I'm not going through all of that tonight. I've been fighting all day, arguing against the Keystone pipeline with Republicans, arguing against this with you, and arguing against antitrust laws with supposed libertarians. But a few points.
You keep mentioning libertarianism like it has something to do with this. Like you'll score points with the audience for attacking that label.
You should know by now I could give two shits about having a popular opinion.
Even though most libertarians want a free market in almost everything, many people of other political persuasions prefer the free market in at least some areas of the economy.
Using "free market" ideologies that are just not applicable to a 21st century problem like this is like trying to conduct brain surgery with a sharp rock.
In summary, you don't believe a lack of competition is a problem, which I will never agree with.
Competition has nothing to do with the problem. I don't think you're even addressing the problem itself, which is ownership.
You think the physical cost is the only reason we don't have better service now. So, you support the federal takeover,
This is all wrong.
1) There is no "federal takeover."
2) This isn't about cost of service, but ownership of the data moving through the network.
3) This isn't about possible future service, but the nature of the internet today.
4) Your argument fails to address the majority of internet use in the United States which actually falls under FCC regulation; the use of mobiles on CDMA/GPRS networks.
5) The Net Neutrality debate is really only about fiber and hybrid fiber networks.
even though it does nothing to address your concerns of cost,
??
because it claims ownership of the packets of data.
The public would own the "airwaves" so to speak. This is how the internet has
always operated.
Again, ISPs have had limited to zero influence on the topology or actual operation of the internet in history. ISPs like Comcast are making a concerted effort to change that. Hence the need for regulation.
First of all, I don't agree that government ownership of the packets is the same as being owned by the "public trust".
You keep saying "government ownership" but that's not what "public trust" means. Public trust, in this regard, means literally (with respect to IP laws) "Public Domain." Or in essence, yes, Charter/Comcast can snoop (just as anyone else can), but they cannot impede or throttle.
Sen. Clarence Dill, one of the co-authors of the Radio Act of 1927, on the subject of ownership of the airwaves: “The government does not own the frequencies, as we call them, or the use of the frequencies. It only possesses the right to regulate the apparatus. We might declare that we own all the channels, but we do not.”
Now, if regulated under Title II, it would mean that ISPs could actually no longer snoop, as it would violate standing laws against wiretapping, which is an interesting consequence of the law.
Second, Comcast and the like are acting like Big Pharma, saying they need monopoly profits to invest in this infrastructure. so now they will be treated like Big Pharma, with a government protected monopoly.
Optimus, that's not what is being debated, at all...
And that has done what for the cost of pharmaceutical drugs? And the quality of those drugs?
Again, bro, this isn't what's being debated.
What's being debated is whether or not a packet sent from your computer belongs to you as a member of the public, or the ISP because you're using their equipment.
That's 90% of the debate.
This law doesn't propose anything to either help or hurt the already existing data infrastructure monopolies that exist in the United States and elsewhere.
This law doesn't have anything to do with growth of infrastructure; but instead, it has to do with how ISPs can create revenue and proportion limited traffic to select sites and users.
I just wish we wouldn't get carried away with these philosophical debates, and instead focus on the reality that without something similar to Net Neutrality, and without the government being able to regulate fiber, we will rapidly end up in a situation where we have partitioned networks that are no longer an "Internet" of sorts, but instead, more similar to what we had predating the Internet.
We would end up with the AOL, Prodigy, Compuserve model that died as a result of an open and free network. That's the "open and free" that Net Neutrality is trying to preserve.
My interest in this is not political. I'm a hacker. I have been since before the WWW existed. I do
not want a regulated internet, and the thought that the federal government is getting involved
sickens me.
But at this point, I do not see a viable alternative......
Comcast and other ISPs have already begun the process of creating "fast lanes," which really translates to "slow lanes," internet snooping, and a loss of freedoms that we presently enjoy. Eventually this business model will be so pervasive as to exist from the highest tier networks down to the user. We would have topologically disconnected and distinct networks between various ISPs not sharing their infrastructure or servers.
Unfortunately, the very manner in which the internet operates is too complex a topic for those debating this in the halls of Congress; and the American populace has no stomach to learn how multi-homed networks, and interoperable fiber optic networks are the foundation of the internet at it's lowest levels.
What the major ISPs and the Republican Party is proposing is literally the end to the Internet as we know it. It's literally that serious of a problem, but they hide behind the complexity of it. I wish I could sit here and say "leave it alone," but unfortunately that's not an option.
If I've got to choose between AOL-redux and an open Internet over fast DSL, I'll choose DSL. And yeah, that's probably the most analogous and fair comparison I can come up with.
