Net Neutrality Summit 79
Castar writes "BoingBoing has a post about an upcoming summit in San Francisco about the issue of Net Neutrality. The EFF and speakers on both sides of the issue are gathering to debate and spread awareness of Network Neutrality, which is an increasingly important topic. The FCC, of course, might have the final word."
Re:The tragedy of the commons (Score:5, Informative)
Beyond this we must ask which ways of charging for bandwith and content are acceptable and which are not. A big error made by amateur free market thinkers is that they believe that a free market means no rules. Free markets still operate within some level of rules such as no stealing and a certain requirement for transparency. Once information is not available to the consumer as to the difference between products offered this becomes no longer a truly free market.
I am OK with paying for the bandwidth of the connection coming into my computer. I am also OK with the website paying for the size of the bandwidth leaving their servers. What I am not OK with is interference in between the two. My connection provider should not be able to decrease my bandwidth because they do not like the website that I am accessing. Similarly the website's connection provider should not be able to decrease their bandwidth because the connection provider does not like me.
Re:make that 4 (Score:5, Informative)
I can't imagine why I, a consumer, would support what I've heard about "net neutrality." It seems to be all about restricting my freedom to buy the service I want in the service of a dubious and cynical goal
Net neutrality wouldn't be needed if the consumer had the freedom to buy from a plurality of services in the first place. The fact is, for a variety of reasons (such as the limit on the number of cables you can bury, as well as the particular history of the industry), there are not very many choices available to consumers for data carriers. The usual rules for consumer decision and free-market optimization simply don't apply when you have monopolies controlling the market.
Net neutrality (if done properly) is about preventing monopolies from abusing their position and artificially limiting consumer freedom.
[It] boils down to making sure freeloaders don't have to pay any more per packet than the rest of us.
I can't parse this statement. How are they "freeloaders" if they are paying the same amount as "the rest of us"? It hardly seems unfair for everyone to pay the same amount for a given level of bandwidth usage. If the "freeloaders" you are referring to are companies that make money over the Internet (e.g. Google), then I remind you that they are paying for their net connection same as you or I. No one right now is freeloading, despite what the telcos would have us believe.
it sounds like if I happen to want a massive pipe to my door, and lightning service to various IP addresses of my choice, then ... the government isn't going to allow me to cut a deal with my ISP for speedier treatment of my packets in exchange for more money. Likewise, if [someone] is perfectly willing to accept 4th class parcel-post service for her packets if the price is in the basement, then she, too, is up a creek, because it's a one-size-fits-all price and service level.
Net neutrality is not not "one-size-fits-all" mandate by the government. ISPs are free to offer varying levels of service at varying prices. Everyone is free to purchase the service level they want and need. No one is saying that gigantic corporations and grandmothers have the same Internet needs.
What neutrality is about is preventing the ISP from discriminating based on the source/destination of the data they transmit (and, according to some, should also include protocol neutrality). To use your mail example, no one is saying that we can't have Express vs. Regular vs. 4th-class. What we are saying is that the postal service cannot charge you to send a package, and then charge the receiver, again, to receive up the package (and moreover have variable charges depending not on distance or quality of service, but on whether they have "a deal" with the source or destination).
In physical distribution, this "common carrier [wikipedia.org]" rule has done considerable good: it prevents a carrier (especially monopoly carriers like rail) from colluding or discriminating, thereby opening up the service for everyone to use freely and fairly.
checking out the record of innovation and efficiency growth in industries that have been heavily regulated in the past ...-- such as airlines, telephone service, broadcast radio, power generation and distribution, public education, public health -- then alas any one with half a brain comes to the unpleasant conclusion that such interference always increases the price and decreases the efficiency of the service.
That's a rather bold statement to make without any specific explanation. Although I could formulate counter-examples, it's largely irrelevant to the debate at hand. I think most of us would agree that government regulation should be avoided where possible. However, there are cases where government intervention can be helpful and even necessary. In particular, since the telco industry is inherently a government-sanctioned monop