Verizon and Metro PCS are already in a court dispute over such regulations in a district court of appeals. It just so happens that last year, this same court ruled against the FCC, saying that it overstepped its authority in reprimanding Comcast for filtering out traffic to a website that it clamed consumed large amounts of bandwidth.
Now, as much as I would love to believe that market forces, left to their own device, will be more efficient than with government regulation, the financial disaster of the last two-and-a-half years leaves me all but exhausted on that notion. Why not learn from facets of free-market failure and try to transpose that knowledge to other areas (i.e. the net neutrality issue). I think that it's a bit out-of-touch to suggest we let the market guide itself completely. Just last year, Comcast essentially blackmailed a partner of Netflix, which the partner obliged to keep its customers happy.
Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore), who sponsored the amendment to the bill and sits as chairman on the House Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, said his measure is "about keeping the government out of the business of running the Internet." I found that quite rhetorical, as he seems to be equating these measures by the FCC (which are promoting an absence of restrictive and discriminatory policies) to some authoritative government intervention that stifles freedom. Furthermore, as noted in the article, the rules do give ISPs flexibility to manage data on their systems to deal with network congestion and unwanted traffic as long as they publicly disclose those practices. Essentially, the rules seek to abolish the aspect of "paid prioritization," or favoring traffic of business partners or the ISP itself.
Any thoughts? Perhaps I am missing the "pros" of letting ISPs control the internet and am solely focused on the "cons." Regardless, I think too much of anything is a bad thing--whether it be too much autonomy on behalf of the ISPs or too much government control over how they let the ISPs do business.
It is certainly unfair to let ISPs favor sites which are their partners or which can pay more to be permitted on the Internet. But the only other way of controlling which sites will be viewable by a consumer is to let the consumer himself decide which sites he wants and pay for those alone. Considering the permission of free speech in the nation, the last thing we want is the Government dictating to its people about which website content should be allowed on the Internet. Pay-per-site- usage of the Net is the best solution, in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteBelieve it or not, there are actually some pros of letting ISPs control the Internet. For example, if your ISP begins to limit your Internet, you have the choice to choose a different provider. Therefore, you can continue to change providers until you are satisfied with the way in which they’re controlling your Internet usage. If the government ends up taking control of the Internet, we are stuck in a way. This is so, because we can’t just change our government in order to dodge their regulations on our Internet usage. This is emerging as very controversial issue, because the FCC is claiming to preserve our freedom, but in a way I feel they are more interested in the power they would obtain. I’m torn on this issue and find myself agreeing with Ryan’s point that too much of anything is a bad thing whether that would be the ISPs control of the Internet or the government’s.
ReplyDeleteI found an interesting article on the FCC’s plan along with the “heat” it’s receiving.
http://www.crn.com/news/storage/224701060/fcc-takes-heat-over-internet-control-plan.htm;jsessionid=GdWunPQLGNeS6i6Tuv1Tgw**.ecappj02
Not sure I would trust ISPs to do what's best for the consumer, except increase their costs for you to switch, or choke a competitor (e.g., Netflix). And if AT&T and T-Mobile merge, well all bets are off. Who would you go to, and how much would it cost to switch? I'm for regulating. That's what the FCC was set up to do from Day 1... when it was radio waves they had to manage (and control)... now we have spectrum auctioning. Oy!
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