I suspect, although I could be wrong, that Alexander’s comment about Asian girls relates solely and specifically to a disagreement between him and the friend to whom he alluded.

Keith Töpfer

You are correct for most, but not all, urbanized areas. We live in a near suburb of Seattle, but our condo complex is in a relatively shallow ravine along a major North-South arterial, with a taller apartment complex at the lower end of our property. Result, we live in a cellular “dead zone.” We also have only Comcast (high-speed fiber-optic cable) or Verizon (land-line DSL—much lower BW) as an available provider. If we did not have one of those two choices we would have to have a land-line telephone to make/receive calls from home (whether via Comcast or Verizon). There are other parts of the suburb in which we live which suffer from similar limitations on just how free a market is available to serve them, again owing to terrain. And this is in a major metropolitan area of the U.S. So, I think your analysis of the choices that are “commonly available” to consumers is at least a little bit overoptimistic.

Pax et bonum,
Keith Töpfer

(we agreed to disagree on the topic of weather or not it is acceptable to employ only attractive Asian girls).

As a free market capitalist – I believe the gov’t has no right to dictate to ISP’s what they can/can’t do.

The problem is that in Etowah County, AL – there aren’t a whole lot of comparable choices for internet service. You have Comcast, AT&T DSL (which is ATROCIOUSLY slow in comparison), and depending on your area – Charter (again – nothing but crap) and OpenRange 4G wireless (very promising, but not available everywhere and still slow – in comparison).

So if Comcast starts segmenting off Netflix or Hulu for an extra fee – I don’t really have a very good comparable option because of anti-competitive actions by local, state, and federal gov’t regulations in favor of the larger companies.

Imagine a law (or a declaration by a judge) forcing all ISPs to block access to any site accused of copyright violations… China’s internet controls would pale in comparison. In my mind net neutrality laws will primarily act to prevent governments from destroying the internet in the name of IP… it may well be the lesser of two evils.

There need not be legislation on this issue. The market would solve them problem on its own (and may even give the consumers more choices and lower prices!).

i keep hearing people say they are afraid of being charged subscriptions to their favorite websites like they pay for cable channel packages. really!? i mean, really? does anyone honestly believe that this is the direction we will move in. if at&t (my dsl provider) makes me pay for google then i’ll either find an alternative isp or i’ll use an alternative search engine. if rupert murdoch wants to block his content from google, it won’t even be missed. there are hundreds of equal or better content sources out there that will not charge and will not care how far their content is syndicated. in this digital age, there are always going to be less expensive, and often free, alternatives whenever someone wants to try and make us pay.

Comcast and other providers have expressed the desire to block certain websites, make access to certain websites premium, and slow down others.

Now, if every market had 3 or 4 options available I suppose the competition would tend to “force” the competitors to offer as much as they could to please the demands of the customers.

But many millions of folk in the US only have one option, as do I. I have Comcast and no other options. I have no landline hookup to my house for a DSL option.

Another sticky kink in the system is that the US govt funded and continues to fund large portions of the internet backbone and fiber-optic cabling and tie-ins all over the countries in cities and towns all across the country. Also, there is no single “owner” of the backbone.. it is an incredibly spaghetti-like mishmash of segments that all use each other lines and trunks at any given time. It is definitely a cooperative and sharing arraignment.

Not having net neutrality in place is exactly the same as say Verizon blocking calls to Cingular phones or intentionally making calls to Cingular phones sound crappy.

Is this a good idea?

That said, it seems that in the US there is not that much competition between internet providers. Is that natural (expensive or risky infrastructure investment) or the effect of some earlier intervention?

Two recent threads related to this question:
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?topic=11515&post=79852&uid=36496893934 (Mises Institute forums)
http://jonoscript.wordpress.com/2009/10/28/why-everyone-should-care-about-net-neutrality/

Note, they seem to want to be “open-minded” and evaluate any possible net neutrality rules on their merits: “… we look forward to evaluating Chairman Genachowski’s proposed net neutrality regulations.” A principled libertarian does not need to wait to evaluate them: any net neutrality regulations by the state are obviously illegitimate for a number of reasons, regardless of their substantive content.