Background story.
(Apologies in advance for such a long post.)
Im not getting my head around the net neutrality issue. For starters, Im not sure I understand the objection to regulation.
OK, sure, big companies dont want government regulation. I get that part. But its easy to conceive why regulation might be a good thing and then I get confused.
So lets say regulation gets shot down, it wont be long before some big, greedy company is going to use its big pipe to the Internet to force some small company into bankruptcy, and Big Company will then be able to buy up Little Companys intellectual property at a fire sale. For reference, check the Microsoft antitrust action.
Then, lets say Im a little developer who has created a lousy product that needs easy, speedy access to the Internet. When my product stinks, Ill find a lawyer who says he can make me a bundle of money by telling a jury that the reason Im not rich is because Big Company is using the same tricks on me that it used on Little Company. No real basis in fact, but certainly a pain for Big Company, so it decides to settle. Now a new genre is created in the legal community.
Lets say an Internet company actually cares about its customers, and it wants to help the majority by keeping a minority from spending too much time using bandwidth-hogging sites. Except, most of those sites are from the top content providers -- TV networks -- who just about all have some relationship with all the big Internet companies.
Finally, if the Internet companies maintain the right to limit what gets sent down their wires, theyll also end up with the responsibility. So when the prudes dont like they see on their computer screens, the No. 1 avenue for redress wont be the person or company that published the offending material, their lawyers will go for the deep pockets: the Internet companies.
Sure, I get that its hard to trust the government with regulating the Internet, but is it really hard to imagine crafting some kind of regulatory structure that makes everybody (at least most people) happy? Weve survived with the government regulating telephone lines and thats the most analogous thing out there. Without regulation -- and I hate to get all paranoid, but it seems conceivable -- we could have Internet monopolies decided what machines we own and what software we run.
mt
(Apologies in advance for such a long post.)
Im not getting my head around the net neutrality issue. For starters, Im not sure I understand the objection to regulation.
OK, sure, big companies dont want government regulation. I get that part. But its easy to conceive why regulation might be a good thing and then I get confused.
So lets say regulation gets shot down, it wont be long before some big, greedy company is going to use its big pipe to the Internet to force some small company into bankruptcy, and Big Company will then be able to buy up Little Companys intellectual property at a fire sale. For reference, check the Microsoft antitrust action.
Then, lets say Im a little developer who has created a lousy product that needs easy, speedy access to the Internet. When my product stinks, Ill find a lawyer who says he can make me a bundle of money by telling a jury that the reason Im not rich is because Big Company is using the same tricks on me that it used on Little Company. No real basis in fact, but certainly a pain for Big Company, so it decides to settle. Now a new genre is created in the legal community.
Lets say an Internet company actually cares about its customers, and it wants to help the majority by keeping a minority from spending too much time using bandwidth-hogging sites. Except, most of those sites are from the top content providers -- TV networks -- who just about all have some relationship with all the big Internet companies.
Finally, if the Internet companies maintain the right to limit what gets sent down their wires, theyll also end up with the responsibility. So when the prudes dont like they see on their computer screens, the No. 1 avenue for redress wont be the person or company that published the offending material, their lawyers will go for the deep pockets: the Internet companies.
Sure, I get that its hard to trust the government with regulating the Internet, but is it really hard to imagine crafting some kind of regulatory structure that makes everybody (at least most people) happy? Weve survived with the government regulating telephone lines and thats the most analogous thing out there. Without regulation -- and I hate to get all paranoid, but it seems conceivable -- we could have Internet monopolies decided what machines we own and what software we run.
mt