Principles for sound Internet policy: Internet for Everyone
The Internet For Everyone project is a set of motherhood-grade principles for Internet access in the US; they're collecting signatories to present to Congress:
Internet for Everyone (Thanks, David!)
Access: Every home, business and civic institution in America must have access to a high-speed, world-class communications infrastructure.Choice: Every consumer must enjoy real competition in lawful online content as well as among high-speed Internet providers to achieve lower prices and higher speeds.
Openness: Every Internet user should have the right to freedom of speech and commerce online in an open market without gatekeepers or discrimination.
Innovation : The Internet should continue to create good jobs, foster entrepreneurship, spread new ideas and serve as a leading engine of economic growth.
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That's a plan with widespread appeal*
*This will stop being funny when the image gets fixed.
Wow, I just gotta comment on the size of that banner... Amazing. Truly amazing.
ohhhhhh... Internet for Everyone! The huge picture really hammers home the point. Like, yeah! Internet for everyone!
;)
size does matter!
Plasmator, you are not only quicker, but funnier. Very nice.
Oh noes! Cory! You broke the BoingBoing
#6 You totally just stole my comment.
That, or the blogosphere has developed some sort of hive-mind...
Lordy!
Internet for everyone as long as they have giant monitors.
Sorry about that! Fixed now... Accidentally set the image-size to 5420 wide instead of 420! All fixed now.
That banner gave me gas.
420??? Woohoo!!!
I'd just like to remind everyone that the goal of universal service (as opposed to "dual service") is how we got in the telecom monopoly nightmare in the first place.
A problem with declaring normative goals is that they ignore the process by which they're achieved. It echoes the four year plans of the Nazis, Soviets, and New Dealers.
A more productive and diagnostic method would be to ask why we haven't achieved these goals already? Where are the frictions? What's causing the problems and how are they formed?
What are the causes of a lack of competition in telecommunications markets?
What are the causes of a lack of private investment in increasing bandwidth infrastructure?
What restricts the deployment of wireless bandwidth technologies such as HSPA+ (42Mbps) by cellular companies (e.g. Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, AT&T)?
Oh, so what was the article about?
@#13: Get this man a prize.
If "we" want these goals to be realized, let's help make it happen without congress. Maybe the next Internet bubble bursting can be all the failing telecos, from service and price requirements placed on them by congress.
@13: AT&T's vast resources go to calling me every couple of days and asking if I'd like to change my service.
There is something to be said for the regulatory capture for rent seeking vis-a-vis "assuring scarcity".
Indeed, however, as we learn from the Phil Gramm debacle, there's no half-assing deregulation; it's gotta be all the way. Repealing the service and price requirements without simultaneously repealing the monopoly privilege is a recipe outright extortion. The telecoms must be completely defrocked."The telecoms must be completely defrocked."
Debagged and radished.
this reminds me: it always bugs me when the ISPs whine about bandwidth usage. i mean, seriously, it's not like it's a limited resources. they can just make more. of course that would require them to actually spend some of the money they gouge out of their customers...
Back in '93, I had a Moment of Awe. I realised there was a planet-spanning network, through which the subject was no longer the object.
It hit me like a tonne of bricks, like reading Clarke's passage:
31st December, 2000. All long-distance charges abolished.
It smacked me clear out of the park. I realised that there was a mechanism in place for the whole planet to become one large, nattering family. For us all to realise that 4.5 billion years ago, Sol farted out the Earth, and that we are all composed of the heart of a star. That we could chuck out passports, ditch our militant nationalism and just live as people, all different, all incredible, all just folk.
It was youthful idealism. But reading this gives me just a smidgen of that back. So, thanks.
(*sigh*)
Zuzu, of course the means and process matter. Nobody ever said the means and process don't matter. But if you travel without having some notion of where you want to arrive, you're likely to end up in some place you don't want to be.
The Internet for Everyone project is the part of the process where people talk about what we should be aiming for. The step after this one is where we talk about how it can be made to work, and examine things that have consistently gone wrong.