Net neutrality, wired
p2pnet.net news view:- Phillip Smith of Community Bandwidth hilighted my comments to the recent The Tyee article on Network Neutrality. If Phillip thinks these comments are worth repeating on his own BLOG, then I should publish here. Being the great organizer Phillip is, he better organized the comments by bringing together the most relevant paragraphs from a few comments.
An entirely separate issue is Network Neutrality which says that all bits should be treated (and charged) the same regardless of the source, destination, or contents. It is important for people to realize that this is a separate issue than the bandwidth issue, so congestion and other such issues (caused by over- subscription by ISPs) are also entirely separate.
Say I write a book with Microsoft Office. If the book turns out to be a best seller, should Microsoft receive a cut of the royalties? Most rational people would say no, Microsoft was paid for Office when it was purchased, and it should never matter how valuable the content is that is created using this tool. This is in fact what the Telecommunications Companies are asking for — they want a cut of the value that other people are generating simply because wires which they manage (and customers already paid for) are being used.
Our past Industrial economy was largely built on top of what could be called “Road Neutrality”. The road networks, largely owned and managed by various levels of government, charged taxes to pay for them but didn’t charge based on the “value” of what people were transporting. I believe most rational people would realize that our capitalist economy could not exist without this common transportation infrastructure working that way.
I’m not suggesting we need to nationalize the entire of the communications infrastructure and manage them the same way we currently manage roads. I do, however, believe that this infrastructure needs to be regulated to offer a similar effect, while still allowing for competing private sector offerings relating to different technologies (Wired, Wireless, Fiber, etc). If regulation is not sufficient to protect the necessary neutrality, then nationalizing the communications infrastructure would be warranted.
The argument that the telecommunications companies “own” the wires and should be allowed to break with the Neutrality required to have a capitalist economy is entirely without merit. The physical system that these wires are placed in are largely “owned” by the public sector (or created by governments stepping in and creating right-of-way exceptions to privately owned real-property). On top of this, this communications infrastructure has always been highly government subsidized in the form of direct grants and tax incentives.
Government offer these right-of-ways to put wires under our cities , provinces or countries under specific conditions. I believe that Neutrality should be one of the basic conditions. If the providers don’t like those terms, and that is their choice, then they should no longer be allowed to put wires under our country, or use the spectrum managed by our governments on our behalf.
Sounds fair to me. If private sector companies aren’t willing to be part of the infrastructure in a fair and honest way, then the public sector will simply need to manage the communications infrastructure as the transportation infrastructure has been.
Russell McOrmond – p2pnet contributing editor
[McOrmond is an independent author (software and non-software) who uses modern business models and licensing (Free/Libre and Open Source Software, Creative Commons). He's also the CLUE policy coordinator.]
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January 28th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
the tools of an auto/truck mechanic, carpenter, plumber, surgeon, etc., etc., etc.
Therefore, what these companies are asking for would be like Mack, SnapOn, Craftsman or any other tool company telling the users of their tools that they [the companies] are going to charge these people for using those TOOLS!!!
The same with our vehicles. What these companies are asking for would be like vehicle manufacturers telling drivers that said vehicle maker is going to charge us to drive our OWN vehicles!!!
It’s just plain ludicrous!!!
THE NET NEEDS TO BE LEFT _AS IS_!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!