Rand and Ron Paul denounce net neutrality and the public domain
boingboing.net
boingboing.net
From what I can tell, the main point of this manifesto is that governments are trying to establish control over privately-owned Internet resources, that the language they use is intentionally deceptive, and that governments enjoy a double standard whereby data collection is prohibited for private endeavors but allowed and even encouraged by governments [3].
Perhaps the boingboing author would also consider my views about the Internet and legislation radical and "pretty terrible," but while I consider this manifesto confusing and poorly written, I'm not seeing any evidence of many of his points, and I can't help but agree with many of the manifesto's points. One particular line from this article says "They also ... argue that government monopolies over knowledge should be extended, and that tax-dollars should be used to enforce them." Where is that in the manifesto? Is the author missing something, or am I missing something?
[0] http://www.campaignforliberty.org/profile/14524/blog/2012/07...
[1] "Among the most insidious are government attempts to control and regulate competition, infrastructure, privacy, and intellectual property."
[2] "According to them [the Internet collectivists]: ... Private property rights on the Internet should exist in limited fashion or not at all, and what is considered to be in the public domain should be greatly expanded."
[3] "Internet collectivists are clever. They are masters at hijacking the language of freedom and liberty to disingenuously push for more centralized control. 'Openness' means government control of privately owned infrastructure. 'Net neutrality' means government acting as arbiter and enforcer of what it deems to be 'neutral.' 'Internet freedom' means the destruction of property rights. 'Competition' means managed competition, with the government acting as judge and jury on what constitutes competition and what does not. Our 'right to privacy' only applies to the data collection activities of the private sector, rarely to government.
Out of curiosity, what do you imagine is non-government-enforced IP law?
Not many people seem to understand their libertarian views on things. Their philosophy is neither for free Internet or against free Internet. Their philosophy is about less government intervention. SOPA and PIPA are both bills that impose new government control over certain things (controlling/limiting the rights and freedoms of individuals and ISPs). Net neutrality is also an idea that imposes new government control over certain things (controlling the rights of ISPs). To libertarians, almost all government control is considered bad, be it control over corporations or control over individuals. Thus they are against all of these things simultaneously.
I'm not saying I agree with their exact philosophy. But it's simple, very consistent, and they never seem to stray far from it.
1. Is this a core function of the federal government?
2. Does it execute Constitutionally defined duties?
3. Does it protect Constitutionally defined rights?
4. Does it protect property rights?
5. Does it protect individual rights?
6. If the federal government does not do this, will others?
7. Will this policy or regulation allow the market to decide outcomes or will it distort themarket for political ends?
8. Is this policy or regulation clear and specific, with defined metrics and limitations?
Yet the Pauls seem all too eager to push federal limits on abortion and marriage equality.
I personally don't agree with all aspects of their philosophy, but it's still consistent.
You're confusing a states' rights fetish for libertarianism. Libertarians are generally alarmed by forcing things to be illegal, not making them legal.
I have never heard them suggesting Abortion or Gay Marriage be illegal at the federal level.
Then you haven't been paying close enough attention.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/26/rand-paul-fetal-per...
http://theiowarepublican.com/2011/ron-paul-condemns-obama%E2...
I resolved to never read it again about a year ago, and I've been happier since then.
Even so, I think the libertarians are coming to the consensus that IP are something to be opposed. Ron Paul is just a little bit behind on the time.
Expansion of the public domain is the kind of things that any anti-IP libertarians will applause.
Why?
An argument can be made that government funding of teclos should come with certain restrictions - those restrictions must be present when the money is doled out. Government creating problems in order to solve them, is an easy way to further their involvement. Additionally, I believe the Pauls would be against the funding.
I don't want to be paying extra to access certain popular services, or to be rate-limited while accessing a service that my own ISP owns an alternative to. And that's only the tip of the iceberg.
That said, I can benefit in some areas that would no longer exist with government-enforced net neutrality. For example, here in the UK BT offers an unlimited broadband deal with 'exclusions' -- without them I suspect there would have to be bandwidth caps:
"We want to give everyone the best possible speeds at all times, so we only manage speeds on P2P (peer-to-peer) file sharing networks at peak times. All other broadband use isn't affected – and there's no limit to how much you can download." -- from the products and services page on BT.com.
Given congress's track record, I think there are plenty of rational reasons to be wary of asking them to start telling ISPs how to run their networks. Why should we think such regulations wouldn't simply favor incumbents who are big enough to play the political game, like most of what congress passes?
If the problem with the telcos is that they're wielding publicly-granted monopoly powers, then let's address that directly. For an example alternative, I like the model where neighborhoods or municipalities own their own last mile infrastructure, giving them plenty of leverage to buy transit at competitive prices. This solution is practically illegal thanks to the legal barriers supporting the existing monopolies. Streamline the process for startups to get approval to compete and I don't doubt we'd see many innovative new models.
Read it yourself here.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/99193487/The-Technology-Revolution...
I happen to disagree, because internet operators tend to operate in a quasi-monopoly state in the US, but the simple freedom/libertarian angle here is against net neutrality.
If Google changes your ranking, you lose traffic and visitors just as surely as if Comcast throttles your bandwidth and people bail on your site for slowness. But no one is talking about "search neutrality" and regulating Google's rankings. And Google owns its own dedicated fiber connections, which obviously prioritize its own traffic.
Freeing up the telecommunications market is the solution here. With new protocols and new carriers, you could implement things like SPDY in hardware if carriers were free to discriminate between packet A and packet B.
Remember, there's no such thing as a natural monopoly in Paul's world, individuals are on equal footing in bargaining power against giant companies, there is no information asymmetry, any harm can be set right by a monetary settlement, and Nash equilibria always give the best outcome for all parties, and so free markets alway are best and don't need any regulation to make them actually work.
It is hard to identify significant influences on the Internet by entrepreneurs or private firms (excepting work done on government contracts) before 1992. The most influential one I can think of is the decision by Sun Microsystems in the mid-1980s to include a TCP/IP stack and basic internet client software with every workstation at no extra charge -- which was probably responsible for the biggest increase in the number of people with access to email in the 1980s -- but even there, doing so would not have occurred to Sun if the US government had not contracted with UC Berkeley to add those things to BSD.
Summary: although entrepreneurs and the market had dramatic effects on the internet after 1992, the internet of 1992 was the result mainly of substantial spending by the US government every year for thirty years leading up to 1992.
And the internet of 1992 was already very compelling and useful to those willing to master the "text-mode" (no graphical UIs) software used to access it.
The FCC manages licenses for the exercise of free speech over broadcast media. It fines disapproved speech. It dictates that telecom equipment be wiretap-friendly. It's a board of 5 political appointees not apportioned by vote or region, but split between the two national political parties. The FCC could never be a friend of true 'neutrality', but rather what the national political establishment finds helpful.
Even if initially adopted in the spirit of the 'nondiscriminatory transit' principle, after a few years you should expect 'network neutrality' to mean 'safe for children', 'copyright-protecting', 'wiretap-friendly', 'with set-asides for underrepresented viewpoints', and 'in compliance with campaign finance laws'. After all, it's not a 'neutral' net if it's filled with piracy, pornography, untappable criminal chat, ethnic/gender-insensitivity, and unregistered political activity. That's downright hostile to law-abiding Americans and their bipartisan protectors at the FCC!
There's one small, vague and convoluted mention in the Paul statement about the 'public domain'. It reads roughly:
According to them [government attempts to control and regulate competition, infrastructure, privacy and intellectual property]... Private property rights on the Internet should exist in limited fashion or not at all, and what is considered to be in the public domain should be greatly expanded.
That mention isn't even necessarily referring to the rigorous intellectual property notion of 'public domain' (meaning non-copyrighted). It seems more the colloquial notion of 'public domain' as 'that which the government manages, like parks and roads and government buildings'. In order to ridicule this, Doctorow has to spin Masnick, who is himself heavily spinning the Pauls. So that one vague mention becomes instead...
• for Masnick, "The Public Domain [is really an] Evil Collectivist Plot"
• for Doctorow, "Rand and Ron Paul denounce... the public domain"
This is a signature move of politics and click-grabbing headline-escalation. Create the an unfair, unfavorable, heavily-spun summarization of someone's views. Credit that summarization to the original source as if they'd said exactly that. Publicize to get a reaction. Collect the traffic-boosting glory!
As to whether DARPA's history suggests that any 'net neutrality' regulations would be applied in an 'enlightened' manner, I find that idea laughable. The FCC is not run by by research scientists who value the end-to-end principle and resistance to damage/censorship above all else. The Congresspeople who'd be passing the enabling legislation are those who keep passing 'Decency Acts' (no matter how many times the Supreme Court strikes them down), enabling new wiretapping powers, and trying to sneak favors to big donor industries into legislation.
The internet is no longer a research project or prototype. Its equipment, infrastructure, and services are now overwhelmingly privately provided. We should look at attempts to federally impose "network" neutrality with as much skepticism as if they were trying to impose "printing press" neutrality or "nonfiction book neutrality" or "newsprint neutrality". Those ideas would rightly be heckled, were they proposed, because our society understands at a deep level that the printed/written word should be a government hands-off zone, from author through editor-publisher-distributor. The same should apply to the internet.
It is "collectivist" to release software (etc.) in public domain???
Something done only by collectivists? So that if I contribute to FOSS I must be labeled a collectivist?
Maybe the Paul's better offer further explanations.
[edited for clarity]
The boingboing author seems to be interpreting the manifesto incorrectly, because the manifesto is not using the term "public domain" to mean what we all use it to mean.
Read that quote again.
They are decrying the expansion of the public domain onto private property. Like when you start telling somebody how to use their stuff? I'm sure you know what I mean.
They have zero problems with people voluntarily contributing to the public domain. It's when that contribution isn't voluntary ...