If you were hired today as a consultant for Comcast PR and Corporate Communications, what would you do?

I’m holding this survey over at: http://jburg.ty...ey—i.html.

All this does is increase the sophistication required to jump-start a business that conducts sales on the web. The big guys like it because it tends to limit the smaller, more nimble start-ups from sprouting. Lawyers like it because it generates hours of time.

We need to realize that business is good. I say this because there are the socialists out there who love regulation because it actually does slow things down – that’s what they want.

For the rest of us, we need to keep educating the public and try to do a good job of being stewards of people’s money, privacy, etc.

I generally put the die-hard Net Neutrality crowd in the Socialist realm. The rest of the people who buy into Net Neutrality do it because it sounds good.

Moving forward, we not only have to educate the public, but we have to push for regulations that consider and acknowledge that “business is good” and reject regulations that have side effects that hurt business. (Using the words “unintended side effects” is wrong, because for some people, the side effects that negatively affect business are a main driver.)

Look at the vast amount of innovation that occurs because people are (relatively) free to move around and take risks. Many people complain about the oil companies. Imagine if they were less regulated and execs saw opportunities to make money by, say, building new refineries? They’d leave and create start-ups. That doesn’t happen because the barriers are too high. Even with the vast amounts of money to be made, the local, state, federal, etc. regulatory environment makes it difficult. Then, add in the environmentalists/socialists and the legal world and you can see why we’re stuck with very large oil companies. People complain about them being so big, but our own system creates this mess and no one talks about it!!

If there is some continuum that covers the amount regulation of the big internet companies, moving to more regulation is only going to hurt us all in the long run as fewer people get involved in startups that compete or tangentially compete with these companies (Comcast, Verizon, etc.)

This is not rocket science. Regulation generally favors the big guys and puts a damper on the ability of smaller players to compete. Regulation also invites the legal system to slow things down: more and more attorneys will be going after companies – which further solidifies the big guys and keeps out the small guys.

Adeline (from a previous post) said, “the telco/cablecos excel at one thing and one thing only – manipulating the regulatory bodies”. While I wouldn’t be so one sided that they don’t do anything else well, the reason they are so good at manipulating the regulatory bodies is because the regulatory bodies become close to being single biggest aspect of operating the business. We read all the time about how Intel, etc. has Moore’s Law to deal with. Throw regulation at Intel and the wheels will come off the track. So we want more regulation for telcos/cablecos????

In short, we should resist this Net Neutrality and many regulations.

http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com

You dont own the ISP. If you want to own an ISP get one. then you can offer all the net neutrality you want and the customers will come running. Its not good to go your whole life feeling like a powerless blob who can only get things done through whine’ing. MMMMmom he wants to shut access off thats not fair! call Mr Senator to take care of it

Feel free to express your opinion on this website (forum, not blog) and voice your opinion – the more the better.

But do we seriously want to give the GOVERNMENT regulatory control over the internet?

Can you imagine the “Bureau of Intertube Technologies”?

How can we begin to imagine that our government wouldn’t end up abusing that power to the detriment of users, not to mention taxing the living daylights out of innovation on the web?

Lets not forget who we’re really talking about here.

Regarding Ted’s assertion that there is no public Internet in America, that’s also nonsense. While ISP’s are unregulated, the underlying networks (physical and logical for OSI enthusiasts) are regulated and therefore subject to public policy expressed vis those regulations. There would be no Internet as we know it now had the Internet not originated as a public service of the federal government. As a former telco employee who participated in the planning process, I can assert this as a fact. Prior to the creation of the Mosaic browser in 1994, all the RBOC’s were attempting to build their own “information superhighway” or broadband network. It was the intent of each RBOC to tightly control all content on that network, as well as the devices that were permitted to attach to it. In that world, their would have been no Amazon, Ebay, Google or Facebook, because the telco bureaucrats would never have allowed it. Fortunately for us all, Netscape popularized the Mosaic browser, AOL popularized dial-up Internet access and the RBOC’s have been trying to put the unregulated Internet genie back in the bottle ever since.

The telco/cablecos excel at one thing and one thing only – manipulating the regulatory bodies. They know their legacy business (voice minutes sold on a metered usage basis). They do not know how to transition that business model to a broadband, open access environment. So every attempt to “manage” P2P taffic, or VOIP traffic, or locked cell phones is simply an attempt to revert the world to one they understand. To believe otherwise is foolish, especially if you have never listened to an internal telco/cableco discussion of such issues. Bottom line: unless Congress wises up to the real state of affairs, bandwidth will remain a scarce and rationed commodity in the US, while other countries with more enlightened telecom policies develop a surpluses (France, Korea, Japan, Scandinavia, etc.).

You dont own the ISP. If you want to own an ISP get one. then you can offer all the net neutrality you want and the customers will come running. Its not good to go your whole life feeling like a powerless blob who can only get things done through whine’ing. MMMMmom he wants to shut access off thats not fair! call Mr Senator to take care of it Jimmy.

Okay, now I get it and now I am scared! That would SUCK!

A true free market dominates all, too bad we don’t live in a free market economy and lobbyists can pressure our congressmen to screw over any attempt at competition