A VC: In Search Of Open Internet Access

Creating a law that says "application agnostic" is going to leave things up to considerable legal debate. Define "application":

"Web traffic": Services that run over TCP/80 or TCP/443

"Video streaming": Delivery of live or buffered video

"VoIP": Phone calls over IP

With categories like the above:

(1) How would you filter in an agnostic way? I can stream video inside of a TCP/443 tunnel, I can send VoIP there too... how do you know what it is? Match off of source IP? I can get crafty and distribute my content through a CDN -- do you block the CDN? Do you require them to register each application with you?

(2) What would prevent a provider from coming up with a way to bypass their own filters in a way that follows the "letter of the law" but not the intent? If a "hostile" application was circumventing things by tunneling or hiding their traffic the "quality team" would catch them and block it. If a friendly application did the same the "quality team" can just claim "they don't have the ability or measures in place to detect application B".

It sounds good in theory but in practice any ability to classify traffic will create a non-agnostic system once the business people spending the capital call their legal teams for advise.

Rather than legislate the current providers into a revenue box you compete with them. Collectively form your own cable company in a high-revenue market, and force the cable companies to innovate to protect their margins. As a collective you have the votes to compete in the political arena.

Forming "collectives" providing desired services for a large group is the origin of the farmer's collectives that ran grain silos at collectively acceptable prices. The same needs created the "populist" movements of Teddy Roosevelt and the Grange (http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h854.html).

Farmers started as fiercely independent freeholders who were being charged usurious transport fees in the late 19th Century. They eventually took collective action against the railroad barons (http://mshistory.k12.ms.us/articles/163/farmers-the-populist...).

The similarities with highly individualistic entprepreneurs is striking. The modern railroad barons are the accesss providers. The farms are web sites in server "farms" throughout the world and the content must be delivered to the (mostly) urban centers world wide.

The troubles between farmers and railroads is recurring in Asia now (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870338900457530...).

The problem of course is regulatory capture (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Regulatory_ca...). The answer to this is, I noted above, "populist" movements are popular and can drive policy by petitioning the government. Should that not work then voting to change the government has worked in the past.

tl;dr - as was done in the 19th centry, form collectives to get product from the "farms" to the consumer.