The Father of Net Neutrality Is Running for Office | Hacker News Reader

The Father of Net Neutrality Is Running for Office

wired.com

103 pointscyphersanctus6 comments

I didn't realize Tim Wu had gotten into politics. This makes me very happy.

Tim Wu wrote the The Master Switch [1], which explains how US media/telecom wound up the way it is today -- how the dominant players came about in various industries (radio, broadcast and cable TV, movies, telephones), and the events that led to the legislative/regulatory environment we have today. The book also explains how IP laws (patents, copyright, etc) have shaped history.

The Master Switch should be required reading before discussing such topics on Hacker News.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Master-Switch-Information-Empires/...

Master Switch is an approachable book and offers some interesting historical accounts. But it's definitely a book intended for a mass audience that embodies Wu's particular take on the whole industry. The major weakness of the book is that, as a sacrifice to the narrative format, it gives insufficient weight to a major aspect of the whole story: how telecom regulation is shaped by contemporary trends in economics and the economics of regulation.

I'd recommend your second read after Master Switch to be a proper textbook in telecom regulation, for a more detached take. My (quite biased--I know one of the authors) recommendation: http://www.cap-press.com/pdf/2322.pdf.

Your third read should be Khan's "The Economics of Regulation" http://www.amazon.com/The-Economics-Regulation-Principles-In..., which puts the whole field into the larger context of the economic theories in play and how those theories have been applied to various regulatory and deregulatory efforts.

The democratic machinery in New York is pretty frantic with their GOTV efforts, as this is a realy lame election cycle with hardly anything up for contest in a meaningful way. In my area the "hot" race is over the judges who oversee wills, adoption and probate.

The polling for likely voters must look better for Wu, as I've gotten literally dozens of telephone calls and mailers. If Wu doesn't lose big, it's pretty humiliating for the governor, who has to date managed to rule with a fairly iron fist.

Unfortunately, when he's had anything to say recently, it has fed my concerns about uninformed net neutrality legislation, namely that he doesn't seem to understand the difference between prioritization within the network and peering.

This legislation has to be designed by people who know what the wiring and working network configurations of the internet look like, which is a problem because people see that as the industry self-regulating.

It's really tragic, as a politically interested Columbia student I hadn't realized who he was, or that he was running, until this afternoon. :(

If you are in NYC go vote in the democratic primrary before the polls close at 9pm

Reply on news.ycombinator.com