good FUD-dispersing coverage of the Comcast/Netflix deal...

[Rob Seastrom]

Alex Fraser <beatnic at comcast.net> writes:

> I don't want to give up net neutrality for a discounted cable bill. 

This is not a net neutrality issue; it is an issue of providers (in
this case most egregiously Cogent) overcommitting their bandwidth and
allowing a customer to congest their ports to another provider.  I can
assure you that other non-Netflix traffic passing over those
interconnections was adversely affected just as badly as the Netflix
traffic.

Net neutrality is about preferential handling of packets, not about
upgrade schedules.

[snip]

> Things have happened so fast that the normal slow
> development of social institutions to deal with the new technology (its place
> in society) haven't had time to form

On this we agree...

> and since that very technology is the way
> most people interact the people who control that technology can prevent the
> social organizations from forming at all or at the minimum controlling the
> outcome.

One sure way to put the brakes on the innovation and evolution is to
get the regulators involved.  No thanks.

> The technology is important obviously and the engineers who make it
> work are doing great, but unfortunately it will be lawyers who figure out the
> social issues. We must argue over who pays the lawyers!

Who do you suggest would be the best people to pay the lawyers?
Surely not the taxpayers...  taxpayer-funded lawyers had provisionally
given Lightsquared the green light and were going to make it permanent
until everyone with a technical clue started screaming in unison.

-r