Next Up for Nationalization: the Internet

National Review ^ | November 13, 2008 | Phil Kerpen

[dr_who]

Network neutrality means less technological innovation — and less freedom, too.

By Phil Kerpen

Following the nationalization of investment banks, Fannie and Freddie, consumer banks, and private insurance companies, taxpayers are likely asking: What’s left for the federal government to nationalize?

How about the Internet?

Network neutrality, or net neutrality, is the beneficent-sounding name for sweeping new government regulatory power that would prohibit Internet service providers from innovating in their own networks. This could lead to much less broadband investment by private companies, and could potentially force government subsidization, control, and outright nationalization of the Internet. The implications of this are chilling.

[sport]

Ready for a little European fascism, anyone?

Most in the United States are not only ready for it, they will welcome it with open arms. As evidenced by the last Presidental Election. Those who do not want it are in the minority.

[bamahead]

Just like that, the American ideal of pluralism is dismissed as fragmentation, while free speech gives way to political correctness.



Libertarian ping! Click here to get added or here to be removed or post a message here!

[The Great RJ]

Internet censorship is already here as the Australians are starting to restrict access to certain "objectionable" sites to protect children and stop child pornography. Banning access to sites critical of the government would be only a few keystrokes away. The first assault by Obama will likely be to open the flood gates on Internet taxation. Look at all the taxes and fees tacked on to your phone bill...that will soon come to your Internet access.

FCC Commissioner Adelstein has already suggested that fees be placed on broadband access to pay for extending high speed Internet service to remote areas. Imagine another $2 per month on your ISP bill so that the 6 people in West Waterpump, SD have broadband on their two computer.

[dr_who]

That’s what amazes me. This guy thinks that no one is entitled to disagree with him. It seems pretty naive as well as nutty.

[dr_who]

Can you really say that it has been net-neutral? ISP’s have been filtering or degrading different types of P2P traffic for a while now.

[GVnana]

FCC Commissioner Adelstein has already suggested that fees be placed on broadband access to pay for extending high speed Internet service to remote areas.

Yep. Here we go. Paying higher taxes under the guise of providing services to "under served" markets -- turning the Internet into another public utility.

Just think of the government jobs and the lack of private sector jobs to fund them!

[djsherin]

This is despicable. We’ve created far too many moral hazards and slippery slops in the country. This is what happens when you go to the federal government to get things done for you.

[dr_who]

Next, the other cites Google's "propagandist" who the author says calls for the nationalization of the Internet because it will make it, "essentially open to all." What is wrong with that?-not the nationalization part, the open access part? Does the author mean to leave it to us to infer from the very fact of nationalization that the government will impose invidious discriminations?

The author objects to Cerf using the "road system" as an analogy when the fact is that ISP's and bigger players that ISP's connect to OWN THE NETWORKS, the networks they built themselves and offer access to in return for that stuff called money, the very same thing they used to build the networks in the first place. Google offers content, but they don't have much in the way of network infrastructure, so it wouldn't surprise me that they'd like to have the government essentially take over someone else's property and run it according to Google's liking.

What some people here are most likely arguing about is the right to do absolutely what ever you please with a $50 ISP account. If a 80-90 billion dollar corporation like Google wants to do what ever they please with someone else's network, perhaps they can build their own darn network themselves.

[Psycho_Bunny]

I believe what I said was "almost entirely".

And I think the word you're looking for is "filtering" or "throttling" rather than "degrading". I use three Cymphonix filters for throttling Peer to Peer on my employers networks.

[dr_who]

Yes, “throttling” is the common term. Or “degrading”, depending upon your point of view.

[jas3]

I already run several Tor routers right now. I’m playing with I2P as well.

[Desdemona]

Competence doesn’t have much to do with what the market will buy.

[Fichori]

“It's proponents define it thus: "...a network-neutrality regime. In its strictest form, such a regime would require every bit that travels over a network to be treated the same way." So far, so good.” [excerpt]

No, thats not good.

It undermines capitalism and free enterprise.

The government needs to stop telling people how to run everything and let ISP's sell whatever kind of service they want.

Don't like how your ISP handles your BITs?

Get a different ISP.

Except under net-neutrality, all ISP's will be the same, so getting a different ISP will be pointless.

If all ISP's were forced to operate exactly the same, there would be no competition.

Innovations would be hampered by bureaucratic red tape.

In the end you would wind up with one ISP, which would, naturally, be run by the government. (poorly of course)


Just look where bank-neutrality got us.

The banks were forced to give out loans to everyone equally, and now the economy is tanking.

The last thing we need is communist dictators who can't keep the government on an even keel telling us how to run our inventions.

[nathanbedford]

At last, cogent arguments delivered up in better form than those of the original author. Thank you.

[Jmerzio]

“Of course the leftists in congress want to sink their fascist teeth into the internet. They hate the fact that we have a vehicle for communication that they can’t control and tax.”

Doubtful. The internet is to the left as talk radio is to us.

[dr_who]

Lastly, it “the internet” gets messed up by government, people will simply create new networks above, below, or along side it. There is nothing that prevents people from creating their own separate networks, and there’s good reason to have multiple networks rather than just a single data infrastructure in the United States.

The people you're talking about are likely to be Comcast and Verizon, since they have the networks and can do as they please with them, including partitioning them off from the internet so not to come under the sway of "network neutrality" regulations.

[bootless]

Two words:

Harrison Bergeron

Read here: http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/hb.html

(for free - HA!)

[steve-b]

What a pile of BS. Network neutrality simply requires network providers to actually provide access to the entire Internet -- you know, the service their customers purchased.

[steve-b]

In an ironic twist, one of the scare tactics they use is the idea that phone and cable companies may start blocking access to political websites. Of course, this is exceedingly unlikely in a competitive marketplace where customers can take their business elsewhere.

Damn no-good cable company! I'm taking my business to the OTHER cable company!

Oh, wait... I live on Earth, not the author's home planet.

[steve-b]

"The concept of Network Neutrality has unfortunately been misunderstood by many conservatives, libertarians, and other champions of the free market. That's too bad, because the free market essence of the Internet is exactly what would be lost without Network Neutrality.

"The large telecoms, some politicians and a number of conservative pundits have characterized the push for Network Neutrality as a left-wing attempt to stifle innovation and put government bureaucrats in control of the Internet. Well, it's not. Through my work with Gun Owners of America, I am demonstratively a lot further to the right than they are.

It is true that the largest member of the coalition looking to regain Network Neutrality is MoveOn.org – and they are usually my political enemies. But Gun Owners and groups like Brent Bozell's Parents Television Council have done did what many on the right don't seem to have: our homework.

One of the most telling points is that what the coalition is trying to get codified is what we have had all along as the Internet was developed. In all of those years, Network Neutrality was policy… until August of 2005, when the FCC changed the rules. How can this policy stifle innovation and competition when the Internet has been a roaring success in those areas for decades?

The real problem is that we are under a distorted market from the get-go. Government is setting the rules. The result has been a government-supported oligopoly. We are lucky that those controlling physical access to the Internet have been forced to give every purchaser of bandwidth equal access – it doesn't matter whether Gun Owners or the Brady Center is purchasing a T-1: all T-1 purchasers pay the same for the same level of service. And moreover, the phone company has to tough it if they don't like what is being done with that bandwidth (such as this column).

This goes all the way back to Ma Bell – after all, the physical infrastructure of the Internet is the nation's phone lines. And just as I-95 is the only Interstate we have between Richmond and the Beltway, no one is going to build a competing physical Internet.

But people are going to build new Burger Kings along the highways. Suppose, however, that AT&T owned I-95. And that they inked an exclusive deal with Wendy's. Or bowed to pressure from food Nazis and said no burgers at all from Florida to Maine.

What we think of as the free market nature of the Internet is only possible because the oligopoly has been forced to keep its hands off of what actually gets done with the infrastructure they control.

In a truly free market, Network Neutrality would not be necessary, as good old American competition would drive the very best service up the ladder of success. But as long as government is setting the rules for a handful of companies, the rules have to include statutory Network Neutrality to ensure those companies can't unilaterally shut down what the innovators are doing. If they had any choice, telephone companies would not have allowed Instant Messaging or Voice over Internet – those things directly compete with their largest moneymaking service!

But it can be worse than that. Large telecoms have internal anti-gun policies. If they were allowed to, what's to stop them from slowing or blocking content they disagree with?

Another wrong argument made by the misguided is that the leftists are trying to institute price controls, forcing companies to charge the same for high bandwidth video as for quick-flying e-mail. Or as one writer put it, charge the same for a golf ball and a marble being sent through garden hoses. Nope. That bigger, more expensive hose required to deliver the golf ball? Network Neutrality merely means that all who buy that particular hose get the same hose at the same price and can't be denied the chance to lawfully use it.

It's a funny way to have to think of it, true, but as long as Congress is making the rules for a handful of major companies in providing the infrastructure, it has to make certain those companies give equal access to all comers. That's the way it has been for the very lifetime of the free and open Internet we're all interested in maintaining.

--Craig Fields, Gun Owners of America