[ale] Republicans’ “Internet Freedom Act” would wipe out net neutrality | Ars Technica

[Robert Heaven]

Before everyone goes running whole-hog into this "Free Market" (wild west) world, you need to remember a little history. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, during the boom years of the Industrial Revolution, competition between businesses, especially in the telecommunications industry, was, quite literally, gang warfare. They were constantly cutting each other's wires/cables and, on some occasions hiring mercenaries and shooting each other. The local municipal franchise monopoly was put in place, not to be a good-ol-boy system (which it unfortunately became) but, to stop the gang violence. (by the way, after the AT&T divestiture, the cable cutting started up again but, so far it's been small scale)


> On Mar 7, 2015, at 2:57 PM, Michael Trausch <mike at trausch.us> wrote:
> 
> Perhaps the Internet needs rebuilt by the people. Encrypted wireless mesh networks with low-power nodes that can collectively deliver good bandwidth. A virtual circuit protocol on top to control path jitter, and get rid of the big boys entirely...?
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
>> On Mar 7, 2015, at 12:47 PM, Brian Mathis <brian.mathis+ale at betteradmin.com> wrote:
>> 
>> With services like this, you need to have local monopolies on some level, otherwise you'd have a different set of wires running everywhere for each service provider, and the streets would be constantly under construction as other providers were installing new lines, etc..., which has other negative impacts.  This is the reason that exclusive franchises are granted in the first place (often with large tax breaks).
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo