[clue-talk] Net neutrality

[blackcat]

top poster and hi-jerker
I will state that the whole mess started with the government
and any kind of finessing will never work.  Get the government
( which has a failure rate of 90% ) out of the internet, roads,
etc.  It will be puzzling for a while, in the end it will be
vastly more effective AND we will have more freedom.
Gus Calabrese





On 2006-May 08, at 6:55 PM, Jed S. Baer wrote:

On Mon, 08 May 2006 15:50:47 -0600
Matt Gushee wrote:

> I recently heard that Congress is considering legislation that would
> allow internet providers--especially large ones, I guess--to  
> allocate or
> withhold bandwidth as they see fit. This raises the specter of
> censorship, they say. Makes sense on the face of it, and I'm  
> inclined on
> general principles to distrust whatever large media companies want.
>
> But I wonder what you're all hearing about this issue. How worried
> should we be?

That depends upon your starting premises. Do you start out from the
premise that the companies who own the wires/fiber have property rights?
To what extent do you think the government should be able to abrogate  
such
rights? Doesn't ownership imply control?

Let's say you own a large piece of property, and you've put in a private
road, from one side to the other. This route happens to be the easiest,
most convenient, fastest route from point A to point B, on either  
side of
your property. You also own a trucking company, and your trucks  
travel on
this private road between those two points. Should the government be  
able
to force you to open your road to other traffic, such as that from
competing trucking companies? Suppose you have two roads. One is a
well-maintained freeway, which you reserve for the exclusive use of your
trucks. The other is still pretty good, but the speed limit is lower,  
and
it isn't as smooth, and you let anyone use it on a fee basis, based on
type of vehicle, etc. Should the government be able to tell you it's
unfair for you to restrict your premium road to only your traffic?

There are many issues here, in the vein of regulated monopolies and  
public
utilities. IMHO, they all come down to the question of how much the  
state
should abrogate property rights for the sake of the "common good".

Probably (I don't know, just speculating) some of the same people who  
are,
and have been, advocating that the FCC get out of the business of
regulating the airwaves are also arguing that the internet should be
regulated to make it "fair". Well, what's fair? And to whom?

jed
-- 
http://s88369986.onlinehome.us/freedomsight/
Key fingerprint = B027 FEFB 4281 CC72 67D1  4237 F2D0 D356 077A A30E
... it is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday
facilitate a police state. -- Bruce Schneier
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