Obama: Net Neutrality Matters a lot.

Excellent! (0.00 / 0)

But would it be too much to ask to apply the same thinking to rolling back much of the media deregulation, and restore the "airwaves" to the public sphere?

In fact, and more broadly speaking, this is the key to challenging the conservative Republican worldview.  We cannot keep electing Republican governments that are philosophically opposed to government's role in serving the public interest and expect anything more than a prevailing culture of Every Man for Himself.  On virtually every issue and every aspect of the public interest, the GOP is the party of privatization: public "broadcasting," public lands, public health, public education -- even our military is increasingly dependent upon private security contractors.

We simply cannot run a government like a grocery store, stocking the proverbial shelves based on a business formula of supply and demand and profit and loss.

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by: clincher @ Tue Oct 30, 2007 at 07:10:01 AM CDT

Limited number of slots (0.00 / 0)

There are a limited number of slots on the airwaves. It is simply not possible, as you seem to be proposing, to let everybody who wants to start a new radio station just go on the air. Everybody would be stepping all over everybody else's signal and nobody would be able to hear anything. (I suspect that's really not what you meant. But in the context of the previous message, it's what you come across as saying. Let freedom reign!)

The number of "slots" on the internet is also limited, but it's limited by infrastructure, not the laws of physics. You can always expand the infrastructure to give everyone the same speed that someone playing the fastest action game may want. At a cost, of course. I'm not quite as sure as others that I really want to be required to pay for speed I'll never need or want.

Bill Thomasson

Permission to reprint explicitly granted

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by: wathomasson @ Tue Oct 30, 2007 at 11:06:28 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Re-regulation (0.00 / 0)

My point is that the Federal government, once upon a time, issued licenses to broadcasters for limited periods and subject to renewal depending upon how well the licencees adhered to operating standards determined by the public interest.  It wasn't perfect, but much like the American democratic experiment in general, it was and remains a work in progress.

What the FCC in particular has grown into is something of a fraternity; while broadcast/cable/satelite has become just another comfortably deregulated industry that will do whatever it must do to stay that way, in the interests of shareholders and at the expense of the broader public interest.

Further, there is a consistent pattern to this deregulatory approach concerning other facets of the public sphere.

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by: clincher @ Tue Oct 30, 2007 at 12:49:20 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

required to pay for speed I'll never need or want (0.00 / 0)

under net neutrality, you can still buy whatever speed you want. The point is that you don't want ATT giving some packets priority over others. The transmission is neutral with respect to content.

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by: fh @ Tue Oct 30, 2007 at 13:20:57 PM CDT

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Contradiction (0.00 / 0)

Three sentences. And the second and third contradict the first.

Let's look at things in more detail. Under net neutrality, game packets have to travel over the internet backbone between (let's say) San Jose and Comcast's server farm in Elmhurst at the same speed as packets representing static web pages destined for my computer. The only way to combine that with the speed and reliability gamers want is by providing almost unlimited high-speed bandwidth. That costs money. I think we can safely assume that as a result AT&T and its fellow backbone service providers are going to charge Comcast more. And I can see no real alternative to Comcast passing those extra costs along to me.

A few days ago I was looking for a new router for my home wireless network and discovered that the top-of-line router comes with software that gives game and video packets precedence over other packets. I didn't get that. This, of course, is a case where neutrality costs less. But when you're talking about the internet backbone, it costs more -- unless, of course, you're sayinng that gamers simply don't matter.

Bill Thomasson

Permission to reprint explicitly granted

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by: wathomasson @ Wed Oct 31, 2007 at 12:31:00 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

If some entity is going (0.00 / 0)

to assign a hierarchy to packets then I prefer it be "the government" rather than a for-profit corporation.

Jeff Wegerson

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by: wegerje @ Wed Oct 31, 2007 at 12:38:21 PM CDT

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I won't disagree with you there (0.00 / 0)

But that's not net neutrality.

Bill Thomasson

Permission to reprint explicitly granted

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by: wathomasson @ Wed Oct 31, 2007 at 13:04:47 PM CDT

[ Parent ]