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Your comment is currently "above the fold" and even though I agree with you, I downvoted because I don't think this discussion should involve what Mark Cuban wh

Your comment is currently "above the fold" and even though I agree with you, I downvoted because I don't think this discussion should involve what Mark Cuban whatsoever. Whatever dialog he spurs is going to be an intellectual dead end. BTW, why isn't anyone talking about the Interstate Commerce Commission, the predecessor to the FCC, and the similarities between common carrier status of railways and Internet service providers? We have over a hundred years of actual evidence to support the pros and cons of regulating public communications. Why are we choosing to instead resort to blind conjecture based on talking point samples from the last decade?

Spooky23 12y ago
I mentioned Mark Cuban in context of the parent comment. Whatever our opinion of Mr Cuban, his arguments are essentially the same as the telecom people. If we had a functional market, the excesses of the ICC would be a cautionary tale of great impact. Unfortunately the behavior of the ISPs has illustrated that we don't have that functional marketplace. I think we should follow the path successfully implemented (in most places) for utilities like water, electricity and the legacy telephone service.
- williamcotton 12y ago
  I know, it just sucks that this is now turning in to a discussion directed by some loud mouth on a reality TV show. Anyways... I'm not disagreeing with you. I agree that we should follow historical precedent and that ISPs should be regulated as Type II common carriers. The railways that the ICC were primarily established to regulate were most definitely not a functional market. Railways at the time were also charging different fees for the different things they were transporting. Their customers also didn't have a choice of competitors and suffered under collusion between companies. Network Neutrality is essentially an extension of the same conversation. The ICC also had statues for regulating communication. The FCC took over for the ICC's role in regulating communication in 1934 and the organizational was modeled on the ICC with 5 member appointed by the president. We should be talking about what worked with the ICC and what didn't. If people are offering conjectures about what the results of these FCC regulations will have on the Internet they have plenty of historical evidence to use for their arguments. We can point to how the railroads abused and had a negative impact on society. We can show how overregulation harms industry. We can show example of regulatory capture. We can show example of tragedies involving unmanaged shared common resources. Railways and the ICC are a very similar analogy but we can reason about all sorts of other precedent. We can find examples from the Hanseatic League, the Holy Roman Empire, the Dutch East Indies Company, the South Seas Bubble or anything else from our history. It all applies and led to our existing systems of government, business and law.

Spooky23 12y ago

I mentioned Mark Cuban in context of the parent comment. Whatever our opinion of Mr Cuban, his arguments are essentially the same as the telecom people. If we had a functional market, the excesses of the ICC would be a cautionary tale of great impact. Unfortunately the behavior of the ISPs has illustrated that we don't have that functional marketplace. I think we should follow the path successfully implemented (in most places) for utilities like water, electricity and the legacy telephone service.

williamcotton 12y ago
I know, it just sucks that this is now turning in to a discussion directed by some loud mouth on a reality TV show. Anyways... I'm not disagreeing with you. I agree that we should follow historical precedent and that ISPs should be regulated as Type II common carriers. The railways that the ICC were primarily established to regulate were most definitely not a functional market. Railways at the time were also charging different fees for the different things they were transporting. Their customers also didn't have a choice of competitors and suffered under collusion between companies. Network Neutrality is essentially an extension of the same conversation. The ICC also had statues for regulating communication. The FCC took over for the ICC's role in regulating communication in 1934 and the organizational was modeled on the ICC with 5 member appointed by the president. We should be talking about what worked with the ICC and what didn't. If people are offering conjectures about what the results of these FCC regulations will have on the Internet they have plenty of historical evidence to use for their arguments. We can point to how the railroads abused and had a negative impact on society. We can show how overregulation harms industry. We can show example of regulatory capture. We can show example of tragedies involving unmanaged shared common resources. Railways and the ICC are a very similar analogy but we can reason about all sorts of other precedent. We can find examples from the Hanseatic League, the Holy Roman Empire, the Dutch East Indies Company, the South Seas Bubble or anything else from our history. It all applies and led to our existing systems of government, business and law.