The Internet Should Be a Public Good | Hacker News Reader

The Internet Should Be a Public Good

jacobinmag.com

60 pointsborkborkbork108 comments

This rosey view of the public-funded Internet ignores the reality of the network at the time. As recently as the mid-1990s, the entire Internet could netsplit, like a badly-run IRC network; there was a run of a couple days where commercial sites (like Ripco, my first ISP) couldn't reach any .EDU sites.

Telecom companies like Comcast and Verizon "own" the backbone because they built it. Not just the backhaul connections they install at enormous expense, not just the hundreds of millions of dollars of switches and routers, but the very peering centers and agreements that allow different networks to interoperate. Had UUNet been forbidden from building "private" backbones, they'd have simply built a new IP network, and we'd all be using that instead.

Are you saying that this couldn't have been accomplished by a public utility? Or that these companies have produced better outcomes? We made the choice to hand over the existing backbone that took decades and billions of dollars to build.

Yes, I'm saying this would not have been accomplished by a public utility.

I don't know what "hand over the existing backbone" means. Verizon's network consists of optical backhaul links, terminations, and a switching infrastructure that they spent billions to build over decades. They didn't inherit it, and I don't believe UUNet inherited their DS3s and AGS+'s in the 90s, either.

They inherited NSFNET, which emerged from ARPANET. It's in the article.

That's not what the article says. The article, by the way, generates the same question your last comment did: what does it even mean to "inherit" the backbone? Does it mean "be allowed to interconnect with"? That's a pretty counterintuitive definition of "inheritance".

Ah, you're right. Sorry for the misunderstanding on my part. They abandoned NSFNET and declined to pass regulations regarding the new privately built infrastructure. That begs the question: if the government so successfully innovated in this space during the 60's, 70's, and 80's, why did that have to change in the early 90's? Perhaps the prevailing political climate had more to do with it than economic or technical considerations?

I think if you reread my top comment here you'll see me disputing the premise of your question. They funded R&D, much of it at private firms and more still at university CS departments, and orchestrated the installation of a not especially good backbone connecting (mostly) universities.

The thing we use today to watch movies on was built entirely by private companies, responding to the market, which detected and amplified user feature requests nobody even took seriously back in the Gopher days.

It's not just that the Internet of 1992 wasn't especially good: that Internet also solved an easier problem than the one we have today. In particular: more of the work could be delegated to leaf networks, and less expertise and capital was required to provide some semblance of a backbone.

I also object to the tone of this Jacobin article, which strongly implies that the backbone was somehow deeded over to telecom giants. That's false. I was the lead technical employee at a regional ISP in the 1990s, and made friends with many employees at our upstreams and at other companies. Lots of scrappy little companies rolled up to create the regional networks that were eventually consolidated into the giants we have today. Anyone who wanted to go all-in on rolling a regional network into a backbone provider had a shot in the 1990s.

> Telecom companies like Comcast and Verizon "own" the backbone because they built it.

In Europe most of the backbone has been built by state-run public companies with public money. Only with the wave of privatization in the 90s the EU backbone has become privately owned (for various weird definitions of "privately owned").

However. When the backbone was publicly owned the "broadband" of the time (ISDN) was available to most of the population, including those living outside the big cities and in rural zones. 20 years later the current broadband (fiber) is available only in selected metropolies. The rest is delegate to "market failure" (official term of the trade).

Seeing networks are public infrastructures puts things under a different light. Water, gas, phones and electricity are available everywhere, even where it makes no economic sense, because it makes _human_ sense. Why can't we treat computers networks (access to information) the same? We have been doing it for 40 or so years before the privatizations. After 20 years, why can't we call this privatization experiment failed and go back to the previous state of affairs?

If you want your Internet service to be as responsive to customers as your gas and electric service is today, I supposed you could declare the experiment "failed". As I pointed out, I'm happier with an Internet I can watch movies and make phone calls on than I am with the one that repeatedly netsplit in the 90s.

Incidentally: ISDN was widely available everywhere where there were modern phone-switching networks, because they required very minimal upstream equipment to handle. Essentially, if you had already 5 years ago run copper to a Northern Telecom head unit, you'd basically already deployed ISDN. Every local ISP in the US was able to jam a couple PRIs into some Ascend boxes to provide ISDN just as soon as those boxes were available.

I don't think it's reasonable to compare ISDN to last-mile technologies that require new cables and new block-by-block termination equipment to install.

Comparing the internet you have in 2016 to the internet that existed in the 1990's is a bit unfair, don't you think? The idea that only markets are capable of delivering innovations or necessary services to the public is debatable.

For example, the U.S. government, through DARPA, created countless valuable networking innovations that private companies, such as AT&T, didn't want to touch even when given the opportunity.

I think if you read the comment carefully you'll see I'm not simply saying "the 'public' EU backbone provided rural ISDN", but rather that I'm making a more subtle point than that, about the nature of ISDN.

There's a reason an ISDN BRI provides the rate it does, and a reason why each of its B-channels is 64k: the digital phone network was already channelized that way.

Actually I was replying to your original comment before you edited. The idea that a publicly run internet would not have been able to produce the innovations necessary for Netflix is debatable and betrays a certain political persuasion on your part.

No, it doesn't. You've fallen victim to the fundamental attribution fallacy, and it's led you to generate a rude remark.

He's saying the task to deploy ISDN in the 1990's was minuscule compared to what is required to roll out fiber to everyone today. It's like comparing government oranges to private Teslas.

Government has been responsible for the largest undertakings in human history. Space flight, nuclear weaponry and energy, particle colliders, etc.

That's mostly true. It's just that the modern Internet isn't one of those things, unless you're talking about the academic research funding that generated Raj Jain papers.

You're right, it's not. But it could have been.

There is very little evidence to suggest it would be. A space program is a monumentally impressive achievement, but it's one that was generated by fiat. The Internet is the result of countless different responses to market pressures.

Our telecom networks used to be effectively nationalized. You couldn't even choose your own telephone. Back when the government had a role in running the actual backbone, there were restrictions on commerce on the Internet!

Many of the largest undertakings. (Here's one counter-example - the world's first transatlantic cable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York,_Newfoundland_and_Lon...).

The mistake many libertarians make is to argue that government is inherently incompetent. This viewpoint contradicts reality. Government agencies which attract smart people can be as successful as any private company. Large private companies can be as bureaucratic as any government agency.

The fundamental difference is that there's no way to get rid of bloated and ineffective government organisations. NASA is a good example: in the 1960s it was the place where every bright young engineer and scientist wanted to work, but over the decades it stagnated into another bureaucracy dominated by non-technical folk chasing pork-barrel funding.

> The fundamental difference is that there's no way to get rid of bloated and ineffective government organisations.

It may be practically difficult to do so, but there is definitely a way to do so, and its usually quite obvious from the manner in which those government organizations are structured and chartered in the first place.

Plenty of government organizations that have been viewed as "bloated", "inefficient", or otherwise undesirable have, in fact, been gotten rid of.

> Comparing the internet you have in 2016 to the internet that existed in the 1990's is a bit unfair, don't you think?

I certainly do! It astonishes me that the article here under discussion treats them so.

How so?

Via the same implicit counterfactual on which you rely - that is, that had the Internet remained a publicly funded, primarily academic project over the last two decades, it would nonetheless be substantially similar to the Internet we have today.

That's not my argument. Publicly funded does not necessarily mean primarily academic. The market is not the only driver of public demand for goods and services. Streaming video is a fairly obvious innovation that benefits the general public.

That's certainly your argument. But you're doing a better job of losing it to 'tptacek than to me. Please don't let me distract you any further.

He's just better at dodging my questions than you are :). But please, keep erecting your straw man.

The entire point of this is that the internet would be fundamentally different if it were democratically controlled. That does not mean we would miss out on innovations like streaming video. It does mean that average users would have faster speeds and more control over their data. This of course assumes a political environment geared towards the average citizen. Sadly, in the United States, that is not currently the case. But it is achievable, and we used to be much closer to that ideal.

This isn't complicated. To believe the USG could have created an equivalent or better Internet as a regulated public utility, you have to believe that none of the major attributes of the modern Internet were produced through competition, because that is what you lose when you nationalize and regulate an industry.

Electricity, gas, and water work as utilities because to a first approximation, the only competitive access is price. One thing regulation can do is drive prices to an acceptable place (often not the lowest price, but a satisficing price).

But that is not the only axis of competition for Internet service. Nobody knows or cares what the quality of their gas service is, but most people can tell you how fast their Internet connection is, and not everyone wants the same service.

As I pointed out downthread, when telecom was a regulated utility, we didn't even have competition in telephone handsets.

Yeah, they'll tell you their internet connection speed is shitty. Unless you live in Chattanooga, where the evil Department of Fiber Optics is busy oppressing them.

Go look up EPB's ASN and see which public utility companies they're peering with to get Chattanooga customers in touch with Google.

But this is entirely silly. EPB is great. More cities should run their own last-mile networks. What they do instead is impose regulatory frameworks that forbid companies that could run gig fiber networks from doing so unless they also serve markets where they would hemorrhage money.

But the success of public utilities in places like Chattanooga is not an argument that a public utility could have built the modern Internet. To see just one reason why, try to host Youtube or Netflix on EPB's network.

You're right. They're prioritizing access over the financial concerns of the providers. That's what public utilities do. That's what we did when we electrified the South. That's why I keep pointing to your fundamental political assumptions. It's not that we can't do it, it's that certain people don't think it's valuable.

Please stop attacking me personally. You have no idea what my fundamental political assumptions are. If you're frustrated about how unpersuasive I find your argument, perhaps stop arguing; you aren't entitled to persuade me, but you're starting to write as if you feel you are.

I'm actually enjoying this conversation. That's why I've stuck around this long. To quote your last comment:

"What they do instead is impose regulatory frameworks that forbid companies that could run gig fiber networks from doing so unless they also serve markets where they would hemorrhage money."

Who cares if they're hemorrhaging money? The Public Works Administration hemorrhaged money electrifying the South. The Post Office hemorrhages money delivering to far flung rural areas. Society however has made the judgement that these costs are worth it because they promote inclusiveness and equality. You are making the opposite judgement. That judgement is inherently political.

You don't even seem to be reading my comments anymore. You've invented a disagreement that we don't even have, so you could reintroduce politics. I'm not interested in having a political argument with you.

Incidentally, you may be chuckling at the tenor of this conversation and where it's going, but as I've told you repeatedly, I am taking offense. I am not enjoying it, and I wish you'd stop.

Welp, maybe you shouldn't have commented on a political article then? I'm really not trolling you here. I'm reading everything you're writing.

I suspect others will notice that it is you who have been ignoring me.

This is my biggest problem with people in the tech industry. You can't divorce the systems you build, or the tradeoffs made by companies and policymakers, from the underlying political ideologies that inform those decisions.

You might be surprised and deeply dissatisfied what others will notice.

The article in question is a political article, and the solutions it posits are, by definition, political. Just because you don't feel that you're in any way having a political conversation does not necessarily make it so.

I'm not objecting to politics in general. I'm objecting to continually being asked to pass a political purity test in this particular branch of the discussion. I shouldn't have to explain to the other commenter why they're wrong about my politics. It was bogus and rude for them to invent a political straw man and attribute to me.

I'm prickly about this, because, as you might know, this happens all the time here.

fwiw I do know that it happens all the time here. And, as someone whose politics runs very far to the left contra this forum (I'm a regular Jacobin reader), I can appreciate the annoyance. I did strike me as a bit dissonant, coming from you.

Edit: also, not having to constantly battle either a) trolls or b) what I feel to be right wing libertarian myopia is one of the reasons I've commented so little here, so, I Get It. I've been a reader/lurker for something like 7 years now. early 2009, I believe.

Some years ago, during a phase in which every other comment on this site seemed to be accusing me of being an NSA shill, I made a decision never to spell out my particular (boring, especially if you know where I live) political beliefs in response to people accusing me of having a particular political inclination. Doing so might simplify (dumb, lazy) arguments. But we shouldn't have to do that.

I remember that. Not one of the brighter HN moments. I've done a small amount of activism, come from a family who have had run ins with the security state (had my own as well). It can be jarring to then turn around and have to defend a position that automatically grants you "shill" status to online nutjobs.

I was wrong to have brought up your personal political beliefs. I apologize for that.

The arguments you are making, however, are dependent on the idea that markets are a necessary mechanism for the existence of the modern internet.

You have the right to withhold your political beliefs from anyone in any context.

You've gone astray by demanding that others de-politicize their language in a similar way.

I believe that about the Internet. I don't necessarily believe it about anything else.

I am fine with politics, as long as the political discussion doesn't take the form of "here is what I have inferred about your personal political beliefs".

> most people can tell you how fast their Internet connection is

Most people on HN, maybe. Most consumers can maybe recall the speed advertised by their ISP (but maybe not, given how ISPs mostly used named tiers and often don't prominently identify even the advertised speed), but that can be a very different thing from how fast their connection is in practice.

This presumes that innovation comes about only as a result of competition.

I don't believe that it always does. I do believe that almost all of the innovation we've seen on the Internet has come from competition.

Would it not be fair then, to say that came about from specific circumstances peculiar to America?

Why would that be the case? Has it generally been the case that innovations on the Internet have been generated from countries where the Internet is (more like) a public utility, and only then imported here? That's not my impression.

My own feelings on this would take a long time to sketch out, and are pretty diffuse tbh. They would also depend not so much on the internet per se but on high technology in general. I would point to early Israel, which was highly, almost exclusively socialistic (and in ways not reproduced anywhere else, i.e. the kibbutzim) as being capable of high tech innovation with a highly dynamic state sector. Also, I feel it worth pointing out that (even though it doesn't make my argument any stronger) that just because something has been the case up until now doesn't make it The Only Way It Works.

So, just to be clear: this isn't a blanket belief I have about technology. The modern Internet, however, appears to me to have developed largely in response to consumer demand, first for email, then for web pages with pretty pictures, then for secure web pages, then person-to-person audio, then small-scale video, then large-scale video. At each interval, some random company introduced software demonstrating one of those features, and it caught on, and the Internet was built up in response to it.

An ISDN BRI was zippy fast in 1997. I liked my ISDN! And if it weren't for Youtube, I might still like my ISDN.

If the Internet were a regulated utility, we'd have to petition for the local Internet authority to roll out something faster than 128kb/s. But of course, I didn't petition to get my DSL line: I just switched ISPs to one who'd provide it.

Lord only knows what Google would have had to do to get Youtube connected to the counterfactual regulated Internet.

Like I said elsewhere, I think regulated utilities work reasonably well when there's just one figure of merit (usually: price). I think the approach falls apart when the number of variables increases.

Interesting. Thanks for taking the time to respond. Something for me to think about, seriously. Seeing the argument sketched out like this is illuminating as to its extent, I appreciate it.

I'm sure if the government had retained full control of the Internet as a regulated public utility, the US would have the finest Department of Streaming Video in the world.

The attitude that leads to you ridicule government provided services is exactly why I made my previous comment about your obvious political bias. It wasn't any more rude than the sarcasm that you're exhibiting here.

Ask the Brits about the NHS.

One difference between my comment and yours is that you were in fact incorrect about my political inclinations, but I am not in fact wrong about the service model of a regulated public Internet.

You're doing the same thing by asking me to litigate the NHS: presuming that I'm opposed to all government services and all regulations. I won't play that game: you are out of bounds by personalizing this, and asking me to pass a purity test to continue arguing with you isn't reasonable.

Argue better.

I haven't asked you to do anything of the sort. I point out the NHS because I want you to explain why the internet is fundamentally different. You've done an excellent job explaining how the existing internet emerged. You've done nothing to discredit my actual argument.

Why is this any different than the previous upthread comments you called "rude" and labeled with Forum Psych 101 : Fallacy Section. Its kind of ugly, honestly. I say this as someone who has actually taken the time to email you before, thanking you for calling out racism.

As I said elsewhere: mine is a substantive dismissal, and theirs is an ad hominem argument directed at a misapprehension about my politics. If you disagree with my argument, disagree with it.

I would love if my internet service was as good as my gas or electric service. Those are both so reliable, that I've never once had to contact customer service. They deliver a standard level of service, according to fair, legally enforced rates. If they ever do have an outage, I'm entitled to pro-rated credits for the service interruption. They will also roll trucks any hour of the day to restore service after major weather incidents, unlike any ISP I've ever had.

Honestly, we should start holding the major ISPs to the same standard as our other utilities.

They're also the beneficiaries of infrastructure which is already built out everywhere and requires only maintenance and occasional repair. It would be great if the same could be said of ISPs. Can it?

You have much better experience with your utilities than I do with mine.

Two days ago, we found out that our gas had been shut off because Nicor's billing system forgot about our auto-billing. Someone came out, shut our gas off, and locked the meter. We paid them, and they informed us they wouldn't be able to roll a truck to turn our gas on for more than a week, despite the fact that the dude they sent to turn our gas off could have knocked on our door (or, for that matter, they could have called) and worked out the billing SNAFU.

Erin go so fed up that she picked the lock on the meter; when I called to inform them that I was holding their meter lock in my hand, they sent an "emergency" crew out. The new dude had an account note instructing him not to turn our gas on, despite the fact that our account was current and the billing SNAFU was their fault.

He made fun of them and turned our gas back on.

Have you ever called to have your electrical service changed? How was that experience for you? I've had that pleasure, too.

The other great thing I'll say about our electrical is that only goes down for 12+ hours at a time a couple times a year. Depending on your expectations for electrical service in one of the largest US metro areas, that might be good!

I don't like AT&T or Verizon. But I would gleefully hand them my billing and field service work for every other utility I have. I haven't had an AT&T outage I noticed in years. I have never once waited more than a day to get them out to address a problem.

"Have you ever called to have your electrical service changed? How was that experience for you? I've had that pleasure, too."

I've done this. It's something the UK seems to be really good at. I checked my annual usage and found the supplier who would charge me the least for that. So I phoned them. That was all I had to do. My bills went down. Fantastic. The UK government seems to be enforcing a competitive market, and I am no fan of the UK government, so this is high praise from me.

Have you tried to have your electrical provider terminate additional power to your house? That's the kind of change I'm talking about.

I have. It is, as far as I know, pretty much impossible. You'd think they would want to enable customers to use more of their product.

Can you tell me more about this "human sense"? If I build a home on Mars should I be entitled to have some third party provide me with "water, gas, phones and electricity"?

A lot of the decisions I personally make are decided by economic factors, even if it is not the primary factor.

Most relevant Internet bodies are noncommercial organisations, like ICANN, IETF, RIPE, ARIN, APNIC, AFNIC, LACNIC, the various Internet exchanges (xxCIX), some DNS registrars are noncommercial too. But someone has to run the actual cables, manage customers, host servers, etc.

I'd say the Internet has a very good balance between commercial interests and the noncommercial "public good". So good in fact, that some very restrictive governments choose to opt out and create nationwide intranets (China, Iran, ...)

China and Russia are doing this largely to avoid Western cultural and political influence. Their choice to opt out does not necessarily imply that we're structuring our networks in the most just or efficient way.

It does imply that we are structuring our networks in a way that doesn't have the capabilities for restriction that they would like.

That's correct. We don't enforce restrictions on political speech or deviant pornography, for the most part. But we do enforce intellectual property restrictions that largely benefit Western corporate interests.

To me it is a testament for the resilience and sane architecture of the Internet as we know it that restrictive governments can not achieve their goal without changing the underlying structure of their part to a central controlled version. Other technologies like the radio or telephone were centralised by default, so much more "dictatorship friendly".

The U.S. government seems to have no trouble achieving its commercial and surveillance goals under the current architecture.

Really? I only hear western governments whining that encryption threaten their surveillance powers [1][2].

[1] http://bigstory.ap.org/article/7d57f576e3f74b6ca4cd3436fbebf...

[2] http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/24/12621834/france-germany-en...

Your argument assumes it's not within their power to end this threat. In fact, the Senate proposed a bill that does just that [1]. There's nothing inherent to the current architecture that prevents the government from compelling companies to do their bidding. We've seen that time and time again with NSA surveillance. The crux of this article is that the Internet was largely funded by the public, then handed over to an oligopoly of telecoms in the 1990's. There's nothing about this arrangement that protects average users. In fact, it is partially responsible for the U.S. having the slowest average broadband speeds of any industrialized nation [2].

[1] http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/encryption-backdoors-legislat...

[2] http://gizmodo.com/why-americas-internet-is-so-shitty-and-sl...

In BC, Canada the provision of electricity and water are by provincial/municipal governments, have very similiar requirements in terms of running wires/pipes, and in my experience have delivered much better services.

They don't constantly try to gouge me. I've had to call their support lines maybe a few times my entire life (as opposed to many tens of times for telcos). And I really don't see how sending bits could be more difficult than delivering high voltage or pressurized water.

This is exactly right.

Most services that lend themselves to a natural monopoly (because most people only really need one power/water/phone/internet line to their house/business) should be implemented as a publicly run infrastructure with value added ISP's on the end.

The current vertical integration of internet providers impedes any new competition.

Arguing for integration is like saying that all roads should be owned by the "Road Company" that also happens to be the "Car Company" and you can only use an expensive car you bought from them on their road.

> The current vertical integration of internet providers impedes any new competition

Wouldn't the government owning the service be the ultimate impediment to new competition?

I'm not defending ISPs, but lets not too quickly throw them under the bus.

Also, your casual throw-away comment:

> Most services that lend themselves to a natural monopoly ... should be implemented as a publicly run infrastructure

Requires the government forcibly taking over quite a few large companies.

That's a weighty request, and would be exactly the opposite of what we should want to see in the world.

> Requires the government forcibly taking over quite a few large companies. That's a weighty request, and would be exactly the opposite of what we should want to see in the world.

Yet this is exactly what happened in developed countries in the 20th century, now many of these are again privatized with the predictable loss of efficiency and increased bureaucracy (supporting frameworks, arbitrage, watchdogs, etc...).

In my country the privatization of public transit and energy companies has been a total disaster. I remember when I could get things done without being pingponged between 12 different parties, things that used to take a day now take weeks.

Water delivery methods and techniques haven't changed much in 100yrs. Network tech changes rapidly. Government doesn't seem like the kind of place that deals with upgrades well

Imagine the utilities had to deliver water at an increasingly high pressure, every year, or you would be furious and frustrated. So, in 2000, they're running at 5 psi.

By 2005, they need to be at 50 PSI in order to keep you happy.

By 2010, you expect 250 PSI.

By today, you'd not be willing to tolerate anything less than 1000 PSI.

Internet is not water, it is not electricity. It should not be a "public good".

This is nonsensical. Upgrades to both water delivery, electric grids and other utilities are in fact a thing, and they happen all of the time.

Funny enough, in keeping with the BC, Canada example, the BC Hydro had every customer upgraded - ie, the ENTIRE CUSTOMER BASE - to smart meters a few years back - the equivalent to running fiber to every last mile residence in the province.

Upgrades and enhancements have no bearing whatsoever on the corporate governance of the service is structured. The simple fact of the matter is that I don't need 5 companies to provide 5 different physical data delivery methods to my end point. I don't need a cable line, a phone line and a fiber line connected to my home concurrently any more than I need a 220V line to run my washing machine and a 120V line for my lights.

I need a single hookup for water. A single hookup for electricity. A single hookup for internet (or rather, communication). Any more than required is just inefficient and not cost effective.

"In BC, Canada the provision of electricity and water are by provincial/municipal governments, have very similiar requirements in terms of running wires/pipes, and in my experience have delivered much better services."

The internet is not 'electricity'.

The internet evolves rapidly over time, there are competing technologies etc.

My friend, the Province of 'British Colombia' delivers some of the worst healthcare in the Western world - and they don't even have your records online. How do you expect they will manage bleeding edge technology?

Also - you are gouged on pricing. Have you seen your electricity bill? In Ontario, we pay artificially inflated fees. The government subsidizes irresponsible solar installations to the tune of 85 cents / kwh. They charge massive 'transport' fees. Hydro One is a massively bloated public entity with masses of retired people earning $100K a year from age 55 onwards. Have a look at their staffing budget - it's downright scandalous.

I'm not saying that electricity should be entirely privatized, but the internet, at least for now, should probably be.

Unless there is a big 'build out' (such as they have done in China or S. Korea) - I don't see government taking a direct role, other than perhaps regulation, and sponsoring access to rural communities and the poor.

> worst healthcare in the Western world - and they don't even have your records online.

One does not imply the other. In many ways I'm quite happy my medical information isn't all over the web. As a resident of BC myself, I don't see much of a difference between our heath care and ON or AB; other provinces I've lived in. You can argue that the Canadian system is flawed, but I have the Cambie centre that I can pay for and receive care on par with US quality right now.

>Also - you are gouged on pricing.

Demonstrably False. Your made in ON problem isn't shared by everyone else, thanks.

https://www.bchydro.com/accounts-billing/rates-energy-use/el...

http://www.hydroquebec.com/publications/en/docs/comparaison-...

>Unless there is a big 'build out

There should be one, right now. The entire country should be getting fiber to the door. That will be the last required physical infrastructure upgrade required for a long time. A national not-for-profit entity should own all of that, and the carriers can then compete/lease it to provide services.

The government could do it that way, but you have to trust them to do it correctly the first time. Because those government run utilities don't run on ten year upgrade schedules they run on 100year upgrade schedules. When homes and apartments are connected to water and power networks they never get upgraded.

A national internet service designed in 1999 might just be ADSL for everyone.

There is a lot of talk about how great municipal fiber is, but a town near me did it over ten years ago. Took out 30 year bonds to build a 10mbit up / 10mbit down system that's pretty expensive.

You only have to look at telecom regulation in the first place. After deregulation prices dropped and investment in advances started up again. Tons of money was invested into wireless. But AT&T wasn't pushing that forward at the time.

You have to consider political issues. Voters hate "rate increases" for power, water, and electricity. Proposals to jack up rates to build a FttH system to every home I the country would be shot down.

And if you mean true government ownership and operation of the network there are privacy and censorship issues. In the USA the government is allowed to censor government airwaves but not cable networks. I'd worry that censorship attempts would be tried on an government owned network.

>A national internet service designed in 1999 might just be ADSL for everyone.

Recognizing the irony here that for vast swaths of the country, that would be a marked improvement over the status quo. (Although it probably would have been cable in Canada given existing penetration at the time.)

> In return, the government demanded nothing: no compensation, and no constraints or conditions over how the Internet would take shape.

This isn't true. The US gov can and has put its thumb on the scale and used its position in the past. The .xxx TLD springs to mind.

As is so often true, Jacobin ignores history as experienced by the rest of us in favor of their preferred narrative.

Maybe this is nip-picky, but I don't think the author knows what "public good" actually is.

I'm referring to economic definition of "public good" which is quite interesting, if you aren't familiar with it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good

I don't think there's another definition. Is there?

Maybe the author didn't pick the title, but he misused the term in the article too.

Internet is a public good => government claims general regulatory powers over what goes through the Internet.

No thank you.

As compared to a private company claiming regulatory powers with no oversight?

If Facebook owns the internet, Facebook decides what is on the internet.

If icann owns domain registration with no regulation, icann decides who gets a domain (as well as the power to strip domains from their current owners).

And who can stop them? Some other company offering competing root DNS servers? I don't see how that could ever work. For better or worse, the internet operates strongly on the concept of a central root authority. Root DNS servers. Root Certificates. Centralized distribution of IPs.

If those central authorities have no regulation or oversight, they can and will shape the internet to their whims.

in a nutshell, you and OP have summed up the problems. Neither solution is terribely awesome, and we - society - needs to find a balance and appropriate governance for the system.

Why in the world do you think DNS is the issue? If you're worried about that, look at Namecoin. This is a solved problem.

The issue is that the government, given sufficient regulatory power, will start doing things like banning porn or "extreme" political views. This is not hypothetical; it has already happened in the UK.

Let me paraphrase your own comment in response.

The issue is that the corporations, given no regulation, will start doing things like banning porn or "extreme" political views. This is not hypothetical; it has already happened on Facebook.

Censorship is not purely the domain of the government. At least there are checks and balances on a government's power (as ineffectual and slow as they may be); save for the morals of a company's leadership team, there are no checks or balances on a corporations actions without regulation.

> look at Namecoin. This is a solved problem.

Most excellent. How do I give my mother a namecoin domain and have her visit their webpages? If it involves "download X from namecoin.org", you're already in trouble, since that's already relying on DNS. If we get past that, and the namecoin wallet needs to bootstrap itself - does it also use DNS? If it involves changing system configurations, period, it also won't work, since I've taught my mother to never to do that (she lacks the technical knowledge to add nuance to the restriction).

ISPs could have already tried to ban porn, but they haven't.

Facebook isn't an ISP. Just because a single company has content restrictions doesn't mean every company in the world will do the same.

Namecoin doesn't need DNS to bootstrap. Why would you need to download something? Do you need to download a DNS client for your grandmother? If such a system becomes adopted, OSs include it in the background, like DNS. If you can't be bothered to read the namecoin paper, look at the great success of products like Google DNS. Nothing fancy, but an excellent privately run DNS.

> ISPs could have already tried to ban porn, but they haven't.

Yes, they have. For one example when AOL was both an ISP and service provider, you bet your butt they blocked porn and objectionable speech.

> Facebook isn't an ISP.

I'm not sure I agree with this - the Free Basics program sure quacks like an ISP duck.

> Just because a single company has content restrictions doesn't mean every company in the world will do the same.

With no legal restrictions, what stops them?

> OSs include it in the background, like DNS.

I'm of the opinion that this describes a future that will never exist. Microsoft, Apple, and Linux distros have no compelling reason to include namecoin support by default, and likely never will. Especially since there is limited to no support for failover or localization of name->IP lookups. Even the lack of support for legal disputes over trademarked domains (for example, does amazon.bit actually go to the same location as Amazon.com) would scare off any for-profit company.

> Namecoin doesn't need DNS to bootstrap.

I missed that namecoin uses a number of fixed IPs as seeds for bootstrapping into the blockchain, so DNS control matters less there (well, once you have the software, that is). Of course, IPs are also distributed by a centralized authority, and routing information for IPs can be ignored by ISPs, so it's a mistake to assume the IPs will never change.

>With no legal restrictions, what stops them?

You tell me. Most ISPs never had content restrictions, even though they could have.

>and likely never will.

You're probably right, but the point is they could if the need was there.

Internet is a private good => private corporation claims general regulatory powers over what goes through the Internet.

Thank you?

Private corporations have no strong incentive to regulate speech, and it's very easy to gain a competitive advantage by being less regulated than one's competitors.

Internet is a public good -> regulatory powers are voted on and enacted by public bodies who are transparent and can be voted out.

Internet is a private good -> a tiny group of unelectable, unaccountable corporate leaders decide in secret everything about how it works, and are ethically required to make decisions which are bad for you and me but good for their profits.

Ironically, government regulation tends to work more like your second example. You are also objectively wrong; the FCC, the primary Internet regulator, is not voted in and is in no way transparent.

It's also good for profits to be less proscriptive than one's competitors. There is no discernible reason that competing ISPs would choose to limit free speech of their own accord.

> > Internet is a public good -> regulatory powers are voted on and enacted by public bodies who are transparent and can be voted out.

> You are also objectively wrong; the FCC, the primary Internet regulator, is not voted in and is in no way transparent.

The FCC has only the regulatory powers it is granted by statute, hence, "regulatory powers are voted on" is correct.

Those powers are enacted by Congress, which is an elected body which can be voted out.

The FCC is, in fact, governed by a number of transparency laws in the execution of its regulatory powers (and Congress has some degree of transparency, as well.)

So, I would say that your attempted rebuttal is more wrong than the post you are claiming is "objectively wrong".

>Those powers are enacted by Congress, which is an elected body which can be voted out.

You mean the congress with an 11% approval rating? Yeah, that's going great.

That's a misleading statistic. No one votes on "congress as a whole", they vote for their individual representatives. And individual representatives typically have a high approval rating (and are frequently voted out when it falls).

>No one votes on "congress as a whole"

Exactly. But congress as a whole would regulate the Internet.

I still say that's a little misleading. On any issue of national (or broader) scale, the people accounting for the difference between the behavior of my elected official (of whom I, statistically, approve) and the behavior of Congress as a whole must still be somehow contended with.

> and is in no way transparent

They are pretty fucking transparent. And they are still a public regulatory body, appointed by people appointed by the public.

> There is no discernible reason that competing ISPs would choose to limit free speech of their own accord.

Unless that ISP wants to create a streaming video service. So they block access to Netflix so you can "enjoy" their video service as well. If you want the internet to be run the way cable service is, then great, good for you. But the rest of us enjoy the freedom of being able to access any resource connected to the network for one price.

> So switch ISPs

(You'd inevitably bring it up)...most ISPs are a monopoly so there goes that idea.

>appointed by people appointed by the public.

So they're not elected; they're hired by the someone who is hired by the people in congress with an 11% approval rating. Great.

>most ISPs are a monopoly

When this occurs, it is a result of shitty municipal government line leasing policies.

The internet already is a public good.

How so?

From the article:

> It’s precisely the insulation from market forces that enables government to finance the long-term scientific labor that ends up producing many of the most profitable inventions.

It's this insulation that allows the government to waste billions and trillions on everything.

Innovation requires smart people and money. Neither of which the government can provide except by taking from the population as a whole. Therefore, the government is entirely unnecessary in the process, and usually quite counterproductive.

Sure, I'd characterize the creation of the internet as a "waste" as well, I say while typing a message on it. Similarly the social security and medicare that allows our grandparents to continue to live without bankrupting us, or forcing us to watch them die. Similarly the healthcare that stops poor people from dying on the street or robbing/killing you and your family out of desperation, and the police that protect your wealth, and the roads you drove on to get to work today, and the regulatory bodies that ensured your car isn't an explosive deathtrap and that you didn't keel over and die this afternoon from the meat in the sandwich you ate for lunch. All wastes.

Almost all valuable research cannot be supported by a profit motive; it does not pay off in any reasonable timeline. It is always done by a group with a huge amount of money to waste, like Google, AT&T in the past, the U.S. government. The market is as terrible at creating new and relevant research as it is at creating art. It is an optimization machine that finds local maxima and it is very good at that.

The government is literally made of smart people and money.

> Almost all valuable research cannot be supported by a profit motive

I disagree entirely. Only a profit motive can support valuable research.

We obviously see the world differently, but would probably get along just great if we were spending time together, so - help me understand your perspectives a bit better.

What book or author would you recommend, who makes a strong case for your point of view? I'll give it a read.

Thanks!

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