick that most did not even know to what extent it went on. You essentially had to pay "The Man" if you wanted to do any financial business over the wire period! Not just the fact that it controlled race track betting information and wagering. His mafia partners made enough money to keep the FBI off their backs...J. Edgar Hoover did not even acknowledge that they existed and a substantial part of Washington not just Cities official and Police were on the take. If there is no sensible public oversight of what goes on on the internet then you can bet it will become a haven for criminals and eventually they will run things from behind the scenes!

Re:It doesn't matter who is violating your rights

[plastbox]

Worst. Idea. Ever. The Norwegian ISP Telenor tried this some years back (around 2003 me thinks). I lived at home at the time and thus did not have any say in the choice of ISP. Each month we were limited to 1GB of total data transferred at which point the speed was reduced to 64k, unless we chose to pay ~$20 for 5GB "packs" of data. My parents, who were paying the bills, refused to see the need to change ISP. Luckily, my mother was an avid surfer as was my sister, so within about two weeks my math was proved correct and the 1GB limit was reached through surfing alone. Believe it or not, this business move was rotten enough that even the average non-techie users fled Telenor in droves. Prior to this, Telenor was the biggest ISP by far as they (and all the phone lines) were government owned until they were privatized in 1995. A company that pulls this sort of moronic, money-grabbing stunt deserves to die horribly.

Re:It doesn't matter who is violating your rights

[Jesus_666]

The siblings are right. Anything involving lots of connections will cause a cheap router to hand or reboot. o yourself the favor and get one intended for many connections. IIRC, the WRT45GL series ought to be able to handle the load but you should read up on it.

Re:But...

[BubbaDave]

We've repeated the error of the french in the 1700's (or was it 1800's) of destroying out financial system by allowing the re-packaging of worthless securities to 'eliminate risk', so I'd say, yes, we are going to let them do it again.

Or more accurately, we won't be able to stop them.

Dave