Bring on the Hydraulic Despotism
I was reading the report on the New York Times: Charging by the Byte to Curb Internet Traffic and suddenly felt compelled to comment.
This entire scenario is a little ironic. For years ISPs have been telling subscribers they can’t share their service through unlocked Wi-Fi APs, it is a violation of the TOS. Millions of subscribers have locked their Wi-Fi, causing millions more to need their own ISP, regardless of how little they use it. A picture emerges of dwindling resources and a shortage of bandwidth. Everything we were told the Internet was not going to be.
Now the ISPs are deciding individual subscribers are using too much bandwidth. There is a famine looming on the horizon, a widespread shortage of internet access that is reminiscent of the former Soviet Union. We are seeing the building of a modern-day "Hydraulic Empire", a despotic system where vital resources are squeezed to a minimum, and maximum profit for a few powerful warlords is the result.
So it’s not too surprising the "One ISP per user" TOS wasn't enough for them. The alternative would be socialism, publicly sharing resources. ISPs quickly stamped that scenario out years ago. Now we get the same story, that there is "too much socialism" on the internet. People are paying the same whether they download movies or just check their email. Too much equality. Too much socialism.
The irony? "Free Market Capitalism" was supposed to bring consumers cheap, fast and unlimited internet access. But all we have seen is a gradual decline in the quality and freedom of the internet as ISPs duke it out for profitable turf. This is the end game of unregulated capitalism.
Comments
| Gnarlodious | Sorry, I think I AM describing "free market capitalism", where business has far too much influence over government. Big Business doesn't really want government (democratic) interference anyway, and that is the true Benito Mussolini Fascism. And yes, isn't it just like Fascism to blame the poor ignorant consumer for cybercrimes committed from their internet access. There is something almost Kafka-esque about it. |
2008-08-06 14:23:50 X | ||
| Comcast Grosse Pointe | You know that you are not describing the results of free market capitalism, but of corporations lobbying the government, don't you? It is a form of socialism, sometimes described as fascism. The Marxist form of socialism isn't any better. As for unlocked Wi-Fi and TOS and so on... That is a contract between the user and the provider. It is a private issue. If it bothers enough people then others will provide a way around it. Meanwhile, the way things go, although I haven't heard anything like it yet, I certainly can envision where people use unlocked Wi-Fi access of someone else to conduct various nefarious activities like terror plots, drugs, child porn or whatever, and there the poor unwitting, unlocked wi-fi user of record is, swept up like Harry Buttle to his death in the system, while Harry Tuttle runs free. |
2008-08-04 06:16:42 X | ||
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