4 ms·

Schmidt makes great arguments for why government should not meddle with newspapers. Unfortunately the same arguments could be made to say government should not

by uuilly 16y ago

Schmidt makes great arguments for why government should not meddle with newspapers. Unfortunately the same arguments could be made to say government should not meddle w/ ISP's who charge web services for premium pipes.

Locke1689 16y ago
How so? The argument isn't that ISPs aren't allowed to offer their own services, simply that they're not allowed to degrade services for others. This is delineating the nature of ISPs as two things: content providers and utilities. The part that needs government regulation is the utility, not the content provider. Personally, I believe we would all be much better off if the government owned and was responsible for all the dark fiber and companies simply leased control to provide services. Hell, there's even a considerable argument to nationalizing all utilities which have a natural monopoly.
- loewenskind 16y ago
  >Personally, I believe we would all be much better off if the government owned and was responsible for all the dark fiber and companies simply leased control to provide services. Ack. The U.S. government is already talking about an internet "kill" switch. If they owned the infra as you suggest they wouldn't have talked about it...
- gojomo 16y ago
  Those who wish to regulate or tax search engines and aggregators for the way they siphon revenues away from newspapers think that certain monopoly and informational-public-goods arguments are relevant. In the absence of intervention, they say, value is collected by undeserving Google/HuffPo/Drudge, not the deserving traditional newsgatherers. Only by intervening to curtail the distribution endpoints' new power over audience access, they say, will we get the quality and competitive news we need. That's a mirror in many ways of the argument for net neutrality regulations. Neutrality advocates want to regulate one layer of providers -- the pipes -- for the way they intervene between content/service providers and audiences, siphoning revenue from the endpoints. the absence of intervention, they say, value is collected by the undeserving network tollkeepers, not the deserving novel internet services. Only by intervening to curtail the midpoints' chokehold, will we get the competitive and quality network services we need. Does that help illustrate the contradiction?
  - yungchin 16y ago
    The issue here isn't whether search engines or ISPs or other middlemen collect deserved or undeserved value; net-neutrality is not at all about capping the ISP's income! Net-neutrality rules are meant to ensure that the ISP will keep a level playing field for all business passing through it. Google has kept the playing field perfectly level for all news shops, it's just that the field has become very bad for all of them.
    - gojomo 16y ago
      If an ISP wants to offer differentiated services X, Y, and Z, because it thinks that will maximize its revenues, and then the FCC says that service mix is illegal due to the costs it imposes on others, then yes, that 'neutrality' enforcement is about curtailing the ISP's revenues, preventing them from capturing the value others create, boosting other businesses. The FTC's trial balloons around taxing aggregators, enforcing new 'hot news' rights, or subsidizing news producers are also motivated by the desire to provide a 'level playing field' for newsgatherers and story-originators, where a near-monopoly like Google, or thinly-staffed all-cut-and-paste-no-research aggregators, can't capture all the value news media create. Once you invite committees and congresspeople to set rules to reallocate the revenues from an activity, where do you stop? (Even if economist/philosopher-kings can tell the difference between the right places to intervene, and the wrong ones, can our political system?) If the FCC can ban certain service packages in the public interest, why can't the FTC force republishers to buy distribution rights from traditional media in the public interest? Google wants its pot-of-gold to be protected from meddling network operators by new rulemaking. Why can't the newspapers ask for their pot-of-gold to be protected from Google by new rulemaking?
      - Prolorn 16y ago
        That a loose analogy can be drawn between network neutrality and newspapers does not mean both cases have equal merits. One of the merits of each case must be their practicality, and at least to me, net neutrality seems relatively straightforward compared to newspaper regulation. It is more-or-less the default state of the internet today, I believe, while newspaper regs appear harder to craft. Regulators could fail to discern the right vs. wrong places to intervene, as you say, but that's all the more reason we ought to point them out.

by uuilly 16y ago

Locke1689 16y ago

How so? The argument isn't that ISPs aren't allowed to offer their own services, simply that they're not allowed to degrade services for others. This is delineating the nature of ISPs as two things: content providers and utilities. The part that needs government regulation is the utility, not the content provider. Personally, I believe we would all be much better off if the government owned and was responsible for all the dark fiber and companies simply leased control to provide services. Hell, there's even a considerable argument to nationalizing all utilities which have a natural monopoly.

loewenskind 16y ago
>Personally, I believe we would all be much better off if the government owned and was responsible for all the dark fiber and companies simply leased control to provide services. Ack. The U.S. government is already talking about an internet "kill" switch. If they owned the infra as you suggest they wouldn't have talked about it...
gojomo 16y ago
Those who wish to regulate or tax search engines and aggregators for the way they siphon revenues away from newspapers think that certain monopoly and informational-public-goods arguments are relevant. In the absence of intervention, they say, value is collected by undeserving Google/HuffPo/Drudge, not the deserving traditional newsgatherers. Only by intervening to curtail the distribution endpoints' new power over audience access, they say, will we get the quality and competitive news we need. That's a mirror in many ways of the argument for net neutrality regulations. Neutrality advocates want to regulate one layer of providers -- the pipes -- for the way they intervene between content/service providers and audiences, siphoning revenue from the endpoints. the absence of intervention, they say, value is collected by the undeserving network tollkeepers, not the deserving novel internet services. Only by intervening to curtail the midpoints' chokehold, will we get the competitive and quality network services we need. Does that help illustrate the contradiction?
- yungchin 16y ago
  The issue here isn't whether search engines or ISPs or other middlemen collect deserved or undeserved value; net-neutrality is not at all about capping the ISP's income! Net-neutrality rules are meant to ensure that the ISP will keep a level playing field for all business passing through it. Google has kept the playing field perfectly level for all news shops, it's just that the field has become very bad for all of them.
  - gojomo 16y ago
    If an ISP wants to offer differentiated services X, Y, and Z, because it thinks that will maximize its revenues, and then the FCC says that service mix is illegal due to the costs it imposes on others, then yes, that 'neutrality' enforcement is about curtailing the ISP's revenues, preventing them from capturing the value others create, boosting other businesses. The FTC's trial balloons around taxing aggregators, enforcing new 'hot news' rights, or subsidizing news producers are also motivated by the desire to provide a 'level playing field' for newsgatherers and story-originators, where a near-monopoly like Google, or thinly-staffed all-cut-and-paste-no-research aggregators, can't capture all the value news media create. Once you invite committees and congresspeople to set rules to reallocate the revenues from an activity, where do you stop? (Even if economist/philosopher-kings can tell the difference between the right places to intervene, and the wrong ones, can our political system?) If the FCC can ban certain service packages in the public interest, why can't the FTC force republishers to buy distribution rights from traditional media in the public interest? Google wants its pot-of-gold to be protected from meddling network operators by new rulemaking. Why can't the newspapers ask for their pot-of-gold to be protected from Google by new rulemaking?
    - Prolorn 16y ago
      That a loose analogy can be drawn between network neutrality and newspapers does not mean both cases have equal merits. One of the merits of each case must be their practicality, and at least to me, net neutrality seems relatively straightforward compared to newspaper regulation. It is more-or-less the default state of the internet today, I believe, while newspaper regs appear harder to craft. Regulators could fail to discern the right vs. wrong places to intervene, as you say, but that's all the more reason we ought to point them out.