On Fri, Aug 20, 2010 at 3:09 AM, Mike Miller <mbmiller+l at gmail.com<mbmiller%2Bl at gmail.com> > wrote: > On Fri, 20 Aug 2010, Harry Penner wrote: > > > Actually I wasn't telling you what you ought to do with regard to net > > neutrality. I was asking you to think before doing anything. > > Back in reality, on Thu, 19 Aug 2010 at 10:41:41, you wrote, "Seems to me > we ought to show up and tell the FCC to keep their paws off us." > > > > I ask you again to think hard about what the consequences of such > > regulation might be. If we outlaw content meddling by ISPs, will it > > cause unmetered connection prices to go up or maybe be phased out more > > quickly than they otherwise would be? Will it affect the usability of > > VoIP or video streaming? If we're dead set on some regulation as the > > solution, is there a way to craft it to minimize those effects? Your > > point (in another thread) that we don't even know how the regulation > > would be worded isn't an argument for or against it, but it would > > certainly make me think twice. Surely you wouldn't support a regulation > > that would affect the entire Internet so broadly without knowing every > > letter of what's in it? > > Right -- we have to know what's in it before we oppose it or support it. > This is what I've been saying and it is not what you were saying. You > might have meant to say something different, but your point was pretty > clearly that government regulation will be bad, so we should oppose it. > > Fair enough. You're right. Oops! :) Yes, I reflexively distrust govt. Maybe you don't. I guess I should be happy to just agree to disagree on that, as long as we can both agree that the questions should be asked. Which I think we do (below). > > I read a bunch of the stuff on this list today and a lot of it wasn't very > impressive but I did like what Tony Yarusso wrote. I liked it so much > that I'm appending it below. What's wrong with what Tony is saying? > > I like what he said too. Let's grant his framing of the problem for a minute for the sake of argument: the providers want to regulate [traffic], and the govt wants to stop that regulation. The problem, for me, is that in order for the government to stop that regulation it has to put in regulation [of provider behavior] of its own. Seems to me that it's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to just "cancel out" unwanted behavior without ripple effects. If you grant that, then the govt doesn't just cancel out the providers' regulation [of traffic]; it introduces regulation of its own. So although I think Tony's model is certainly a desirable one I don't think it's an attainable one, or at very least least not easily attainable. Like you said, we don't have that regulatory language in front of us to evaluate, but it just seems very likely to me that whatever the govt ends up putting in place to regulate the providers' behavior will have unforeseen negative effects. Even if we define the problem narrowly enough to only stop ISPs from blocking access to content, can that come back to bite us? Will that stop ISPs from providing a value-add that might block customers' access to phishing or malware sites? What's going to be considered an ISP -- will a "good guy" who blocks access to all kinds of sites, such as OpenDNS, be affected? (And if not, what's to stop ISPs from just implementing their own independent OpenDNS-alike to get around the rule, and then default to it as their DNS provider?) What protocols will be affected -- will it prevent ISPs from blocking direct SMTP sends from end-users to non-ISP mail servers (which I don't particularly like, but supposedly cuts down on automated spam)? I think we're in agreement that all these questions have to be asked, but we might be in disagreement as to whether the desired result can be gained cleanly (or at all) using the govt intervention method. Like I said, I'll settle for just agreeing to disagree on that, as long as we can both agree that the questions should be asked, so that everybody's got their eyes open going into it. Which I think we do. Peace. -Harry > Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2010 18:54:47 > From: Tony Yarusso <tonyyarusso at gmail.com> > Reply-To: TCLUG Mailing List <tclug-list at mn-linux.org> > To: TCLUG Mailing List <tclug-list at mn-linux.org> > Subject: Re: [tclug-list] Net Neutrality hearing in Minnesota > > Much of this discussion actually looks at things somewhat backward, IMO. > The government would actually be the anti-regulation force here, and the > ISPs the regulators. > > Consider this: > > One option is to have a free-flowing Internet where everything is equal, > and just allowed to happen. The "Information Superhighway" would be > allowed to be a "free market" of ideas and content. > > The other option is to have business executives decide they want to reward > some of that traffic and punish others, or favor some customers over > others, or charge extra fees for certain uses while subsidizing others. > No content is guaranteed passage, but rather must meet the particular > rules set forth for it. > > Which one of those sounds like regulation to you? Clearly it is the > latter, which is the one done by ISPs, dictating which traffic will be > "special" and which will be hindered. The former is not regulation by the > government, but a mandate that regulation must not be done by > corporations. > > The first case, with free flow of information, is the hands-off approach > that allowed the Internet to flourish. The difference is that now the > corporations have the technology to put a stop to that, so people are > asking the government to intervene in order to protect the integrity of > the Internet's nature as it has been from the beginning. > > - Tony Yarusso > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.mn-linux.org/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20100820/7ab78c77/attachment.htm