Via Declan McCullough’s Politech mailing list, here are a few sane people opposed to Neutering the Net.
Telepocalypse by Martin Geddes: F2C: Network neutrality speech:
An open, free net is an emergent outcome, not an a-priori input to be legislated into existence. We need to capture and accellerate the experiments in how networks are built, financed and sold; and protect those experiments from incumbent wrath until the results are in.
But most critically, don’t fossilize the network in 2006 by adopting network neutrality.
Some more Martin:
So neutrality rules that entrench our “Internet Mk1” as somehow sacred, hallowed and for all time are just totally counter-productive. Better to allow Verizon to screw over their customers and make it worthwhile for someone to bypass them entirely using newer technology. Or just swallow your pride and copy the unbundling rules that work just fine over here. BT can deploy a two-tier walled IMS garden, if they like. Just they have no way to make me buy it unless it creates some compelling value.
The Only Republican in Frisco:
You should not be surprised that the loudest advocates of ‘net neutrality are those on the far left, including MyDD, Kos, MoveOn and Craig Newmark (lovely guy but hardened socialist). Their arguments are very much in line with things like McCain-Feingold and the old Fairness Doctrine….
The history of the Internet has told us we should imagine the unimagined. Let’s preserve the absence of inhibition that has gotten us this far. Keep it libertarian. No new laws.
(Put another way: think about what the FCC has done in the name of “decency”. Now expand it to private bits on private networks. That’s “neutrality”.)
I would rather have little Johnnys grandma getting priority for her video checkup with the doctor at the hospital over little Johnny getting his bandwidth to upload the video of the prank he pulled on his buddy.. I would rather make sure that information from life support or other important monitoring equipment, medical or otherwise is finding its way without interruption, and without the end user having to pay for an off the net solution. These are the applications that make the net great. These are the applicatins that offer equal opportunity to those who are disadvantaged.
And check out Hands off the Internet, the Telco lobbying group.
Declan’s own take is quite reasonable:
Whatever you think of the desirability of Net neutrality, keep in mind what the legislation actually says. It would award the FCC the power to regulate what business models will be permitted on the next generation of the Internet.
And this from a guy who’s all for free downloads and that sort of thing.
I like this quote from above, “Let’s preserve the absence of inhibition that has gotten us this far.”
Yes, exactly. In the U.S., we’ve had neutrality thus far, and will until the merger restrictions on AT&T and Verizon run out next year.
Do you actually think we’d have the Net of today if dial-up wasn’t regulated under Title II? No, we’d have AOL and Compuserve and MSN. And that’s just dandy, right?
Cuban’s own group Public Knowledge disagress with him. Cuban has a “I can pay” mindset.
This has to be one of the strangest leaps of self-deliusion I’ve ever seen:
What a raging non sequitur.
Where’s the fallicy Dickie?
Dial-up networks are regulated under common carrier, Title II regulations. The networks – not the ISP’s like AOL and Compuserve.
Without this protection, and that of the Computer II ruling, AT&T (pre 1984) and RBOC’s (post 1984) would have been able to dictate what traffic flowed over the non-voice frequency of their copper. The logical following of that is, an AOL like walled garden.
You should know better, my good friend Mr. Richard.
AOL and others connect to the Internet, you see. Shall I explain how that works?