Comments on: Net neutrality – Circa 1996

By: MrBlog

MrBlog — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 17:25:47 +0000

Sesas, Good point. The "free market" worked with dial-up because there was
lively competition among ISP's meaning blocking would be limited by that "free market" because people could speak with their wallets and switch to providers that don't block.

That is not true anymore because of the duopoly where we are stuck with either cable or DSL (telecom), and in many cases we don't even have that choice. So if our ISP blocks now, we have no option to switch and therefore no "free market" to correct that ISP's behavior.

By: sesas

sesas — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 09:15:24 +0000

but the threat to the free internet does not come from the government regulation, it comes from the ISPs that what to penalize the services that are not their own. Like Verizon that uses 80% of its carring capacity for its services and the remainder is for everybody's else services... do you think it's fair? is that the "free market" you are talking about?
The Internet was neutral untill 2005 because of a law made in 1934 regarding telecomunication. Then the FCC in Agust 2005 decided that the ISP where extempt from that law and so now it is possible that Comcast block p2p traffic, AT&T slows down Vonage traffic and so on.

where is the "free market"? was it back then, or now?

could Page and Brin found Google if they had to pay a toll to carry out their service? could Yahoo? or Youtube?

By: MrBlog

MrBlog — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 22:55:02 +0000

I tend to agree Peter and AJ. However, in this case it’s not quite so simple, or at least if the govt. is going to get out, they need to get all the way out, and make it easy to put pipes into my home. As it is now, other entrants cannot get the access to the home, the right-of-ways etc. that were granted to the monopoly LECs years ago. As long as I have no choice in providers for access to the net, I have a problem. This is a hard problem to solve. My preference is for communities to take ownership of the first mile and then the community takes a cut from whatever service providers that want to offer services on it. But that means a lot of politics and a lot of awareness creation in the public that there is a problem. I’m going to post a followup blog post in response to these comments.

By: AJ Carey

AJ Carey — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 15:15:08 +0000

Peter’s right. The real issue isn’t whether the idea of net neutrality is good or not, but that government regulation will hurt the internet instead of helping. Regulation means burdensome rules, increased costs, and less freedom. The internet has thrived because the government has let it operate like a free market. Why should it be ruined by changing that now?

By: Peter McDoogle

Peter McDoogle — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 02:21:21 +0000

Lets look at the real issue here: the government stepping in where it should not. We dont need congress to step in and make regulations without any real problems to warrant the new laws. "Net Neutrality" will add regulations that slow the process of discovering new technologies and the consumer will flip the bill for this lack of progress.

By: DG Lewis

DG Lewis — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 03:52:16 +0000

See the link shown for my homepage for a further take on the net neutrality controversy, c. 1996. Hint: remember the term "modem tax"?