The free market is a an unattainable ideal. Like pure communism, the human element just won't support it. I don't think you can separate government from economics, and both are guaranteed to be at least a bit messy. > saw Al Franken as a sponsor, thought to myself "has this guy ever > had a serious thought on anything, -2 points, for biased assertion while trying to make a logical argument. J Sent from my iPod. ...because my other device is a BB Storm. On Aug 20, 2010, at 2:15 AM, Harry Penner <hpenner at gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 4:40 PM, Robert Nesius <nesius at gmail.com> > wrote: > Hi Harry, > You assert that all regulation is designed to restrict choices. > But, is that really true? Some regulation is designed to guarantee > we have choices because without choice "free markets" devolve into > abusive monopolies. > > Really? I can't name an actual monopoly in the last century that > wasn't mandated or at least hugely facilitated by government > regulation. Can you? If so, let's look at what prevented the > choice. No offense, but I suspect you're taking "free markets > result in monopolies or at least in a menu of nothing but bad > choices" as an unexamined premise. And without that premise, > doesn't the prospect of bureaucrats making more rules for you become > much less attractive? > > I did ask for examples, but I wasn't clear enough. I wanted > examples related to the topic of Net Neutrality that backed your > position of reticence with respect to endorsing regulation enforcing > net neutrality. > > your reaction, for instance, was too quick to take the time to give > examples or demonstrate any in-depth knowledge of the issue, which > is exactly what you criticized me for -- rather than thinking it > through. > > I did criticize you, but here's the deal. You expressed an opinion > and position first, but it was practically content-free. You framed > your position with generalizations, not facts or chains of logic > based on the issue of net neutrality at all. You were went straight > to "free marketeering/anti-regulation" and didn't even suggest as to > why that is relevant. I wasn't flaming your position, I was > challenging you to give me something other than rhetoric to consider > and think about in the context of Net Neutrality. I'm still > waiting. Give me more to think about and consider and I'll think > about it. > > If you're just afraid of big-government/regulation on principle - > nothing less and nothing more - okay then. I get it. > > Here's what happened: I saw "savetheinternet.com", thought to > myself "somebody's got delusions of grandeur!", followed the URL and > saw Al Franken as a sponsor, thought to myself "has this guy ever > had a serious thought on anything, especially on tech stuff I care > about?", saw that the page gave a very slanted view of the net > neutrality debate, and thought to myself "I sure hope nobody takes > this seriously; just for grins maybe I'll remind my fellow TCLUGers > to look before they leap on this, because they make it sound like a > no-brainer but it probably isn't the right thing to do". So I > posted a message reminding you all to think hard before letting the > likes of these clowns redefine the traffic rules for the Internet. > > Yes, I am very skeptical of big government, as any sane person is. > And skeptical of the good most regulation does. So nothing less and > not *much* more... I've spent the last 5 years auditing tech, not > producing it, so I'm not claiming any special knowledge. > > But I'm also a fellow Internet user who has worked for and with > content providers (as most people on this list probably have), and > I'm not comfortable with the idea of anybody telling me or my ISP > what must or must not be prioritized. Would it be nice to have > video prioritized? Sure, sometimes. Would it be nice not to have > BitTorrent de-prioritized? Sure, sometimes. Admins of large > networks make those kinds of decisions all the time. Should those > decisions be made at the ISP level? Probably not. But maybe I'm in > a situation where I'm administering a very large network and I > *want* all kinds of crap filtered at the ISP level. Or maybe I'm > just a guy at home and I don't. Why shouldn't I have a choice? > Seems to me not *all* ISPs are going to do the wrong thing just > because they *can*. If there are enough people who want minimal > packet inspection and minimal traffic shaping on their Internet > feed, there's probably going to be somebody who will continue to > offer it. Maybe that forces all of us who care about that kind of > stuff off Comcast and back onto DSL, using somebody like VISI or > IPHouse who still cater to the tech-savvy crowd. Maybe it costs a > couple bucks more per month. Or on the other hand maybe I can't get > anything but )!&%! 3G at my house and Verizon is going to be one of > the bad guys who do that kind of stuff and won't even give me an > option to pay more for an uninspected/unshaped connection. [ASIDE: > Heck, they won't even give me an unmetered connection no matter what > I pay... But it was my choice to live in the sticks, and I knew the > situation going in (well actually I didn't, but that was my fault), > so I'm just living with the consequence of my own choice. When I > first got here, I tried WildBlue satellite Internet and it REALLY > stank: metered, restricted, and latency like you wouldn't believe. > I chose the lesser of two evils -- a smaller cap and less > reliability (3G instead of satellite), but much lower latency. > That's how choice works. I realize those factors aren't the subject > of the net neut debate, but I think it would have played out > similarly if the issue had been content intervention instead of > latency.] > > The alternative, as I see it, is starting (or some might say > continuing) ISPs down the path of TV or phone providers, where > there's little or no choice. It seems to me that when you restrict > providers in what they can provide, you ultimately and necessarily > restrict consumers in what they can consume. In other words, by > regulating the providers we regulate ourselves to some extent. > Maybe that's OK with you but I'd prefer to take my chances among > providers making varied choices than among providers where some > bureaucrat has already made the choices for everyone. > > > My understanding of Net Neutrality is that it preserves the > separation of concerns between bandwidth providers and content > providers. It means everyone's traffic between the content provider > and my box is treated fairly, and that the service I'm consuming is > not trumped by traffic from content providers with cozy deals with > my bandwidth provider that I may not even be aware of. It also > means that my bandwidth provider can't de-prioritize traffic from a > competitor to one of their own services and force me to be vendor > locked. That is to say - net neutrality preserves choice by > preventing the people in control of distribution from deciding for > me what my choices are going to be. > > Which is to say, I really don't understand the free-market/anti- > regulation objection to net-neutrality. Bandwidth is a commodity. > Bandwidth providers are utilities. What is the basis of your > objection to net-neutrality other than general paranoia and/or > dogma? That is what I was looking for (and expecting) from your > first post. :) > > I certainly understand your concern and agree that it's a legitimate > issue. But making it illegal for ISPs to consider the content of > the traffic can have costs as well. As the pipes become more > congested, will VoIP still be feasible without prioritization? > Sure, you can prioritize it on your own LAN and on your firewall, > but if it gets treated the same as telnet once it hits the big pipes > how will it sound in 2 years after every cell phone on earth is > playing youtube videos of lolcats? One solution is to build bigger > pipes, but will ISPs keep giving you unlimited data transfer for a > flat fee if they have to double their capacity and can't tweak the > traffic to increase perceived bandwidth? > > Actions have reactions: maybe regulation solves the content > discrimination problem, but it might directly cause or hasten other > undesirable outcomes such as the end of (or an increase in the price > of) unmetered home connections, or degrade VoIP performance (forcing > people back onto POTS lines or onto cell phones where we are already > seeing metered data), or make "free" Internet video conference calls > suddenly expensive or impossible, or who knows what. > > As I said in a couple other posts, I'm not saying regulation is bad > per se, just that we owe it to ourselves to think hard about the > consequences before we push for this or any regulation. There are a > lot of smart people on the net; I've just gotta believe there must > be some other way to deal with the problem. > > And BTW I really appreciate the thoughtful tone of your message -- > we may disagree, but it's nice to see we can do so peaceably (unlike > most other places on the net). It's one of the reasons I love this > list. > > -Harry > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.mn-linux.org/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20100820/81e0ba06/attachment-0001.htm