[ale] OT: Craig Newmark of Craig's List on Net Neutrality

[Geoffrey]

Jim Philips wrote:
> On Sunday 11 June 2006 13:52, Jim Popovitch wrote:
>> Geoffrey wrote:
>>> It's like Joe's puts up an ad in the local paper
>>> and Pizza Hut pays the newspaper to NOT print it.
>> That already happens more than you may notice or care.  Billboards are a
>> good example.  Do you really think that CocaCola needs a $1M billboard
>> in Time Square?  No, but they will pay $1M every year to keep Pepsi from
>> having that space.  Fox News did it to CNN at that CNN Center, signed a
>> mulit-year lease on a billboard right outside CNN, then lambasted CNN on
>> it.  Home Depot now buys up neighboring property when selecting a new
>> site, specifically to keep Lowes from opening a store right next door.
>> "Squeezing out Joe" has been a business tactic for as long as mankind
>> has been doing business.
> 
> Yes, and this is a particularly inapt simile. Billboards have never been a 
> medium the average Joe could use for communication. Telephones have always 
> been that and the Internet became that. Telephones became that because of the 
> principle of universal service (a classic case of government intervention for 
> the benefit of majority over the benefit for the minority).  The principle of 
> universal service stated that users easily reached would subsidize the costs 
> of reaching users in more remote areas. Along with this came the idea that 
> the phone company was a common carrier for all traffic and could not 
> prioritize traffic on the common phone lines. These principles should be 
> extended to the Internet. The value of a network rises with the number of 
> people it reaches. I'll grant the phone companies that delivering an 18 meg 
> video is a different task from delivering an all text e-mail like this one. 
> But the phone companies have the balance in this equation all wrong. If the 
> only way large files get delivered is through an agreement between the phone 
> company and the large content providers, then the vitality of the Internet 
> will dwindle dramatically. I would be more than happy to bear some of the 
> costs of downloading, say, an iso of my Slackware distribution. If the telcos 
> are the sole arbiters of what high bandwidth traffic can move, I probably 
> won't even be able to get that Slackware distribution off the Net. So, I'm 
> fine with somebody paying for higher bandwidth usage. What I'm bitterly 
> opposed to is a situation where the content available is only decided by 
> deals cut between the telcos and the content providers. If that happens, the 
> Internet will start to look more like television. And while there are more 
> choices on television than there used to be, it's still pitifully limited 
> compared to the Internet.

Amen.

-- 
Until later, Geoffrey

Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little
security will deserve neither and lose both.  - Benjamin Franklin