[ale] Ale Digest, Vol 86, Issue 8

Allan Richardson jallan32 at att.net
Mon Mar 9 18:10:32 EDT 2015


Let's go back to the 19th century for a minute.  You own a railroad 
(call it Railroad A); there is a steel mill in city X, and a coal mine 
in city Y.  You make money hauling coal from Y to X at a market 
determined rate (the steel mill gets its iron ore from somewhere else on 
another railroad), and hauling steel from X to many places, and the coal 
mine, steel mill and iron ore mine make money. Everybody's happy.

Then you see a chance to buy a bankrupt coal mine in city Z, which is a 
bit farther from X than Y is from X, so your freight hauling rates for 
coal from /your/// mine in Z to the steel mill in X are higher than what 
you have been charging from Y to X, so the steel mill continues to buy 
from Y rather than Z.  But since your railroad and your coal mine are 
parts of the same company, you can instead haul freight from /your/ coal 
mine at Z to the steel mill at X at a /loss/, and make up the difference 
by stealing business from Y, who does /not/ have the advantage of his 
own railroad going to X.  For reasons like this, the Congress back in 
the 1880s created the ICC (Interstate Commerce Commission) and 
designated the railroads as /common carriers/, meaning that they must 
publish a price for hauling commodity C from X to Y or from Y to X, 
known as a /tariff/, and charge /all/ customers, including subsidiaries 
of the railroads, according to the same tariffs.  Or better yet, 
railroads should not /own/ other business which are customers of the 
railroad.

This same philosophy was extended in the 20th century to trucks, 
airlines, bus lines and telephone/telegraph lines (not sure about river 
barges): if your business is carrying it, you have to treat the cargo 
(or passengers or messages) of your own subsidiaries (if you have any) 
the same as any other customers' cargo (or passengers or messages).  
With some exceptions and modifications, this has worked well in those 
businesses, and /informally/ the internet carriers have followed the 
same practice until the last few years. The new regulations do not 
involve government telling internet relaying organizations or last-mile 
ISP carriers how to do their business, only how /not/ to do it: namely, 
putting a web based business owned by someone else at a disadvantage, or 
out of business, in favor of a competing web based business owned by the 
internet carrier.

If a Comcast owned video rental download business had to compete fairly 
with Netflix, or with a company which might become the next Netflix, 
rather than loading the outside customer with extra charges to avoid 
fatally slow delivery of its products, this would encourage innovation 
rather than stifle it. /Allowing/ ISP manipulation of the speed and time 
delay of its service on the basis of /who/ the customer is, would 
effectively stifle /anyone other than/ Comcast, AT&T, etc. from being 
able to create innovative products.

Almon Strowger's funeral home business suffered when his competitor's 
wife became the town telephone operator and switched funeral customers 
to her husband's business.  He invented the rotary dial and stepper 
switch to fix that problem.  Let's continue to honor his memory.

Allan Richardson

On 3/9/2015 12:00 PM, ale-request at ale.org wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
>
>     1. Re: Republicans? ?Internet Freedom Act? would wipe out net
>        neutrality | Ars Technica (Damon L. Chesser)
>     2. Re: Republicans? ?Internet Freedom Act? would wipe out net
>        neutrality | Ars Technica (DJ-Pfulio)
>     3. Re: Republicans? ?Internet Freedom Act? would wipe out net
>        neutrality | Ars Technica (Paul Cartwright)
>     4. Re: Republicans? ?Internet Freedom Act? would wipe out net
>        neutrality | Ars Technica (DJ-Pfulio)
>     5. Re: Republicans? ?Internet Freedom Act? would wipe out net
>        neutrality | Ars Technica (Jim Kinney)
>     6. Re: Republicans? ?Internet Freedom Act? would wipe out net
>        neutrality | Ars Technica (Solomon Peachy)
>     7. Re: Republicans? ?Internet Freedom Act? would wipe out net
>        neutrality | Ars Technica (Robert Reese)
>     8. Re: Republicans? ?Internet Freedom Act? would wipe out net
>        neutrality | Ars Technica (Robert Reese)
>     9. Re: Republicans? ?Internet Freedom Act? would wipe out net
>        neutrality | Ars Technica (Robert Reese)
>    10. Re: Republicans? ?Internet Freedom Act? would wipe out net
>        neutrality | Ars Technica (Paul Cartwright)
>    11. Re: Republicans? ?Internet Freedom Act? would wipe out net
>        neutrality | Ars Technica (Brian Mathis)
>    12. Re: Linux-like gui text editor for MacOS? (Chad Huneycutt)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 08 Mar 2015 12:16:51 -0400
> From: "Damon L. Chesser" <damon at damtek.com>
> To: ale at ale.org
> Subject: Re: [ale] Republicans? ?Internet Freedom Act? would wipe out
> 	net neutrality | Ars Technica
> Message-ID: <54FC75F3.7030200 at damtek.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"; Format="flowed"
>
> Like the other poster, I don't see a monopoly.  I jump from comcast to
> AT at T as it suites me.  I could go dish if I want.  You can go digital TV
> over the air with a very minimal investment for 100% free delivery.  Of
> course, I don't subscribe to ANYBODIES tv content, only Internet
> service.  But seeing as how  you can watch so much junk on the Internet,
> via smart TVs, via providers like Crackle, HBO, Hulu, etc, where is the
> monopoly?
>
> Does not Comcast have a right to say who will use their circuit and for
> how much?  And your contract with Hulu has nothing to do with Hulo's
> contract with Comcast.  Don't like them?  Dump them.  Here is a news
> flash:  Cable TV is a dying bread as more and more people cut the wire.
>
> As more and more people cut the wire, the costs keep getting added to
> the less and less and the profits are actually rising with a decreasing
> subscriber base.  It's crazy.  smaller and smaller groups say they
> "NEED" the tv cable and there is  no way around it.  News flash:  stop
> watching cable TV and the need for paying for less goes away.  NO
> federal law required.  No dualopoly, or "open market" required.  People
> just are not using cable any more and the market is going away.
>
> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-03-19/u-s-pay-tv-subscriptions-fall-for-first-time-as-streaming-gains
>
> and I totally fail to see how separating out "content providers" from
> "creators" would do anything other than make it more expensive to
> "create content".
>
> If you don't like them, don't pay for them.  That is what I do and it is
> working quite well, for me.  I only pay for Internet service and I jump
> ship at the tiniest provocation on to the next provider.
>
>
> On 03/08/2015 10:57 AM, Pete Hardie wrote:
>> Comcast being ISP and content creator is part of the problem.  They
>> will prioritize their content over someone else's ,and since they have
>> a monopoly on delivery, it is de facto unfair
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 8, 2015 at 10:47 AM, Byron Jeff
>> <byronjeff at mail.clayton.edu <mailto:byronjeff at mail.clayton.edu>> wrote:
>>
>>      On Sun, Mar 08, 2015 at 07:41:27AM -0400, DJ-Pfulio wrote:
>>      > I lived in Houston before moving here - not in a baby-bell area.
>>      My phone was
>>      > $11/month.  Moved to Smyrna - BellSouth - $26/month.
>>      >
>>      > 'nuff said.
>>      >
>>
>>      Standard land line. How quaint!
>>
>>      VOIP and Google Voice has deregulated this market already. I have a
>>      Callcentric DID with E911 service for $4.50 a month. Incoming
>>      calls routed
>>      in via GV. By virtualizing my home number, I never have to worry
>>      about that
>>      number being tied to a particular provider ever again. If I ever
>>      give up my
>>      AT&T cell service, I'll do exactly the same with my cell number.
>>
>>      > Don't get me started about power issues where I lived in Houston.
>>      >
>>      > Comcast needs to be broken up, but not in the same way that AT*T
>>      was. More like
>>      > how natural gas has been deregulated in Georgia.
>>
>>      There isn't a direct correlation between the two. The primary
>>      difference is
>>      the fact that natural gas is exactly the same no matter who's
>>      marketing it.
>>      However with digital content, each provider offers different
>>      content that
>>      has to be delivered. Comcast has comcast only content that neither
>>      Charter,
>>      AT&T, or Dish offers. So instead of GNG, which can centralize all gas
>>      delivery operations for every marketer using the same
>>      infrastructure, in
>>      your proposed scenario each provider would have to have a
>>      connection to the
>>      head end of the delivery provider and the delivery provider would
>>      have to
>>      carry enough bandwidth to deliver every content providers content
>>      at the
>>      same time.
>>
>>      Don't you think there will be a cost attached to that? One of the
>>      reasons I
>>      finally turned off my natural gas service was the fact that GNG was
>>      charging me nearly $40/month simply for the priviledge of
>>      providing gas to
>>      my meter. No matter if it's 1 therm or 100, the base delivery and
>>      tax was a
>>      $40+ base. Can you imagine how much a centralized content delivery
>>      provider
>>      would charge simply for access?
>>
>>      How exactly is the market closed? Right now I can get Comcast (which I
>>      would never do, long story), AT&T UVerse, Dish, and DirectTV. In
>>      fact in
>>      the last 5 years I've had service with each of the above and
>>      except for
>>      Dish I've kicked each and every one of them to the curb at one
>>      point in
>>      time or another. There's nothing to preclude Verizon or Google from
>>      entering the fray.
>>
>>      Comparing digital content delivery to natural gas deregulation is
>>      an apples
>>      to gorillas argument, seems to me.
>>
>>      BAJ
>>
>>      >
>>      >
>>      > On 03/07/2015 04:24 PM, Jim Lynch wrote:
>>      > > The Judge made my life harder.  Before his ruling, I picked up
>>      the phone and
>>      > > called AT&T when the network wasn't working. It got fixed.
>>      Afterwards, I
>>      > > called AT&T and after a bit, they told me it wasn't their
>>      problem, so I called
>>      > > Racal Milgo and guess what?  It wasn't their problem either.
>>      It took 2x 3x
>>      > > maybe 4x the amount of time to get the network back.
>>      > >
>>      > > Progress...
>>      > > On 03/07/2015 04:14 PM, James Taylor wrote:
>>      > >> Now you're making us all feel old....
>>      > >> -jt
>>      > >
>>      > _______________________________________________
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>>      --
>>      Byron A. Jeff
>>      Chair: Department of Computer Science and Information Technology
>>      College of Information and Mathematical Sciences
>>      Clayton State University
>>      http://faculty.clayton.edu/bjeff
>>      _______________________________________________
>>      Ale mailing list
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>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Pete Hardie
>> --------
>> Better Living Through Bitmaps
>>
>>
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