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Originally Posted by Ustwo
Who said I'm seeing party lines? I'm seeing philisophical lines. I don't like government regulation in business where it is not absolutely needed. I don't see this as a NEED yet. If we wanted to play party games I'd point out which party wanted to start taxing internet use and which party shot it down at least for a time.
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This status quo is not simply "business", after this effort to "buy" legislative control of the regulatory "potential":
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........AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon spent $230.9 million on politicians from 1998 until the present, while the three Internet companies plus Amazon.com and eBay spent only a combined $71.2 million. (Those figures include lobbying expenditures, individual contributions, political action committees and soft money..........
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NOOOOOOoooooo!!!! Rather...it is a high stakes "game" that puts the public interest at the "end of the line". Control of the priority of data flow on the "internet pipe", is in a special category, a priority below clean air or inexpensively available, clean water, but "up there" with widely available electrical and telephone land line service, even in rural areas.
The demand for data network infrastructure was driven by innovators who designed the WWW standards, browsers, media players like Realplayer, and those who design and produce the content, followed the government driven military and scientific innovation and investment that originated this late 20th century, communication concept, in the first place.
To pick one component, the "pipe", and literally cede control of it's prioritization to a small group of previously regulated monopolies, akin to public utilities in earlier stages of their evolution, because THEY "spent more money on politicians", than the public or the content providers could afford or justify.....and to declare that doing so is consistant with avoiding government "regulation", is inconsistant, IMO with the public interest.
If government is not about regulating in the interest of the public, in a matter like this one, BEFORE, the monopolization of the priority of the speed and the order of information distribution, falls under the control of those who bought the politicians of the party in power, for that privilege,
then when is the public interest ever to be considered. These f**ks paid this much, BEFORE the profits that buying non-regulation of their new monopoly, are realized.
How will your "wait and see" stance, be reversed when the monopolies grow much more wealthy and profitable from their new "prioritized fees" revenue schemes, when it appears that some regulation cannot even be legislated, now.
This is not a case of "government" interfering with "business". This "business" did not evolve from anything aproximating an "even" playing field. The public interest is in levelling the playing field to offset the influence that the few "businesses" who control the internet infrastructure, purchased with the intent to keep out the best interests of the public, in the first place. Imagine if the $230 + $71 millions, spent on buying political control had been invested in productive endeavors or paid as dividends to investors.
If that had been the case, in a poltical system that actually represented the public that elected it, the monopolies might be satisfying their investors in ways less sordid than schemes to charge tolls to speed the flow of the information of a wealthier minority, to the detriment of the rest of us!