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Not like government created Obamacare. There is a huge difference. One is extremely political while other is almost independent other than being funded (insigni

Not like government created Obamacare. There is a huge difference. One is extremely political while other is almost independent other than being funded (insignificant part of whole budget) by government. I would argue involement of government, while appreciated, was not essential in creating Internet considering how independently it was invented around the world.

Thimothy 10y ago
Dude, read your internet history. We don't have a bunch of incompatible protocols tied to different vendors (That was how things were developing) because the DoD of the US said that anything that was to be sold to them HAD to use this TCP/IP thingy. That's not the same as "enforced regulation", but it certainly walks and cuaks like it. No direct government intervention -> No freely interconnected internet.
- wav-part 10y ago
  Assuming that did happen, you are overestimitating its importance. And what about consumer offerings ? There was no such restricitons. The simple reason an ISP did not create its own Internet because by connecting to bigger net it increased networksize and value of its offering. Thats how the whole world, not just US, settled on Internet.
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    Is the author underestimating the importance of the open, standard, non-profit, publicly-funded Internet vs all the for-profit private nets that got nowhere close to its impact? I think not. The private networks are still making walled gardens with no innovation in fiber space with innovative, walled gardens in Internet space. Same old same old doing nothing of significance with pure self-interest unless building it on what government created and partly subsidizes. The latter groups usually also plateu into stagnation sucking profit while the open, less-selfish models grow in new ways.
    - wav-part 10y ago
      Internet is ability of everyone to send any packet to any part of the world. Thats what matters. What someone builds on top of it and/or how open/close, It still does not negate that characterstics of Internet. Inviting governments to regulate Internet is unnecessery risk.
      - nickpsecurity 10y ago
        "Internet is ability of everyone to send any packet to any part of the world. Thats what matters. What someone builds on top of it and/or how open/close, It still does not negate that characterstics of Internet" Internet is a set of protocols run on top of huge pipes that interconnect across many companies, nationalities, etc. They all speak common language. You're trying to oversimplify it to expand on your false argument. What I just described was only achieved once... by governments & companies making money off government projects. No private industry has duplicated it. Closest thing was the cell phone industry where they limited what type of traffic, kept the bandwidth minimal for high profit, charged per amount of data, and so on. They eventually started looking more like the Internet by internally using Internet technologies funded by DARPA, NSF, etc. Originally, though, their model couldn't have created something like we see with the Web or Internet-run commerce. Just like MA Bell before them with their schemes. Private sector wouldn't have built the Internet on their own since it's too risky and costly with 3rd parties getting most of the benefit. Government did it better. "What someone builds on top of it and/or how open/close, It still does not negate that characterstics of Internet." It does within what they build. Much of online activity has transistioned from purely Internet technologies to Web technologies. Companies like Facebook and Slack are where content and activity is going instead of HTML web sites and IRC. The result is people are locked in to vendors to just get what experiences they allow in their walled gardens. With most Internet tech, I could just move everything I had to a different client or server if what I was using wasn't good enough. Standard protocols existed to help. Private sector prefers the opposite as lock-in equals more money. So, they fail twice: preventing something like the Internet from occurring until government did it; trying to turn it back into wall gardens of the past albeit with web browsers and more graphics.

Thimothy 10y ago

Dude, read your internet history. We don't have a bunch of incompatible protocols tied to different vendors (That was how things were developing) because the DoD of the US said that anything that was to be sold to them HAD to use this TCP/IP thingy. That's not the same as "enforced regulation", but it certainly walks and cuaks like it. No direct government intervention -> No freely interconnected internet.

wav-part 10y ago
Assuming that did happen, you are overestimitating its importance. And what about consumer offerings ? There was no such restricitons. The simple reason an ISP did not create its own Internet because by connecting to bigger net it increased networksize and value of its offering. Thats how the whole world, not just US, settled on Internet.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  Is the author underestimating the importance of the open, standard, non-profit, publicly-funded Internet vs all the for-profit private nets that got nowhere close to its impact? I think not. The private networks are still making walled gardens with no innovation in fiber space with innovative, walled gardens in Internet space. Same old same old doing nothing of significance with pure self-interest unless building it on what government created and partly subsidizes. The latter groups usually also plateu into stagnation sucking profit while the open, less-selfish models grow in new ways.
  - wav-part 10y ago
    Internet is ability of everyone to send any packet to any part of the world. Thats what matters. What someone builds on top of it and/or how open/close, It still does not negate that characterstics of Internet. Inviting governments to regulate Internet is unnecessery risk.
    - nickpsecurity 10y ago
      "Internet is ability of everyone to send any packet to any part of the world. Thats what matters. What someone builds on top of it and/or how open/close, It still does not negate that characterstics of Internet" Internet is a set of protocols run on top of huge pipes that interconnect across many companies, nationalities, etc. They all speak common language. You're trying to oversimplify it to expand on your false argument. What I just described was only achieved once... by governments & companies making money off government projects. No private industry has duplicated it. Closest thing was the cell phone industry where they limited what type of traffic, kept the bandwidth minimal for high profit, charged per amount of data, and so on. They eventually started looking more like the Internet by internally using Internet technologies funded by DARPA, NSF, etc. Originally, though, their model couldn't have created something like we see with the Web or Internet-run commerce. Just like MA Bell before them with their schemes. Private sector wouldn't have built the Internet on their own since it's too risky and costly with 3rd parties getting most of the benefit. Government did it better. "What someone builds on top of it and/or how open/close, It still does not negate that characterstics of Internet." It does within what they build. Much of online activity has transistioned from purely Internet technologies to Web technologies. Companies like Facebook and Slack are where content and activity is going instead of HTML web sites and IRC. The result is people are locked in to vendors to just get what experiences they allow in their walled gardens. With most Internet tech, I could just move everything I had to a different client or server if what I was using wasn't good enough. Standard protocols existed to help. Private sector prefers the opposite as lock-in equals more money. So, they fail twice: preventing something like the Internet from occurring until government did it; trying to turn it back into wall gardens of the past albeit with web browsers and more graphics.