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gardnerp wrote: In many states it's illegal to sell items below cost in stores.
And laws against price gouging as well.
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The problem is that Internet carriers are very close to a monopoly in most places. In large cities, there may be two or even three carriers, but they are so large and so much in control of so many types of communications in so many places, that they will inevitably establish similar restrictive rules that gives the consumer or the start-up no real choice at all. The free market is not always free. And that is why regulations are needed.
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Who, exactly, do you think creates the monopolistic situation to begin with? Governments are most frequently the unholy partner in alliance with business to create the situation in the first place.
This precisely describes the situation that led to the Robber Baron's in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Regulation, in and of itself is no barrier to monopolies and big business.
Some laws are indeed required to keep the field fair.. but over-reliance on government (also made up of fallible/greedy people) is also not a good choice.
Ideally you want a situation where barrier to entry in a marketplace is low so that competition is maintained. That is NOT what the internet is right now. Its still only a few really large carriers that own a ton of wire. I think that is to be expected given the frightful amount of capital required to build out a network (in this way the telecoms resemble the railroads I refer to above), but we should not lose sight of how government magnifies the problem where monopolies are concerned.
modified 16-Jan-14 20:01pm.
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If the government had not broken up one particular monopoly, you would still be coding in COBOL on punched cards. Government is a problem when the monopolies take it over, as they have done in the United States. In order to stop such behavior, we don't really have any recourse, except individual purchasing "power", and sometimes even that is under control. So where do you go?
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The right answer is not regulations.. its law.
Regulations are rules that have the force of law but created by a bureaucrat. When that happens, the public has no chance to respond other than during a lawsuit, which is WAY too late to stop bad regulations. When regulations are created, no one in Congress ends up risking their re-election by creating the regulation. We need to get the bureaucracy OUT of the business of creating regulations, and leave that to lawmakers in Congress so that they are risking their rear-ends when creating laws that might be bad.
The original restrictions in place in the Constitution were good ones. We need to get back to that.
We'll never completely rid ourselves of the necessity to consider that big government can be as big a problem as big business.. but if we keep only the lawmakers making laws, we have a better chance of keeping their own desire to grab power in check.
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OK, I get your point. Good luck at finding and electing lawmakers with what it takes to understand and write their own regulations properly.
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Where is it written that experts in some non-law field can't be consulted regarding the making of a law? I just want the legislative power where its supposed to be.. so that the public can make their voice known before a law is passed.. rather than silently having it foisted on us by a bureaucracy that answers to no one?
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Squeezed out?
How?
If I drive at 90 mph on the motorway, does that mean you are being squeezed out when you (continue) to drive at 60?
Is anybody honestly claiming that if I burn the fuel to drive at 90, I should also pay for everybody else to go that fast too?
The internet is not a zero-sum game.
Extra speed leads to extra routes/roads/lanes, paid for by the money these 'privileged' customers pay.
Look, my boss has a Lamborghini and a £30 million house, because he built the company from nothing.
Does anybody think I should automatically get a Lamborghini upgrade at zero cost, plus a mansion, simply because I drive on the same roads and live in the same county?
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The analogy doesn't quite work because, since the beginning, everyone has been given a 'Lamborghini', as you say. And now it's being taken away.
I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone - Bjarne Stroustrup
The world is going to laugh at you anyway, might as well crack the 1st joke!
My code has no bugs, it runs exactly as it was written.
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Well now; it's true, we were. Assuming our servers were all equal. But selling somebody a Veyron does not take our Lambos away.
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the difference is that you, going fast, and me, wanting to go fast, all have the same access to the roadway. Your simile falls apart unless you put a tollbooth at every on-ramp, leaving only the two-lane country roads 'free' to use. It doesn't sound so bad, until you add in the HOV lanes, with an additional tollbooth to get in to them (as opposed to the multiple rider rule, now), and then start charging lots and lots of money - which only the transport companies can afford, for access to either.
If I truly had a choice of provider for internet (other than whether to use DSL, Cable, or Satellite), then free market can be allowed, because the competition should keep things under control. The way it is now, if I need a Cable connection - my only option (in my neighborhood) is Time Warner. There is no way that I can sign up with Charter... and because we have all been divided up, just like I cannot select my own electric company.. that is why 'free market' doesn't work.
On the bright side, perhaps it will knock the spammers out.. because we know one of the first things they'll do is start a per-email charge...
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Sounds like your market isn't free.
Here in the UK it's somewhat different; up until the 1980's the landline network was guberment owned, but when they privatised it, they enforced a policy of allowing other companies to use the hardware.
A better example would be mobile. Mobile started in the 80's without legacy regulation pretty much. We ended up with at least 5 independent hardware bases, offering actual competition everywhere.
Things slowed up a little after the 3G band auction, due to the large amounts bid, but now they're racing each other to provide 4G.
Locally, I only get 2G or Edge, but I don't have to pay anything towards 4G unless it reaches me and I upgrade.
How is this harming me?
It isn't. I 'have' a 3G contract, but by mixing and matching rural land-based hotspots, I can get around 3G scarcity by factoring in no-cost WiFi links.
This is for all mobile devices.
Fixed internet is going to become very much a supporting technology in the next few years, as conventional ISP's who attempt to control the flow will be totally outflanked by mobile.
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Your analogies are poor.
And your comment about mobile is flat out wrong.
First mobile will never be as fast. Nor does it have the bandwidth.
Second, and more importantly, you are ignoring entirely how your mobile traffic actually flows. Despite marketing claims mobile traffic, moves over the same hardware as land lines. It isn't magic.
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My analogies are great.
And 4G is much, much faster than cable.
Get your facts straight.
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Simon O'Riordan from UK wrote: And 4G is much, much faster than cable.
My cheap home cable has 50 meg down and 10 meg up. And I could pay more and get more.
How much speed exactly do you think "4G" has? Do you think you have an option to get more bandwidth?
How much bandwidth do you think a google farm has?
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From Wikipedia 4G article (you'll like that, it's not-for-profit).
"In March 2008, the International Telecommunications Union-Radio communications sector (ITU-R) specified a set of requirements for 4G standards, named the International Mobile Telecommunications Advanced (IMT-Advanced) specification, setting peak speed requirements for 4G service at 100 megabits per second (Mbit/s) for high mobility communication (such as from trains and cars) and 1 gigabit per second (Gbit/s) for low mobility communication (such as pedestrians and stationary users)."
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We all already pay for Internet services with our monthly access fees. There is no business need to charge anyone more than what they are already paying. It is the consumer that initiates Internet activity, so the charges are presently where they ought to be. They should be able to charge for bandwidth, not content. That is what neutrality is all about. If they can charge based on content or who is providing the content, big providers may be able to pay or fight the charges, but anyone wanting to start a business will not be able to without finding big investors. I have a number of websites which may or may not take off. Without net neutrality, I could not do that. Google and Netflix and Amazon all relied on net neutrality to get started. For a while, Verizon blocked Google Maps on cell phones, only allowing their own Navigator on their network, in spite of it not performing as well. I had no choice except to refuse to use any mapping service at all and to call and send emails to complain. I could not move to another carrier, because the other carriers' signals did not serve all of the places where I needed to get and receive calls. If they did, I would switch in a heartbeat. The Internet has become too necessary for communication. It needs to be treated as a utility.
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I sincerely wish you every success with your websites. And when they do, I will claim that 'they are a utility'.
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Before something can be classified as a utility, it has to meet some rules, as Internet service has already met. If my websites ever become such a basic necessity to life and a free democratic society as to qualify as a utility, I won't mind. I will be playing the piano and gardening after you take them over.
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I don't need no rules man. I'm the gubberment.
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A better analogy would be airline travel. The net neutrality supporters want everyone forced to fly coach. They don’t want anyone being allowed to upgrade to better service like business or first class.
After all, travel is a public right...
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"After all, travel is a public right..."
Quite. A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Unless you'd rather pay for a flight.
Oddly, overall Concorde was a commercial success. Just.
But it lost money when flights were first charged at cost. People didn't like bog-standard service on a supersonic flight. It was only when BA made it a premium service with all the bells and whistles at a greatly increased price, that passenger numbers rose and money was made. Somewhat non-intuitive. 
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I think you got your facts wrong.
A better analogy would be:
Your electricity provider suddenly deciding to stop providing electricity to your freezer unless you pay a "freezer fee" because they struck a deal with the local fast food chain in delivering them more business. That's where the ruling stands, and enables verizon to do, and that's what net neutrality is trying to prevent - Unrestricted access to your desired content/destination .. over the subscribed service (at the bought speeds)
As for speed, well so much for the free market here in the US. We've been paying providers premium fees for "high speed" connection which in fact are limited to cable speeds back in the 90s.. sure I might have 20Mbps down, BUT with only 700kbps for upload, this connection becomes useless for anything else than mild browsing and consuming video content. Backups are impossible for example, and online gaming becomes horrible, since you have to UPLOAD quite a lot of data to the other ends. And to why we don't have better? Well, a couple of years ago, verizon struck an exclusivity deal with the local county which bars other providers to run cooper for the next 20 years..
Even better, if you look at the NYC area, you will notice that verizon and comcast have a mutual love.. where you have verizon, comcast refuses to run cooper and vice verse.. Time Warner (the only other smaller provider) is going bankrupt for not having capacity to compete with the other two... And the others, jack up the prices as they see fit. In cases as such, government regulation is a must.
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I think you got your facts wrong.
If you pay for electricity for your freezer, they cannot turn off the power. That would be theft.
Property isn't theft incidentally.
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Same thing for internet connections.. If I pay for an internet service, they should not be able to tell me what websites to visit or not, or to ask more money off of me to let me do that, but the court decided otherwise.
There was never about property theft. It's about a company obtaining the power to tell you how to use their service for the sole purpose of squeezing more money off of you, hence the example of the freezer, what if your local electricity provider decided to change policies and tax you for your freezer, despite the fact you already pay for service? It would if it weren't regulated by the gov.
And as a side note, I am also against data caps. Bites are a virtual resource that doesn't run out. My monthly bill covers the service with the maximum speeds for both download and upload, which the ISP should be able to provide me, regardless if I use the service to 100% all the time or not, cause that's what I pay for. They know it and they still don't do it. They know that most people do not use their service to 100% not even for 2 hours straight, and thus instead of investing in infrastructure to achieve the quality of service, they overload the network segments with way to many contracts, which result in a crappy experience for everyone. And then, when people complain, they blame it on bittorrent or other streaming p2p protocols saying that those kill the network, without providing any evidence for it whatsoever. And even if people use bittorrent, so what? Isn't your over all connection limited to what your contract says? You can't go faster than that, cause it's a hard cap on your modem, regardless of what you download or upload. And even so, isn't the service meant to be used as that.. for data transfers.. cause, go figure.. it's an internet service contract? Why shouldn't I be able to use it to 100% all the time, but only slightly.. not to make the ISP uncomfortable..
On this front, no one gets a Ferrari.. We all get crappy fiats painted red and advertised as Ferraris, and even with those, if you go too fast, or too far, you have the Internet Service Police cutting you down, for "abusing" your "unlimited" contract..
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