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On net neutrality, this isn't surprising and is in my view quite respectable. In Washington DC, where the legislators Paul operate, calls for 'net neutrality' t

by gojomo 14y ago

On net neutrality, this isn't surprising and is in my view quite respectable. In Washington DC, where the legislators Paul operate, calls for 'net neutrality' typically mean putting some federal agency (like the FCC) in charge of what's truly 'neutral' and allowed. The FCC manages licenses for the exercise of free speech over broadcast media. It fines disapproved speech. It dictates that telecom equipment be wiretap-friendly. It's a board of 5 political appointees not apportioned by vote or region, but split between the two national political parties. The FCC could never be a friend of true 'neutrality', but rather what the national political establishment finds helpful. Even if initially adopted in the spirit of the 'nondiscriminatory transit' principle, after a few years you should expect 'network neutrality' to mean 'safe for children', 'copyright-protecting', 'wiretap-friendly', 'with set-asides for underrepresented viewpoints', and 'in compliance with campaign finance laws'. After all, it's not a 'neutral' net if it's filled with piracy, pornography, untappable criminal chat, ethnic/gender-insensitivity, and unregistered political activity. That's downright hostile to law-abiding Americans and their bipartisan protectors at the FCC! There's one small, vague and convoluted mention in the Paul statement about the 'public domain'. It reads roughly: According to them [government attempts to control and regulate competition, infrastructure, privacy and intellectual property]... Private property rights on the Internet should exist in limited fashion or not at all, and what is considered to be in the public domain should be greatly expanded. That mention isn't even necessarily referring to the rigorous intellectual property notion of 'public domain' (meaning non-copyrighted). It seems more the colloquial notion of 'public domain' as 'that which the government manages, like parks and roads and government buildings'. In order to ridicule this, Doctorow has to spin Masnick, who is himself heavily spinning the Pauls. So that one vague mention becomes instead... • for Masnick, "The Public Domain [is really an] Evil Collectivist Plot" • for Doctorow, "Rand and Ron Paul denounce... the public domain" This is a signature move of politics and click-grabbing headline-escalation. Create the an unfair, unfavorable, heavily-spun summarization of someone's views. Credit that summarization to the original source as if they'd said exactly that. Publicize to get a reaction. Collect the traffic-boosting glory!

hollerith 14y ago
Have you considered that for the first 23 years of the Internet/ARPANet's existence, the government was firmly in control of the entire network, including consistently being the largest purchasers of internet equipment such as routers, and being the instigator, planner and funder of the initial design and implementation? (They tried to interest AT&T in running it -- twice, in 1977 and 1987 -- but AT&T was not interested.) Have you considered that it is because of enlightened decisions made by the government that, e.g., Tim BL et al did not need to seek the government's permission to use the internet to deploy the WWW? That in 1999 Shawn Fanning, John Fanning, and Sean Parker did not need to get the permission of the government to use the internet to deploy Napster?
- gojomo 14y ago
  I am aware of the history of the internet. I am responding above to rhetorical mischaracterizations of the Pauls' statements. As to whether DARPA's history suggests that any 'net neutrality' regulations would be applied in an 'enlightened' manner, I find that idea laughable. The FCC is not run by by research scientists who value the end-to-end principle and resistance to damage/censorship above all else. The Congresspeople who'd be passing the enabling legislation are those who keep passing 'Decency Acts' (no matter how many times the Supreme Court strikes them down), enabling new wiretapping powers, and trying to sneak favors to big donor industries into legislation. The internet is no longer a research project or prototype. Its equipment, infrastructure, and services are now overwhelmingly privately provided. We should look at attempts to federally impose "network" neutrality with as much skepticism as if they were trying to impose "printing press" neutrality or "nonfiction book neutrality" or "newsprint neutrality". Those ideas would rightly be heckled, were they proposed, because our society understands at a deep level that the printed/written word should be a government hands-off zone, from author through editor-publisher-distributor. The same should apply to the internet.

by gojomo 14y ago

hollerith 14y ago

Have you considered that for the first 23 years of the Internet/ARPANet's existence, the government was firmly in control of the entire network, including consistently being the largest purchasers of internet equipment such as routers, and being the instigator, planner and funder of the initial design and implementation? (They tried to interest AT&T in running it -- twice, in 1977 and 1987 -- but AT&T was not interested.) Have you considered that it is because of enlightened decisions made by the government that, e.g., Tim BL et al did not need to seek the government's permission to use the internet to deploy the WWW? That in 1999 Shawn Fanning, John Fanning, and Sean Parker did not need to get the permission of the government to use the internet to deploy Napster?

gojomo 14y ago
I am aware of the history of the internet. I am responding above to rhetorical mischaracterizations of the Pauls' statements. As to whether DARPA's history suggests that any 'net neutrality' regulations would be applied in an 'enlightened' manner, I find that idea laughable. The FCC is not run by by research scientists who value the end-to-end principle and resistance to damage/censorship above all else. The Congresspeople who'd be passing the enabling legislation are those who keep passing 'Decency Acts' (no matter how many times the Supreme Court strikes them down), enabling new wiretapping powers, and trying to sneak favors to big donor industries into legislation. The internet is no longer a research project or prototype. Its equipment, infrastructure, and services are now overwhelmingly privately provided. We should look at attempts to federally impose "network" neutrality with as much skepticism as if they were trying to impose "printing press" neutrality or "nonfiction book neutrality" or "newsprint neutrality". Those ideas would rightly be heckled, were they proposed, because our society understands at a deep level that the printed/written word should be a government hands-off zone, from author through editor-publisher-distributor. The same should apply to the internet.