A court ruled today that the FCC has no right to enforce net neutrality standards. What does this mean?An understanding of this whole debate may begin with one simple fact: there really is no such thing as the internet. There just isn’t. All there is in millions of computers voluntarily connected to one another by use of cables, fibers, and air waves. Each computer’s owner has the option of keeping all the information on his computer to himself, or sharing some of it, or sharing all of it.
Now, air waves only allow for limited information transfer, and so it is possible for two computers next to each other to be connected with a wire or cable or fiber. Now, the information exchanges throughout the world–which we call the internet–could continue to exist just fine this way.
But setting up wires between any two computers which wish to share is inconvenient. Businessmen, of course, quickly realized early in the computer age that there was a way to help computer users share information more conveniently. The result was ingenious complex systems in which a company would, for a reasonable fee, bring to its users the hardware necessary to tap into a vast interconnected network of computers and share information in a variety of remarkably efficient ways. We call this the internet and we call the companies Internet Service Providers–ISP’s.
It is in the interests of the ISP’s to serve their customers by providing information sharing as conveniently as possible. This means that the control systems of the ISP’s must try to manage the information streaming through their networks in such a way that customers are served as well as possible. Generally, this means that information is run through a que system that gives all information transfers equal weight within an ISP. Thus, your information will run through the system more slowly when there is more information transferred or less transfer capacity in the ISP, and more quickly when there is less information tranferred or more capacity in the system.
Just as lines spring up in any store because they are an efficient and predictable method for serving customers in the least possible time, so also they spring up online. Now, a businessman has the right to manipulate his lines any way he wants to maximize his efficiency. A businessman, say a restaurant owner, seats his customers in whatever order is most convenient to the smooth and profitable running of his business. If I walk into a crowded restaurant with eleven other people and we all wish to be seated together, we have no right to cry out for government intervention if two people in line behind us are seated first because the restaurant finds a convenient place for seating two before eleven.
Thus, the line behavior of the business is solely operated by the business, which has to do whatever it can to please its customers. If the customers feel that the businesses sevice practices are not good enough, they may go to another restaurant, which will seat them the way they wish to be seated. Of course, lines are just one facet of restaurant service, and because different people at different times and in different places have different priorities, restaurant have arisen which provide a wide variety of different services. We each avoid restaurants we don’t wish to be at and we attend those we like, and all is well. If a restaurant fails to please a significant number of people, it goes out of business.
It would be a grave injustice if there existed a regulatory agency in the government which set rules for how each restaurant must structure its lines, or what manner of service waiters must provide. This would kill the healthy functioning of restaurants. Sure, restaurants would probably manage to servive, but the wonderful variety of methods employed would be restricted by government fiat. This would be both an unjust imposition on restaurants and on their customers. It is possible that restaurants would in some places simply ignore the rules, and there would arise a black market for nice restaurants, subject of course to corruption and manipulation like any other.
Strangely, what we would find inconceivable for the providing of food has been done for the providing of information. A governmental bureaucracy called the FCC decided, even though it had never been granted authority over the internet, to make up rules to govern computer information transfer. It arbitrarily decided that any ISP provider must treat all information transfers in an equal manner, regardless of the nature of the information involved.
Equality, of course, is one of those words that gets thrown around to justify all sorts of governmental nonsense and restrictions on liberty. In this case, the ability of ISP’s to please their customers is severely restricted. Suppose, for example, that an ISP wanted to provide a service to customers that excluded pornographic videos. Only customers who did not want to watch pornographic materials would buy from this service, and the service would give priority to all non-pornographic materials so that customers could get their information more efficiently without having to compete for valuable space with porn watchers. I don’t even need to explain to you how convenient a service like this could be.
But, under the illegal rule of the FCC, such a service, even offered as a single option, would be illegal. That’s right. Illegal to hire someone to provide your family with porn-free internet service. And somehow this is supposed to be okay because the restrictions are in service of equality.
Here’s another scenario: right now it’s tax season. Suppose an ISP wanted to help out its customers by guaranteeing that IRS tax form processing online got priority. So for a few weeks of the year, all other traffic would slow down just a tiny bit to guarantee that tax forms are rapidly and conveniently processed for tax-paying customers who can’t afford to have anything go wrong with their taxes.
Of course, examples could be multiplied, but you get the point. Government has stepped in and is denying customers the ability to select what sort of information-transferring services. And now ends the hypothetical part.
A company called comcast decided to slow down the processing speed of BitTorrent files, a sort of file that is often used to share illegal information peer-to-peer where it can’t be obtained on norma websites. And so comcast slowed down illegal (and maybe occasionally legal) peer-to-peer BitTorrent downloads in order to speed up all other traffic.
And so the FCC sued. And the case went something like this:
FCC: Judge! Judge! Comcast is illegally breaking net neutrality rules.
Judge: What laws have the Comcast people broken?
FCC: No. No. They didn’t break any laws. They broke some rules we made up on our own.
Judge: Oh. Is there a law giving you permission to make up your own rules?
FCC: Well, no. But we’re a government body.
Judge: Government bodies can’t just do whatever they want. And so until Comcast is breaking laws or until you by law are put in charge of what Comcast does, I can’t help you. Leave Comcast alone.
This time justice was served, and at least in this small way the overwhelming powers that government assumes over its subjects have been, for the moment, pushed back a bit. Thank goodness.
the meaning of this net neutrality ruling
A court ruled today that the FCC has no right to enforce net neutrality standards. What does this mean?An understanding of this whole debate may begin with one simple fact: there really is no such thing as the internet. There just isn’t. All there is in millions of computers voluntarily connected to one another by use of cables, fibers, and air waves. Each computer’s owner has the option of keeping all the information on his computer to himself, or sharing some of it, or sharing all of it.
Now, air waves only allow for limited information transfer, and so it is possible for two computers next to each other to be connected with a wire or cable or fiber. Now, the information exchanges throughout the world–which we call the internet–could continue to exist just fine this way.
But setting up wires between any two computers which wish to share is inconvenient. Businessmen, of course, quickly realized early in the computer age that there was a way to help computer users share information more conveniently. The result was ingenious complex systems in which a company would, for a reasonable fee, bring to its users the hardware necessary to tap into a vast interconnected network of computers and share information in a variety of remarkably efficient ways. We call this the internet and we call the companies Internet Service Providers–ISP’s.
It is in the interests of the ISP’s to serve their customers by providing information sharing as conveniently as possible. This means that the control systems of the ISP’s must try to manage the information streaming through their networks in such a way that customers are served as well as possible. Generally, this means that information is run through a que system that gives all information transfers equal weight within an ISP. Thus, your information will run through the system more slowly when there is more information transferred or less transfer capacity in the ISP, and more quickly when there is less information tranferred or more capacity in the system.
Just as lines spring up in any store because they are an efficient and predictable method for serving customers in the least possible time, so also they spring up online. Now, a businessman has the right to manipulate his lines any way he wants to maximize his efficiency. A businessman, say a restaurant owner, seats his customers in whatever order is most convenient to the smooth and profitable running of his business. If I walk into a crowded restaurant with eleven other people and we all wish to be seated together, we have no right to cry out for government intervention if two people in line behind us are seated first because the restaurant finds a convenient place for seating two before eleven.
Thus, the line behavior of the business is solely operated by the business, which has to do whatever it can to please its customers. If the customers feel that the businesses sevice practices are not good enough, they may go to another restaurant, which will seat them the way they wish to be seated. Of course, lines are just one facet of restaurant service, and because different people at different times and in different places have different priorities, restaurant have arisen which provide a wide variety of different services. We each avoid restaurants we don’t wish to be at and we attend those we like, and all is well. If a restaurant fails to please a significant number of people, it goes out of business.
It would be a grave injustice if there existed a regulatory agency in the government which set rules for how each restaurant must structure its lines, or what manner of service waiters must provide. This would kill the healthy functioning of restaurants. Sure, restaurants would probably manage to servive, but the wonderful variety of methods employed would be restricted by government fiat. This would be both an unjust imposition on restaurants and on their customers. It is possible that restaurants would in some places simply ignore the rules, and there would arise a black market for nice restaurants, subject of course to corruption and manipulation like any other.
Strangely, what we would find inconceivable for the providing of food has been done for the providing of information. A governmental bureaucracy called the FCC decided, even though it had never been granted authority over the internet, to make up rules to govern computer information transfer. It arbitrarily decided that any ISP provider must treat all information transfers in an equal manner, regardless of the nature of the information involved.
Equality, of course, is one of those words that gets thrown around to justify all sorts of governmental nonsense and restrictions on liberty. In this case, the ability of ISP’s to please their customers is severely restricted. Suppose, for example, that an ISP wanted to provide a service to customers that excluded pornographic videos. Only customers who did not want to watch pornographic materials would buy from this service, and the service would give priority to all non-pornographic materials so that customers could get their information more efficiently without having to compete for valuable space with porn watchers. I don’t even need to explain to you how convenient a service like this could be.
But, under the illegal rule of the FCC, such a service, even offered as a single option, would be illegal. That’s right. Illegal to hire someone to provide your family with porn-free internet service. And somehow this is supposed to be okay because the restrictions are in service of equality.
Here’s another scenario: right now it’s tax season. Suppose an ISP wanted to help out its customers by guaranteeing that IRS tax form processing online got priority. So for a few weeks of the year, all other traffic would slow down just a tiny bit to guarantee that tax forms are rapidly and conveniently processed for tax-paying customers who can’t afford to have anything go wrong with their taxes.
Of course, examples could be multiplied, but you get the point. Government has stepped in and is denying customers the ability to select what sort of information-transferring services. And now ends the hypothetical part.
A company called comcast decided to slow down the processing speed of BitTorrent files, a sort of file that is often used to share illegal information peer-to-peer where it can’t be obtained on norma websites. And so comcast slowed down illegal (and maybe occasionally legal) peer-to-peer BitTorrent downloads in order to speed up all other traffic.
And so the FCC sued. And the case went something like this:
FCC: Judge! Judge! Comcast is illegally breaking net neutrality rules.
Judge: What laws have the Comcast people broken?
FCC: No. No. They didn’t break any laws. They broke some rules we made up on our own.
Judge: Oh. Is there a law giving you permission to make up your own rules?
FCC: Well, no. But we’re a government body.
Judge: Government bodies can’t just do whatever they want. And so until Comcast is breaking laws or until you by law are put in charge of what Comcast does, I can’t help you. Leave Comcast alone.
This time justice was served, and at least in this small way the overwhelming powers that government assumes over its subjects have been, for the moment, pushed back a bit. Thank goodness.
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