This is a technical problem. It’s very unlikely anyone is intentionally causing it.

ISPs do what they do for a specific reason. Port 25 is blocked to stop spammers. Are you a spammer? Is RFC 821 some sort of iron-clad contract? Is it life or death? Do you want the Federal Government to send enforcement personnel to Cox to make them open up port 25 so you can run a mail server (for whatever reason)? Why do you think force is necessary or warranted here?

I don’t work for an ISP. But I don’t like to see innocent people pushed around. And I don’t like organized hate campaigns. And that’s what this complaining about Cable providers is.

Just saying “it’s not a free market” is not a license to do an unlimited amount of meddling, forcing, coercing, or whatever else is on your personal wish list. Something that’s not perfectly free should be left as free as possible.

Regulation will make things worse. Regulations will pile up and stop the roll out of new services. Taxes will be added to Internet service to pay for the government costs of regulation. Etc. Etc.

Please just leave it alone for 5 or 10 more years and then competitive pressures will regulate ISP behavior.

Interesting post. Here is a link to an interesting story where AT&T filed a letter with the FCC saying that Google Voice calling system violates the commission’s network neutrality principles – http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/att-says-google-voice-violates-net-neutrality-principles/

In fact he’s awfully ge neral about it, as I said in the piece. He wants the FCC to be the Internet traffic cop, which naturally leads to the exact opposite of what he claims he wants, a free and open Internet.

Stop projecting and start reading what he’s saying. It’s ludicrous to take an Obama nominee at face value. Has anyone ever even run a background check on this guy?

Please understand that I do not support government intervention in the free market. I think our differences lie in that you seem to believe that the land line telecom and cable industries are free markets. I propose that they are not and have never been. I further propose that the internet itself is highly regulated.

The entire development of wire based communications has always depended upon the good graces of the government in order to create the rights of way for the lines. This is also true for electrical and sewer utilities. Almost no one in this country has a choice of who provides the last mile of service for any utility. Yes, during the telecom “deregulation” we gained the privilege of deciding between a short list of highly regulated resellers to bill us for using the incumbent carrier’s right of way to deliver dial tone and data services. However, this entire business model was built upon the basic flaws of a highly regulated utility monopoly. I am fortunate that I have a cable monopoly and a phone monopoly to choose between, many people I know have only one choice.

The internet itself is highly regulated as well. The basic protocols that drive the user’s internet experience are developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force, a branch of the IEEE in the form of RFCs (Requests for Comment). Furthermore, routing and addressing are strictly managed by groups such as ICANN and ARIN. This is necessary in order to create a global network that is actually able to function. The internet is not, nor has it ever been the “wild west”.

A basic example of conflict that exists within these models is Cox Communication’s cable modem service. They intentionally block TCP port 25. This violates IETF RFC 821, the simple mail transfer protocol. One could argue that RFC 821 allows submission under TCP port 587, but I would follow the traditional interpretation that blocking TCP 25 breaks protocol. Cox does not care that they are breaking the basic rules of the road for the internet. Nor do they care if customers complain about this. I know these to be facts from personal experience.

It follows that if the government is going to enforce a non-free market monopoly which leaves some customers with no choice but to use Cox’s service, then the customer should be able to appeal to the government to force it’s agent to provide services within the accepted standards.

I do agree with another commenter that wireless services change this picture. The government’s spectrum allocation scheme does seem to allow for robust competition. However, we are years away from that being a viable broadband alternative in many areas.

Bottom line, telecoms and cable are licensees of a government monopoly. They are regulated. It is appropriate to ensure that that regulation is working in the interest of the customers that have had this monopoly forced on them. They are not and have never been free market agents.

Regards,
James

P.S. I am just curious, do you work for an ISP?

I certainly agree that government intrusion into the micromanagement of networks and network structures is well beyond the spirit of Net Neutrality. But I would totally support FCC intervention on an ISPs attempts to limits or throttle bandwidth based on use of that bandwidth purchased.

I simply believe that ISPs that provide media content have a vested interested in the diminshment of what the internet can, and indeed, should do. I also contend that they have a distinct advantage of subsidized infrastructure and exclusive contracting that gives them the means to act on their interests to the exclusion of serving the market demand.

In the end, I cannot agree that this foreshadows a socialization of the internet… nor internet access. If it against principles of Free Market Absolutism? Yep. But thought I believe in Free Market solutions to most needs… in this case I’m deferring to the potential technology.

Anyway, sorry if my disagreement has a disrespectful tone. I enjoy your posts.

I was disagreeing by challenging that poster(justfortoday ) to prove his accusationby showing any evidence of mainstream conservatives doing that(disrespecting a democrats child who kept an out of wedlock child).

Moreover, that seems pretty clear to me that the reply to’s are incorrectly linked. I replied to justfortoday , yet it is showing under a different poster. I would expect that the moderates was similarly mislinked, because it doesn’t make sense if it is a response to me.

As I recall, Redstate has some database issues around that time.

Neil correctly identified the real problem early in his post:

…(usually government franchise-backed) ISP firms could not abuse their monopoly or oligopoly power

The only edit I would make to his statement would be to remove the parentheses and delete the word ‘usually.’ Which means the actual solution to the problem is for the Federal government to use its enumerated power to regulate interstate trade to negate the ability of states to establish local monopolies. Once that is done, the rest of the problems will disappear over time. And I expect it would be a fairly short timeline.

Literally. Government is why we don’t have more competition in these markets, but the Democrats are so ignorant, so ideological, and so radical that they just don’t care.

It’s about the dialectic, it’s not about helping people.

You’re doing a mediocre job arguing for the thing I agreed with. You’re not every trying to argue for the ‘transparency’ stuff that Genachowski is trying to sneak in through the back door.

When I moved here a few years ago, broadband was not available. Then Comcast offered Cable Internet, then Qwest offered DSL, now Qwest offers fibre optic service. There are rumors of FIOS coming. Wireless offerings are starting to get competitive but aren’t quite there yet. This is good, steady progress. It’s supposed to work this way.

The Federal Government should start messing with the situation now? To solve a non-existent (but theoretically possible) problem? Or because you envy Japan’s Internet capability (but don’t understand how our lower population density increases the wiring cost to providers)?