Post #324,132
4/6/10 2:08:16 PM
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Box is against Net Neutrality.
He thinks the companies that provide the connection should be able to earn money in ways other than providing a connection to the Internet. That means they need to be able to shape the traffic. He doesn't like Net Neutrality.
There are arguments both ways, but personally I think that NN is closer to the way to go. If an internet company wants to provide fancy search or movies or whatever, they shouldn't own the pipes. There's too much potential for abuse when a local for-profit quasi-monopoly owns a choke point. Like it or not, most of us only have 1 or maybe 2 realistic broadband options. There's little price competition, and the barriers to leaving a vendor are high.
If Google is putting in their own fiber, I think it's partly a defensive move so they don't get shut-out by Comcast and the like. Their position in 2006 wasn't so nefarious - http://www.lightread...asp?doc_id=107080
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #324,139
4/6/10 3:34:46 PM
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And doesn't it poke a hole in "common carrier" safe harbors?
--
Drew
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Post #324,149
4/6/10 7:04:45 PM
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Re: Box is against Net Neutrality.
If an internet company wants to provide fancy search or movies or whatever, they shouldn't own the pipes. Sounds good, the pipe owner should charge, thanks for agreeing with me.
When you do a googl search if you are a large ISP customer, the google search never leaves that ISPs data center. Google has a local presence. Same for content, it is forward stored. Since google already lives inside that center, shouldnt they pay a little rent for the space and power?
If we torture the data long enough, it will confess. (Ronald Coase, Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences, 1991)
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Post #324,151
4/6/10 7:43:17 PM
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So, make them pay the rent
we certainly do at our data centre.
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Post #324,184
4/7/10 11:03:01 AM
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thats not neutral :-)
If we torture the data long enough, it will confess. (Ronald Coase, Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences, 1991)
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Post #324,195
4/7/10 3:11:09 PM
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You're missing the point
about net neutrality - it's not about having the companies that own the pipes not own the content, it's about the companies that own the pipes favoring their content traffic over the content of other firms.
"Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. ... I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn't hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built--a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from."
-- E.L. Doctorow
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Post #324,154
4/6/10 8:37:19 PM
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Example from elsewhere.
There are arguments both ways, but personally I think that NN is closer to the way to go. If an internet company wants to provide fancy search or movies or whatever, they shouldn't own the pipes. There's too much potential for abuse when a local for-profit quasi-monopoly owns a choke point.
There has been a long running tide of discontent towards Telstra for many years because of almost exactly this problem: they own the copper lines as well as sell services on top. It has taken legislation and court hearings to force them to allow other parties to sell access. Only a few years ago, the CEO of Telstra all but said that if he didn't have to sell wholesale access, he wouldn't. This was one of the reasons he is no longer CEO of Telstra.
Ever since Telstra was part privatised, the issue of separation of lines and services has never gone away. Many commentators said the government of the day should have split Telstra into a government org which owned the physical infrastructure everyone uses, and sole the other half as a services company just like everyone else. In the meantime, we had a change of government and the new lot seem to be heading down that road.
The monopoly of vertical integration is also why much of urban Australia got two cable networks a few decades ago: one from Telstra, one from Optus. Our population density was barely enough to support one, but two?
Wade.
Q:Is it proper to eat cheeseburgers with your fingers?
A:No, the fingers should be eaten separately.
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Post #324,169
4/6/10 11:25:16 PM
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Comcast is trying to go that route.
They've got an agreement (not yet consummated) to buy around half of NBC/Universal - http://www.nytimes.c...ia/05comcast.html
It's clear where Comcast wants to go. They want the pipes and the "content". Box seems to feel it's Ok for providers to have preferred partners, and thus (presumably) preferred packets. Joel Hanes at Balloon-Juice succinctly points out why arguing about BitTorrent is a distraction and why NN is important - http://www.balloon-j.../#comment-1677843
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #324,178
4/7/10 9:22:42 AM
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They're trying to re-invent AOL.
Walled gardens where they run the show from soup to nuts. At least they've learnt that they have to try to make people want to be in there, rather than just assuming they will.
Wade.
Q:Is it proper to eat cheeseburgers with your fingers?
A:No, the fingers should be eaten separately.
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