Submitted by tensai on
Ed Felten has a wonderful blog entry on Net Neutrality, unsurprisingly. Also no shock is that he totally agrees with me. That's how we know he's a smart guy.
To sum up, net neutrality sounds like a good thing and I believe it is, but I fear that many are too quick to rush to legislate it. I mean, this is Congress we're talking about. That's who you want controlling your Internet? Seriously?
The far better solution is competition. The more players in the game, the better the service will be for the customer. There's no doubt about that in my mind. I think a much better use of tax dollars would be to build municipal fiber networks and allow one and all to offer services on it. I see a lot of benefits and few drawbacks to a model like that. Well, few drawbacks unless you're a mega-ISP who hates its customers. Which is a pretty good benefit too.
2 Comments
internet neutrality
Submitted by David (not verified) on
I think internet neutrality sounds like a great idea. The government should remain neutral when it comes to the internet and not get involved.
fair enough
Submitted by tensai on
You're twisting the object of the proposed neutrality (to great effect, I might add). It's a concern that without enforcing some sort of neutrality on the service providers that they will alter the Internet experience in ways beneficial to them but not necessarily to subscribers. There are ample cases of this having happened already, although there are far more counter examples of ISPs who just do the right thing.
My concern is that the cure may be worse than the disease. Congress wanted to show they were doing something about spam, so they passed the CAN-SPAM act. I sure am glad I don't receive spam any more, aren't you?
I agree that they're likely as not to flub it up and make the situation worse, so we're probably better off without Congress meddling with the Internet at all.