Samsung's warning: Our Smart TVs record your living room chatter - CNET

[Rob Seastrom]

Richard O'Neill <richardoneill at earthlink.net> writes:

> On 2/12/2015 12:37 PM, Rob Seastrom wrote:
>> the statement from the FCC does not
>> address any actual problems nor does it represent a particular bit of
>> progress.
>
>  So, if that is the situation do you advocate voting against the FCC
> proposal - or does the outcome really matter? If the outcome doesn't
> matter then why is so much money being spent on advocating for and
> against? It seems to me someone's Ox must be getting gored.

Good question.  The biggest defect in the Title II classification is
that it's pretty much a case study in "someting must be done / this is
something / thus we will do this".  For people who are in favor of
bigger government with no particular regard to the outcome, this is
certainly an exciting turn of events - it seems like it might be the
first step for even more regulation.

I've softened my libertarian stance as I've gotten older, and in the
abstract I don't particularly have a problem with my Internet bill
going up by a non-trivial amount if the (tax, REA/USF-style) money is
earmarked for improvement of access to underserved communities.

The devil is in the details.  I predict boondoggles and half-assed
technology deployments.  BPL was gonna save us all, remember?  I'm
sure the legislature will figure out a way to raid that trust fund the
same way they have with the highway and social security funds.

I can tell you though that increased government involvement will make
your bill go up.  Compliance documentation isn't free, tax burdens
come directly from you the consumer.  Maybe it won't be that bad
compared to how much the cable tv bill gets jacked up by the content
rights holders (which annoys me to no end - it's not as if there is
much quality content out there to begin with).

But you just know that when the cable bill goes up the proletariat is
going to blame their broadband provider, not the government.  That
alone is enough for the broadband providers to expend serious effort
in opposing it.

I could go on and on about errors on the side of the cable industry
(starting out with conflating "always on" and "unlimited at fixed
price", an error that was made 15+ years ago).  There's huge pushback
from vocal and high-profile high-users whenever metered bandwidth or
bandwidth caps get bandied about...  of course they're the ones that
stand to lose while the public at large stands to gain from a fair
apportionment of the costs based on utilization.

>  Are those who are opposed wanting the Government to keep their paws
> off the net so business can operate more efficiently and with less
> regulatory interference? In general I'm against increasingly
> incompetent Government meddling in our daily lives. Talk about
> unintended consequences, far too often Government wet dreams morph
> into nightmares for the rest if us.

If I had the slightest faith that the government regulation would be
better than "somewhat less than half a clue" as I said some messages
back in this thread...

If the Commission didn't have a surfeit of lawyers and a dearth of
engineers...

If there was some kind of responsiveness from the regulators when
things were shown to be wildly out of sync with reality rather than
having to shoehorn a justification for a work-around into "reasonable
technical management"...

Then I might not have nearly the problem with increased regulation that I do.

Federal regulatory suffocation sure isn't going to drive innovation
and competition.

If this sounds like a pretty weak "vote against this", it's probably
because of cynicism and fatigue.  I do not support Title II.

-r