The End of the Interwebs?
On Wednesday, congress will hand over the rein of internet control to the telecommunications industry, thus legislating a corrupt conflict of interest and bringing special interest rule to a thriving, essentially lawless kingdom. Your thoughts?
posted by Pascals Bookie @ 1:18 PM
5 Comments:
I never before saw the similarities between the internet and Deadwood.... until your post.....
In all seriousness, I read about the giving away control of the internet, and I'm not sure how in any way this could benefit anyone except the telecommunications companies. I'd love to hear a counter-argument, because the only websites carrying this story are the liberal ones (interesting....)
Not to be unfair, but the issue you are referring to (Network Neutrality) isn't as cut and dry as the article tries to make it. No, Congress isn't handing over control of the Internet tomorrow, it is not even certain if network neutrality will be included in the bill (which primarily focuses on TV franchise agreements). Plenty of Republicans believe as much as Democrats that no one should regulate what is allowed on the Internet, a free and democratic principle internationally. I mean, did this guy even see what both the Rs and Ds on the International Relations committee say about China's actions on the Internet?
What, congress members condemning something abroad that we fully and completely participate in at home? That would be shocking!
Honestly, I don't think one committee's thoughts on a totalitarian government censoring political websites relates that much to another committee's actions on allowing internet regulation to become a completely capitalist entity. Also, the turnover of control doesn't mean censorship of the internet as much as it means it'll turn into... well, every other media market. Meaning, whoever has the most money will have the most access to the public, and small websites will fade into nothingness like public access television.
Of course, I've already admitted I haven't heard enough about this issue from the other side, and I'd love to hear more about it, if there are articles out there that someone could link to.
Quote from Cato Institute's Network Neutrality position paper:
"is there any such civil or inalienable right to high-speed broadband connectivity?"
(I am surprised Cato himself didn't post this up) - If, let's say, your provider is run by not very nice people who decide to block this
gem (not safe for work) of teh internets, 'theoretically' you could always go out and search for a provider who is run by nicer people who enjoy that sort of thing (like me - if I ever run a broadband ISP, no censorship at all).
The argument against what I just said is: in most areas, there are usually only 1 or 2 'backbone' broadband providers. However, that is a separate problem that has to be solved on its own accord (because it has other side effects except for censorship - for example, ridiculous prices charged by TWC in NYC), without using government interference as an argument.
Basically, the arguments are as follows:
people for government regulation are saying the following, in a nutshell: "let's analyze what the possible abuses of turning control of the Internet over to the providers could be, and create rules that prevent that".
people against government regulation are saying the following: "let's turn control over to the networks. The market will prevent them from abusing their power for things like censorship or blocking access to rival's services".
The following is my pure conjecture: no matter what we want to say about the FCC as a promoter of heavy censorship of the public airwaves (e.g. Howard Stern), they have done a decent job listening to customer complaints. For example, a little while ago they enforced Cell Phone Number Portability - people liked their numbers, and thus were prevented from going to a cheaper better competitor because telecompanies would not allow the transfer the number. I would argue that if telecoms attempted something egregious of that magnitude with regards to teh internets, the rulings to disallow that sort of abuse would be issued after the fact. Not perfect, but probably not too bad, and the key point is that no "possible theoretical abuses" study would be needed.
Let's try not to be too redundant here, ok? Not that I don't think that this is an important issue, and shoudn't be discussed... but at least come up with your own title... ;-)
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