This one time Duncan Black is wrong
Says Eschaton: "The open internets was a bizarre historical accident, necessary to defend and unlikely to be repeated. People always object when I say this, but they're wrong."
But the open Internet as an experience and an ideal came from the decisions of the Federal Communications Commission, dating back to the 1980s and but most particularly in the salad days of Internet 1.0, aka dial-up circa 1990s, when we dinosaurs roamed the halls of the government and had our common carrier paradigm followed by the network-owning telephone companies. The Internet was open, cheap and widespread, because we said so. It was one speed because phone lines were all the same.
Then the FCC, with Congressional support, adopted unbundling and competition was the key to open: in a competitive world no one firm could successfully adopt closed as its business model. Those that tried, failed.
But the 00s brought a series of FCC decisions that repudiated common carrier as to data links, and encouraged consolidation, repealing unbundling, abandoning the goal of widespread high-speed connectivity, and changing open into an open door toward collaborative special deals between big content and big conduit. This is a history lesson for those too young or too concerned with other matters to have lived or learned these arcane facts.
We really need free, universal high speed wifi with no content filters.
December 15, 2008 8:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Um. It still sounds like an accident to me given the stranglehold on radio waves and TV waves the FCC has imposed previously.
December 15, 2008 9:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
I wrote a short piece on the First Amendment and mentioned the old penny newspapers of the 18th and early 19th centuries. The internet, to me, represents the penny newspapers. Presses working 24/7, everybody has access, and everybody can have their say.
The free flow of information and ideas is paramount.
My BELIEF is that this free flow of information will disclose truths that would not otherwise be disclosed. If my belief is false, then the First Amendment and freedom of speech and freedom of the press is a vacant right. It means nothing without that belief.
We must not permit the government or the corporations to inhibit this free flow.
There will be abuses. That is to be expected. The more sites that are available, the more sites that disagree in one fundamental manner or another and the more people who participate, the better.
Minute and/or partially hidden laws or regulations that work to hinder the free flow of information must be confronted.
December 15, 2008 9:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is just like ATM cards. They were free, until the banks fired the tellers. Now we pay fees.
Internet same thing. Google wants to make money now that everyone uses them. Internet now hosts online mags, papers, they want to make money too.
Everything in this country is about capitalism.
December 15, 2008 9:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Capitalism - its' what pays the bills.
December 15, 2008 1:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Having worked in the IT field - specifically T-1 transmission - what I can see as the problem is individual bandwidth.
It doesn't really matter how fast Google is or whomever - it's how much can I take in that really matters.
As a consumer, I should have the option of how much bandwidth I need. In most cases, a megabyte or 1,000 Kbps would be sufficient for most daily transactions. However, if I wished to download movies, that might require additional bandwidth requirements. Here I have two options to select.
First, I could pay for the extra bandwidth necessary to accomplish my desire to quickly download movies or open live streaming video.
Second, I could go with my current bandwidth allotment and suffer the frequent interruptions as the movie stops while the buffer fills.
Either way, its a consumers choice.
As for the supplier, they can have the fastest connection they can afford. They just need to address the flow of data to suit the user at the other end. Just like a printer hooked up to a computer.
As a computer sends data to be printed, the printer accepts the info flow until its buffer - spooler - is full. Once full, it toggles the clear-to-send (CTS) line off which tells the host to hold transmission. Once the buffer is clear, the CTS line is switched back on and the buffer fills up again. Note the printer is always printing while all the hand-shaking on the data transfer is occurring.
The same process can be applied on-line as well.
We have the technology already developed to provide a top-notch service to consumers. We just need to develop a working industry model for all to follow.
December 15, 2008 1:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Net neutrality is slightly different from what you've described in your printer analogy. What net neutrality proponents are afraid of is that "big conduit" will start to toggle that clear-to-send line off for traffic specifically from content providers that don't pay them a fee. Content providers that could afford to pay the fee would be allowed to keep sending. This would be regardless of the bandwidth allotment the end user has paid for.
I and many net neutrality proponents believe this would effectively silence a lot of voices on the Internet.
December 18, 2008 10:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
Google Inc. has approached major cable and phone companies that carry Internet traffic with a proposal to create a fast lane for its own content, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Google has traditionally been one of the loudest advocates of equal network access for all content providers.by play free slots online
April 5, 2009 2:44 PM | Reply | Permalink