For John, BLUF: A solution in search of a problem. Nothing to see here; just move along.
Here is the White House on "Net Neutrality", a topic recently in the news from the Federal Communications Commission decision, 3 to 2 to make the Internet a Utility. And here is what the FCC thinks it said. And here is the trace of the story by the Newspaper of Record, The Old Grey Lady
Here are some notes I cribbed from someone else:
On the contrary, I think this is the deathknell for free and open Internet. Because instead of being the global "Internet"—with a capital "I"—so-called "net neutrality" treats the internet as an "internet" US utility to be regulated by the nationstate. This is important as China and Russia push their concept of "internet sovereignty." If the US can regulate their internet, why can't Russia and China regulate their Internets?The idea of a free and unencumbered Internet, one that could be used to support the Arab Spring or some [name the color] revolution in some nation facing oppression, is going away. In a lot of ways it never existed, in that strong nations, with money and technological savvy, have been limited search engines and social media. But, the Internet was a global concept, struggling to be free.What is the problem that the FCC was trying to fix here? Are Internet speeds getting slower? Has unfair competition caused the Internet economy to dwindle in United States? Did Congress change the law to allow regulation of the Internet? Or, did three unelected appointees make a decision to unilaterally expand federal power?
Now the US has signed on to the idea that the internet is a domestic utility, to be used by each nation as that nation sees fit. Remember, it isn't the first order consequences one needs to worry about, with its obvious goodness. The problem is the second and third order effects. The ones few anticipate. Unfortunately, there are few Daniel Patrick Moynihans and the few there are tend to be shouted down by all the Progressive do-gooders who are going to make our lives better.
Another way to look at it is that every solution contains within itself the seeds of a new problem.
Regards — Cliff
Confusion between the internet itself as a platform for ideas and information, and the means by which it is conveyed via access providers and their bandwidth, is causing a lot of people to miss the point. What is being regulated here is access provisions in the US, not the internet itself. This is materially different from censorship regulations elsewhere that this author is attempting to conflate with their objection to the regulation.
ReplyDeleteThe situation here is a simple paid-political battle between the creatives (Sony, etc.) and the engineers (Verizon, etc.) and the creatives have won this round. On the plus side, we have the same sort of requlated service proscription as we did 100 years ago so that farmers in the midwest could afford telephones. This makes good sense for the benefit of all, because, like telephones, fax machines, and all sorts of other "network effect" technologies, the value to any one person is increased most by another's usage.
However, this does sow the seeds of new problems. Comcast, by virtue of owning Universal, will stop building out their net infrastructure in favor of charging more money for its own content subscriptions carried over its pipes. (We pay either way, don't we). Verizon's strategy is more forward-thinking, and likely to pay off: It is devoting all of its infrastructure investments into its 4G LTE wireless network. (And, likely, a 5G version even better suited to carrying video signals). It's clear their response will be to serve content to mobile devices and charge users for that platform, thus making moot the absence of reliable IP transmission infrastructure. Both behemoths will leave us with decaying access speeds and quality over our current connections, and the government has already sanctioned its approval provided that the decaying access speeds and quality are consistent for all.
The engineers and the creatives are going to figure out how to get paid. This legislation really doesn't change that.