History Lesson

December 2nd, 2009, by The Angry Drunk

Brilliant arti­cle from Matthew Lasar at Ars Technica exam­in­ing the issues sur­round­ing gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion of the Internet though the lens of the issues sur­round­ing the tele­graph sys­tem. I think that, all too often, the tech pun­di­toc­racy tends to ignore the thou­sands of years of human his­tory that pro­ceeded the last decade.

5 comments - (Comments closed)
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  • http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

    the last decade? Shit, they can’t remem­ber last TUESDAY

  • http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

    the last decade? Shit, they can’t remem­ber last TUESDAY

  • http://www.theangrydrunk.com The Angry Drunk

    Oh, I know. Most techd­weebs have the atten­tion span of an ADD rid­dled mayfly.

  • http://chuck.goolsbee.org chuck gools­bee

    What the gov­ern­ment should reg­u­late is the play­ing field, akin to a ref­eree in a sport­ing match, as that will ensure fair play and even com­pe­ti­tion. The referee’s job (I know because I spent over 15 years offi­ci­at­ing Ice Hockey, in three dif­fer­ent coun­tries) is to make sure the rules are being fol­lowed and play­ers are not caus­ing injury to each other.

    Unfortunately in busi­ness or gov­ern­ment there is rarely an innate sense of fair play, espe­cially given that gov­ern­ments are lim­ited to region­ally spe­cific places, and busi­ness is trans­acted through­out known civ­i­liza­tion… the Internet being a prime exam­ple of a bor­der­less mar­ket­place. Further, gov­ern­ments are often just as cor­rupt, if not more than the busi­nesses they reg­u­late, as they are often owned, affil­i­ated, etc with busi­ness or other spe­cial inter­ests. The result, as described in the linked story, is that who­ever owns the abil­ity to reg­u­late (be it cash, com­merce, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, or elec­tions) will wield that power to favor the gov­ern­ment or busi­ness they favor. When it comes to gov­ern­ment power, I always coun­sel peo­ple to be very care­ful of grant­ing it, as it will be used, even­tu­ally by the party you oppose, and per­haps against you.

  • http://www.theangrydrunk.com The Angry Drunk

    I pretty much agree, which is why I think that Net Neutrality prop­erly done is some­thing that the U.S. gov­ern­ment should enforce (to the extent that they can, regional reg­u­la­tion vs. global inter­net etc.). Unfortunately, I’ve also seen some wildly retarded ideas bandied about under the flag of “Network Neutrality,” like the douchenoz­zle we exco­ri­ated on Angry Mac Bastards who wants to con­flate Net Neutrality with the fuck­ing iPhone App Store.