Comments on: Is Broadband a Civil Right?

By: Brett Glass

Brett Glass — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 14:10:56 +0000

Richard: The relevant point is that the government should keep its hands off the Internet unless it’s necessary to step in to prevent anticompetitive conduct.

By: Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 04:37:20 +0000

That’s a minor detail.

By: Seth Finkelstein

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 04:34:47 +0000

“Law actually is monolithic”??? For heaven’s sake, obscenity is a geographic variable, arguably with additional time-dependency on top of that! In the US, law varies from state to state, and on the Federal level, it can vary sometimes in area too (“Circuit Courts”). It’s actually a mess from the standpoint of the geek mindset.

By: Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 03:22:42 +0000

@Seth: Law actually is monolithic; some things really are simple.

@Brett: Relevance?

By: Seth Finkelstein

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 03:12:50 +0000

Richard, that’s again too far simplistic. Governments aren’t monolithic, there are always factions (cryptography was a great example, the financial factions were deadset against the law-enforcement factions). Inversely, the interests of corporations can put in place an infrastructure for MASSIVE spying, as e.g. Google does with Gmail, far beyond what would be ordinarily acceptable in a publicly owned system.

Trying to find some way to just consult net.libertarian ideology for the answer is nonsense.

By: Brett Glass

Brett Glass — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 02:16:51 +0000

Richard:

Possibly, but it is also possible for those national carriers to establish a comfortable oligarchy. This seems to be what is happening in the wholesale “middle mile” business (including “special access” lines and also long haul fiber). The ILECs are gouging non-ILECs. And the long haul fiber owners are refusing to deal with the entities that would need them to bypass the ILECs, because the ILECs are good customers of theirs. Oversight is still needed to prevent anticompetitive practices. But if this is done, no other government intervention is needed.

By: Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 22:41:36 +0000

Anything’s possible, but the big difference is decentralization. We only have one national government, but we have several national carriers, each with different interests.

By: Seth Finkelstein

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:23:20 +0000

“Absent a fascist regime (in which corporations and government ally against the people), …”

One doesn’t need a fascist regime for this to happen – it can occur in every sort of political system. It’s entirely possible to have privat-IZED censorship.

By: Brett Glass

Brett Glass — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:05:24 +0000

…isn’t’ broadband access what is making the Iran Protests happen?”

In a word, no. A questionable election is the cause of the protest. The protesters are using Internet access as one of many possible tools to organize their protests. Telephone chains and other methods would likely be just as effective.

Given a choice between government or corporate control of the Internet and broadband networks in general, it’s certainly not obvious to me that governments are more likely to protect free speech rights than corporations; who’s more sensitive to criticism of the government?

Absent a fascist regime (in which corporations and government ally against the people), the answer is, obviously, the government. Which is why the recently released requirements for NTIA and RUS stimulus funding are so disappointing; they explicitly regulate the funded networks in ways that could harm free speech. And by prohibiting content providers from being able to pay for “express delivery” or other special quality of service provisions, it may preclude innovations that need such service.

Another related disappointment is that the rules for the NTIA and RUS funding explicitly prohibit any private entity that isn’t a corporation from participating. This, obviously, IS a pro-corporate measure that discriminates against sole proprietorships (which constitute the overwhelming majority of American small businesses).

By: Seth Finkelstein

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:31:37 +0000

To be clearer, the argument that broadband infrastructure should be treated as a public resource is not refuted by knee-jerk bogymen. I’d say that what mattered in Iran was that the relevant network hardware was outside that country, not private vs. public. Businesses are often quite eager to censor and appease an authoritarian government (e.g. see Google and China), even to the extent of going far beyond what the government might directly order.