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Dumb Pipes, a Dumb Idea: Net Neutrality as 21st Century Socialism

Started by cordblomquist · 2 months ago

This week’s C:\Spin (#197), CEI’s tech policy newsletter, casts net neutrality in the appropriate light. Calling out proponents of neutrality for what they are–political predators–my colleague Wayne Crews lays bare the misconceptions and ... Continue reading »

2 comments

  • Jeremy

    8 months ago

    While I can understand and appreciate this conservative argument that "government intervention" will create inefficiencies I think that the Internet is a unique market that deserves more consideration before hastily applying Smith's thoughts to it. Certainly no net neutrality advocate is calling for a government owned Internet backbone, they are just saying that there needs to be some sanity in how far infrastructure providers are able to go in filtering or providing different QoS levels to their users. In my mind a world in which Internet providers are allowed to go as far as blocking or slowing down content of their choosing is as bad as one in which a government (China) uses their control of the resources to block out free speech and hunt down protesters. Instead of letting this grow out of hand to where providers are offering faster rates through their network to one company and not to the other, why don't we just continue on our current model where an individual, or a corporation pays their provider based on only the speed between them and their ISP. If I want a cable modem I will pay for a cable connection, if I want dialup speed I will pay for that, but either way I expect equal or nearly equal speeds on the content I am paying to access.
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  • Phu Nguyen

    8 months ago

    Let's take a hypothetical situation where I create an outdoor hippie movie theater. In the beginning, the incentives for people to go to this theater would be my playlist of movies, i.e. how good my taste in movies are.

    Suppose I then allow nerds to post their own playlists for showing in my domain. The effectiveness of my movie theater would be degraded by poor choices made by said nerds.

    If I create and own the medium in which art is expressed, then I should be able to control who sees what. Consider the museum that allows people to bring in their own paintings for display.

    I believe that in pursuing a business model in opposition of net neutrality, businesses are better off in controlling their costs.

    By restricting access to the Internet, the marketplace will find better methods of content distribution. Perhaps radioactive brain waves, who knows?

    All in all, net neutrality sucks.
    reply

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