> Favouring downloads over uploads for technical reasons - that is not really within the scope of network neutrality.
Why not? It blatantly discriminates against uploading services to the direct cash benefit of downloading services.
And that is the heart of the argument against network "neutrality": discrimination laws are always and everywhere a full-employment act for lawyers and bureaucrats. And AT&T will buy those lawyers and bureaucrats and use them to shut down competition.
> The market can't sort it out, because there are high barriers to entry, it is a finite market, and so the market is not infinitely efficient (and in some areas approaches a monopoly), and in practice there is little room for consumer choice influencing Internet markets except with regards to price, advertising, and to some extent reliability.
What market? The Internet industry is still in the wildcat stage, with most of the physical plant becoming obsolete and being discarded on a ~15 year schedule. They are trying to rigidly control a market that we all hope will be burned to the ground in ten years because the technology just isn't good enough.
> The reality is that 'freedom of contract' is not fair when there is a huge difference in bargaining power, the markets can't sort it out for the reasons discussed above, and government intervention is appropriate.
Indeed, which is why the government needs to keep competitive markets open and let them sort out the winners and losers. At this point, nobody knows what services are useful or valuable, so mandating some sort of ideological bandwidth management is pointless.
For example, Amazon might start renting space for a mini hard drive cluster in the telco neighborhood boxes, so that we get TV on demand from speedy local data farms. As surely as the sun rises in the east, Akamai would promptly get a restraining order preventing such a barbaric infringement of network "neutrality".
Why not? It blatantly discriminates against uploading services to the direct cash benefit of downloading services.
And that is the heart of the argument against network "neutrality": discrimination laws are always and everywhere a full-employment act for lawyers and bureaucrats. And AT&T will buy those lawyers and bureaucrats and use them to shut down competition.
> The market can't sort it out, because there are high barriers to entry, it is a finite market, and so the market is not infinitely efficient (and in some areas approaches a monopoly), and in practice there is little room for consumer choice influencing Internet markets except with regards to price, advertising, and to some extent reliability.
What market? The Internet industry is still in the wildcat stage, with most of the physical plant becoming obsolete and being discarded on a ~15 year schedule. They are trying to rigidly control a market that we all hope will be burned to the ground in ten years because the technology just isn't good enough.
> The reality is that 'freedom of contract' is not fair when there is a huge difference in bargaining power, the markets can't sort it out for the reasons discussed above, and government intervention is appropriate.
Indeed, which is why the government needs to keep competitive markets open and let them sort out the winners and losers. At this point, nobody knows what services are useful or valuable, so mandating some sort of ideological bandwidth management is pointless.
For example, Amazon might start renting space for a mini hard drive cluster in the telco neighborhood boxes, so that we get TV on demand from speedy local data farms. As surely as the sun rises in the east, Akamai would promptly get a restraining order preventing such a barbaric infringement of network "neutrality".