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UK Government Report Says Net Neutrality Threatens Innovation
from the fighting-for-you dept
As Mike pointed out, the British government's recent "Digital Britain" report is a mishmash of hedges and wishy-washiness that seems to have been carefully crafted to avoid taking much of a stand on anything. But in addition to its musing on file-sharing, it's worth looking at its recommendations on network neutrality, too. The report says the government should do nothing to prevent ISPs from charging content providers for "traffic prioritization" -- basically letting them charge certain providers a fee in exchange for guaranteed service levels. It also says that traffic shaping and other blocking and network management policies should be a-okay. The reasoning is that ISPs have to be allowed to do these things with their networks in order to "promote investment" and not stifle innovation.
It's hard to see this, as well as the recommendations that ISPs should be copyright cops, as little more than attempts to prop up incumbent (and often ailing) businesses. It's hard to fathom why ISPs should be forced to do record labels' detective work, why they should be on the front lines of protecting the labels' failing business model. And the claim that letting ISPs levy fees to discriminate among different providers' traffic will promote investment, and not allowing them to do so will stifle innovation seems pretty ludicrous. In fact, it's completely wrong: allowing ISPs to charge content providers for service levels will stifle investment and innovation -- established, big players will pay the fees -- not to offer wonderful new services -- but in an attempt to hold down competition. It's not hard to see things get to the point where startups and small companies with new, innovative services will have trouble getting a foothold without making big payments to ISPs. How does any of this benefit the British taxpaying public at large?
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Your thinking is stuck
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net neutrality by competition
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Allowing them to control their network?
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Re: Allowing them to control their network?
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Go right ahead
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Re: Re: Allowing them to control their network?
If the network was built with taxpayer money, then it's just for the network to be run for the benefit of the taxpayer. Pay the money back, give up the exclusive deals, and all's well.
When a company becomes a monopoly, they must be watched to ensure that they (on-paper citizens) are not being valued higher than real people.
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Re: Allowing them to control their network?
If it were actually their network, that would be one thing. But when it's built with gov't subsidies, gov't right of ways, and other issues that block out competitors, it's not really *their* network, is it?
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The less government -- the better
So far we didn't see any substantial abuse of content providers by ISPs. So, it's a good decision to avoid government intervention into ISPs business.
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Re: Allowing them to control their network?
However ... according to the government, it is not their network and they are under the control of the public utilities commission (forgoing any discussion about their usefullness).
Now, I suggest that if this BS continues there is a strong possibility that the web may be put in the same bucket.
So yeah, rock that boat some more you morons.
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Investement
Much of Britain's telecommunication network is much older then other parts of Europe and upgrades to let it deliver modern broadband speeds are very costly (8GB connections the max in much of the UK, 10GB and 30Gb available in certain locations).
Just who gets to pay for the upgrades has turned into a bit of fight, with BT (who owns most of the network) refusing to front the bill alone. The problem comes that BT probably isn't profitable enough in its own right to afford such upgrades, and most smaller ISPs run on increasingly small profit margins.
The alternative of the tax payer footing the bill is not too popular in Government, hence them wanting to promote anything that might encourage investment in the ISP's.
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Why Digital Britain could be bad for you
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The language..
We're at the point where government and lobbyists for the largest corporations are largely indistinguishable.
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Re: Go right ahead
The safe harbor issue that should really scare the ISPs is child pornography. If Comcast or AT&T gets charged as a codefendant in a child porn case, having demonstrated some ability to control what passes through their pipes, they're screwed.
Hence, this whole net neutrality thing is a nonissue.
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