Re: Internet Pioneers Speak Out on Net Neutrality

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Erik Cecil <erik.cecil () gmail com>
Date: October 17, 2009 9:55:56 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net, Brett Glass <brett () lariat org>, dsearls <dsearls () cyber law harvard edu 
>, Bob Frankston <Bob19-0501 () bobf frankston com>
Cc: ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: Re: [IP] Re: Internet Pioneers Speak Out on Net Neutrality

While we may reach this point for different reasons, I agree with  
Brett.  Overall regulation has been horrible for Internet Pioneers for  
two basic reasons: (a) regulation is more political than it is legal;  
(b) what law we have today is incapable of addressing the  
transformative economics resulting from disruptive technologies like  
fiber optic and IP transmission.  Time and again, technology is shoe- 
horned into deployment, operational, and cost patterns defined by  
incumbents.

As applied Net Neutrality pretends to address harms it admits are  
directly the result of duopoly, if not monopoly conditions in access  
markets, by creating "common carriage-like" rights from the statutory  
cloth of a 40-year old exception to common carriage regulation.  As a  
result of the FCC's attempts to solve all sorts of political, market,  
and technological problems associated with the evolution, growth and  
now pervasiveness of the Internet, they are on nearly every legal side  
of the question of how IP should or should not be regulated.

And while, at a policy level, attempting to re-create some of the  
rights lost when the FCC abandoned Computer I, II, and III, is  
laudable, there are such strong monopoly conditions at the loop /  
access level that resumption of those rights will have very little  
pragmatic effect. It is not unimaginable that whatever comes of their  
laudable attempts to resolve difficult issues in a still fragile  
economy will not survive appeal.

There are ways the FCC could approach this, securing legal rights on  
solid statutory footing, simplifying a dizzying array of legal  
interpretations and counter-interpretations that today hobble any  
competitive entrant, including Brett's WISP, and provide meaningful  
protections to individual innovators, who, daily continue to make the  
Internet a frontier for innovation and, therefore, are  also Internet  
Pioneers. Perhaps Net Neutrality will resolve some of these difficult  
issues, but, because I've ridden shotgun along with waves and waves of  
Internet Pioneers large, medium and small, and because I've been  
involved in a skirmish or two along the way winning some but mostly  
watching the ranks of Internet Pioneers dwindle, like Brett, I am  
skeptical of meaningful change without fundamental reform.

Still standing up for Internet Pioneers,

Erik J. Cecil, Esq.

On Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 3:59 AM, David Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:


Begin forwarded message:

From: Brett Glass <brett () lariat net>
Date: October 17, 2009 12:22:32 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net, "ip" <ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: Re: [IP] Internet Pioneers Speak Out on Net Neutrality

...and I strongly disagree. Regulation would be damaging and stifle  
innovation.

--Brett Glass, "Internet Pioneer" (The world's first WISP)




-------------------------------------------
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com





-------------------------------------------
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com