In South Africa we've got a completely free, community driven and supported Wireless User Group comprising of ~2000 nodes.
Whilst it's certainly not the Internet I've seen a marked improvement and understanding in creating large, relatively free networks. (You still have to buy your own equipment.)
One can only hope that by 2025 the technology will have increased to such a point that it'll be powerful (no line of site required), cheap and abundant. (And in effect, uncontrollable by a single entity, corporation or organization.)
If a society has regressed as much as the one depicted in the article, it's not inconceivable that the necessary equipment would be made illegal (or at least require a license).
This is utterly fascinating to me. What kind of protocols does it use? What kind of use cases have sprung up around it and what roles is it playing in peoples' lives? Is it more of a ham radio kind of enthusiast thing or is it working its way into the general community?
It may not be exactly what you're interested in, but they have set up a large amount of equipment and may have information that would be useful to you.
"Why exactly is it bad for people to badmouth their governments or big companies online?"
Funny enough, there's a discussion in our local press these days about the "Press" considered to be a vector of insecurity to government/local agencies (e.g. they badmouth justice for being a mock-up).
I was under the impression that there was debate because people in general don't trust either big business or the government to police things properly.
That's basically it. It's just that the dittoheads think net neutrality = government policing when it's not. The telecoms have done a bangup job of misinforming the free market dogmatists on that matter.
Government mandated net neutrality is basically what most of the debate is about. I don't see much of the net neutrality debate framed outside of whether or not the government should enact regulation.
I'd like to clarify because my comment is ambiguous. It's scary either way. Either we end up with a fragmented internet like the article suggests, or end up with a heavily regulated internet like the article suggests. Both are scary outcomes.
and someone playing the false dichotomy card in 3...2...
The fact that it has generated debate suggests that any attempt at Internet access control will be micro-examined end to end. Even if rationality and human decency fail to prevail, I trust that bureaucracy will slow things down well enough.
Net Neutrality (forcing telecom companies to relinquish control over their property), is only potentially a valid idea because they hold a government-assisted monopoly. They receive government subsidies and have specific permission to lay down fiber-optic cable.
If these were totally independent companies that existed and thrived without the aid of government, appropriating their property for the public would be illegal and immoral.
I believe it is legal in many or most countries. In the USA the power of the state to expropriate property for the public good is called eminent domain, and it is affirmed by the US constitution.
You're not allowed to collude or leverage dominance in one market (infrastructure) into an unfair advantage in another market (content).
Citation needed.
Apple dominates the college student/professional artist demographic. They sell hardware coupled software - it is illegal to run their software on any non-Apple hardware.
This is why free markets work -- if we refused to regulate anything, ever, it'd be oligarchy, and there'd be precious little "free" about it.
That is absolutely wrong. By definition a free market has no regulation (besides prevention of fraud). In fact the only thing giving telecom companies a monopoly is the government.
EDIT: To the person who voted me down, would you mind explaining why? I'd be fascinated to know.
EDIT 2: From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_marketA free market is a market without economic intervention and regulation by government except to enforce ownership ("property rights") and contracts
During the Gilded Age, as the industrial revolution was happening, a small number of people controlled all of the money and infrastructure. Then, there were no laws against collusion or antitrust or any of that. If you owned the railroad line to Denver, you could insist that you'll only ship your brand of widget to Denver, and everyone loses except you. You win big.
So they routinely fucked everyone else over, and life is much better now that we don't have a few massive trusts dominating the whole economy.
It's interesting that you should bring up the railroad industry as an example of why anti-trust laws are necessary....
The railroad industry was extremely corrupt and was heavily subsidized by the government. They received special treatment and competition was forbidden.
Yeah, I'm noticing a trend - you don't even know basic history, but you think you know all the answers and they're so obvious that you can be smug and condescending about them.
Here's a hint: they aren't. Black and white proclamations about "government this" and "free market that" are used by 2 kinds of people : demagogues, and the useful idiots who follow them. Which are you?
but you think you know all the answers and they're so obvious that you can be smug and condescending about them.
With the exception of me stating my opinion that appropriating private property is immoral, I have simply been stating facts. In fact I can tell this discussion has degraded because you have resorted to ad hominem attacks.
Black and white proclamations about "government this" and "free market that" are used by 2 kinds of people : demagogues, and the useful idiots who follow them. Which are you?
Sometimes the extreme view is the correct one. Just because it is extreme does not make it inherently wrong. You are the one being dogmatic. And I'm not even saying that net neutrality is wrong. I very clearly stated that it should remain open for debate - it is not an cut and dry issue.
"Freedom and equality for all" - I take the extreme view on that. Does that make me wrong? If you view the free market as a moral issue then this comparison does not seem so far-fetched.
Yes, the attitude of "I don't have to know what I'm talking about in order to hold an extreme view and be 100% confident in it" is not only wrong, it underlies most of the avoidable catastrophes in human history.
IANAL but extending "eminent domain" to telecommunications infrastructure does not seem straightforward or cut and dry. Eminent domain typically refers to a physical property.
And eminent domain has been affirmed by subsequent supreme courts rulings - it is not explicitly defined in the constitution.
Nice (but quite scary) article. Reminds me a lot of the 'if the internet were like cable TV/mobile phone pricing' image I saw a while ago: http://imgur.com/5RrWm.png
1. Technically no, but it does occasionally happen in practice.
2. Yes, iAd will target ads to you based on your location. Go ahead and type in "pet groomers" to Google, and I'll bet that you'll see a local ad displayed to you. Google is using your location, and I believe it's even using past search habits to display more relevant results. This isn't Apple's doing, it's the norms of the market that they've just entered into.
3. What? Because you have to use open standards and codecs, the media will be wrapped in "insane amounts of red tape"? I haven't seen signs of that yet. My experience with HTML5 audio and video has been quite pleasant on Apple's devices. Furthermore, Apple no longer uses DRM for Music and if I had to guess they could be going that way for other forms of media in their store as well. But again, this generally isn't something that Apple is doing. It's the entertainment industries dictating terms by which Apple must sell the media.
Whilst it's certainly not the Internet I've seen a marked improvement and understanding in creating large, relatively free networks. (You still have to buy your own equipment.)
One can only hope that by 2025 the technology will have increased to such a point that it'll be powerful (no line of site required), cheap and abundant. (And in effect, uncontrollable by a single entity, corporation or organization.)
A bit more about the WUG: (http://ptawug.co.za)
They use standard 802.11g/n (5.8/2.4 GHz) Wi-Fi equipment. And mostly Mikrotik router hardware and software.
I'm just a user - So my information might be a bit wrong...