DeGette doesn't
So people need to write Congresswoman DeGette. They need to tell her that she's wrong on the facts. Here's her Orwell-wanna-be description of the history of the internet, penned for news.com as an attack on "Network Neutrality." As Ernie Miller writes, her cable-lobbyist screed even attacks the end-to-end principle.
Is there no shame?
You can send comments here.
Comments (42)
I'm not quite sure what your objections are. Granted, there's quite a bit that could be considered objectionable, but what are your specific issues?
It's an interesting, and important, misunderstanding in her argument. She views the push to ensure network neutraility as a push to regulate the network into non-regulation. Really, it is a push for an a-regulated network; a network that cannot be regulated, rather than one that can be regualted but isn't only by means of regulation.
The congresswoman fears, and rightly so, the government's interference with the operation of the networks. In her mind, this means, if the cable companies want to regulate their networks, that they should be allowed to do so (for the governemnt to oppose them would be to institute improper regulations). But, is it "regulation" for the government to prevent a third party from taking control of something inherently non-controllable? Perhaps she is right, that the government ought not to get involved. But then she is wrong to disparage other private groups (spearheaded this time by Microsoft, who appears to be a good-guy in the case) for fighting to maintain an aregulated, neutral, end-to-end network.
Her misunderstanding seems similar, as well, to the idea that public-domain or "free-distribution" licenses run contrary to copyright law. Copyright law is what gives such licenses their power, despite the fact that such licenses are not intended to _limit_ distribution, but rather work to promote it.
It is not regulation when the government steps in to prevent private interests from taking control of public, or otherwise open (even if privately created) , resources.
[Continuation of my last comment, broken in two due to length.]
I do have one concern that support the Congresswoman position. Let's say that I've built a large, public, roadway. I charge no toll for this road, and have no access controls for who can use it. A number of local towns have built connecting roads to my road, and the area economies are thriving as a result.
Along comes a new town, and it builds a toll-road that connects to my road. This town only tolls its residents when they go to other towns to shop (e.g., it rewards traffic that patronises local resourses, by penalising traffic that patronises other
towns' resources).
What place do I have, as the creater of the main inter-town artery, to tell this town "don't do that," or to ask the government to do the same? Ultimately, it is the citizens of that town are hurt, and it is their choice to live there. If anything, that town should be hurt, as the citizens flock to other towns.
Perhaps, as is the case with the internet, the citizens don't realise that they are being tolled? Can I then argue that there is a compelling public interest at stake? But how can the ill-fate of the citizens in one backwards town justify the intitution of questionable, at best, regulations?
Or, elevating the argument a bit, can I argue that, because one town can do this and get away with it, that soon other towns will follow in suite? Were that to happen, there would be a number of incumbent effects. First off, from my concern, my public-access roadway is now generating profits for everyone but me: I'm pissed. It is also no longer facilitating economic development, as commerce will be restricted principally to localalities (not to argue against taxing imports and exports, here- though maybe that would be a good way for the Congresswoman to understand the argument) . At this point, the towns are profiting (by taxing their citizens) by reducing economic growth.
Certainly, were this to happen, the "regulation" of aregulation would serve a compelling public interest. But, that is a pretty slippery slope. And, could it not be argued that, rather than ask for regulation, I should just underwrite the creation of a new, toll-free, road that connects to the first town to institute a toll?
I fear I have digressed into rambling. To summarise: the Congresswoman does not seem to understand the fundamental importance of network neutrality (both to the internet, and to economies in general). But, if you don't grant the premise that network neutraility is a good thing (and, though I do, I have learned that it is not an intuitive concept for most people), the question is far from clear-cut.
Bad analogy.
Here's a better one:
Pac Bell (or whatever the frell it is today) is your phone company, and a partner with Borders books.
You want to order a book, but whenever you try to order from Waldenbooks, you get connected to Borders.
When you finally find a work around, it takes 5 minutes to connect to Waldenbooks.
AOL did that with google for a long time (they hacked their DNS lookup), and cable companies are doing this right now on a smaller level, they preferentially cache and round partner's data.
Without something to prevent this, I find it rather likely that people will find situations where (for example) a BBC video feed would be limited to 56K, and FoxNews would come through full throttle.
Murdoch's satellite systems are built on this sort of synergy.
Matthew -- I agree wholeheartedly with your analogy... but I'm always coming across only anecdotes about specific cases where networks were non-neutral.
Does anyone know of any actual evidence of (besides the AOL/Google dns) providers doing site-specific throttling, redirection, etc. ?
At this point, all I've heard are deals that involve some sort of preferential local caching.
That would not bother me, were it not for the obviously forseeable profit driven slippery slope.
I'm not a computer person (I'm a mechanical engineer), but I think that slashdot would be a good place to start.
Tim Wu has some nice examples here (pdf).
Slippery slopes have already been put in place. The examples mentionned above (redirection, caching...) are examples many people won't be able to identify.
I've heard of proxies installed in the workplace that were able to censor content within a page in such a way that you wouldn't notice. The specific example I remember hearing about is, if I were to enter in this post, my post would be removed, but the rest would appear normally. Don't ask me how this would work though...
The highway analogy has a single good point though. Any ISP has the power to restrict and shape how you access the 'net. However, in doing so, they stop selling you Internet access (would make an interesting legal case...) but are selling you something different (a-la AOL, which is a service with the Internet as an added feature). Where it stops being a good analogy is that if I live in town X, my cost to move to town Y that doesn't restrict or shape what I see is quite a bit higher than my cost to change ISP's. Also, as the owner of the highway, are making a profit no matter what, since the towns that link to the highway are paying for the use. You don't care how the towns are shaping traffic in and out of your highway, since it only affects them and their relationship with other towns, but does nothing to affect you.
The main issue here is about control, and choice. I want full control over my connection to the Internet. I don't want any artificial restrictions, or artificial "features" that people paid my ISP to deliver to me. I don't want my relationship with anyone on the Internet to be impeded by the choices my ISP makes. Other vendors, like MS, Google, Yahoo and others, don't want my access to their sites modified or restricted in any manner by ISP's. However, the ISP wants to be able to control all this. This isn't an issue with inovation. It's an issue with control. And if, in the end, there are only a few major ISP's available, that own all the individual backbones, then I won't have a choice, and neither will the individual vendors. This would truly kill inovation and add an artificial cost of entry.
What DeGette doesn't get, is that this issue isn't inovation. It's absolutely and totally about control. We shouldn't allow the ISP's to control our access in this way.
If I understand her arguments correctly, she is coming out against consumer interests on this point.
Several years back I was involved in a business that was formed to help the providers of Internet access (ISP's) make a content play. Bringing the most popular content to their subscribers, without sending them away to search it out on their own (over the open Internet), and sharing in the advertising revenue of that co-branded service.
In this model the end user would have a homogenous brand experience throughout their online foray. Our business was to help ISP's do this, quickly and efficiently. In essence to help ISP's create the kind of advantage that AOL (the market leader at that time) had built early on, a "walled garden" of internet access (to quote Steve Case).
In hindsight I realize this strategy taken to it's logical conclusion does not benefit the end user and therefore is flawed in concept (and unfortunately in execution, business was sold to NBC, who shut it down after a while). It limits choice, and the Internet is all about choice, right?
Congresswoman DeGrette's target is an anti-competitive group called the Coalition of Broadband Users and Innovators, consisting of Microsoft, AOL, and (get this:) DISNEY.
Lessig, when did you sell out to Mickey?
Universities routinely cap bandwidth for applications like Kazaa and other P2P bandwidth hogs. If they didn't, the entire network could slow to a crawl, slowing research uses and things like that. Is this bad regulation (the university is an ISP for the students) ?
Anonymous, you're comparing apples and oranges. The students are getting their internet service relatively free, and only if they're living in the dorms. The University network isn't geared towards normal ISP service, otherwise they'd be selling it to the public. It's therefore much more of a private network (whose primary purpose is education by the way, quite unlike a commercial ISP) than any cable or DSL provider. The students still have a choice of paying for their own connection through another ISP. If I'm paying for Internet service, I better get Internet service, not, as was well put before, a �walled garden� of Internet access.
Also, Richard, I've read better trolls on slashdot.
Anonymous, you're comparing apples and oranges. The students are getting their internet service relatively free, and only if they're living in the dorms. The University network isn't geared towards normal ISP service, otherwise they'd be selling it to the public. It's therefore much more of a private network (whose primary purpose is education by the way, quite unlike a commercial ISP) than any cable or DSL provider. The students still have a choice of paying for their own connection through another ISP. If I'm paying for Internet service, I better get Internet service, not, as was well put before, a �walled garden� of Internet access.
Also, Richard, I've read better trolls on slashdot.
Where to start.
End-to-end is a technical design theory. If you read the theory, it assumes a high performance network. It doesn't address whether the network is "smart" or "dumb". And the ends are not necessarily yours and my PC. The end is that point in the overall network where a task can be efficiently performed without duplication deeper into the network. Final DNS lookup is most efficiently performed at the heart of the network. Routers are most efficient in the middle of the network directing traffic. End points are the most efficient point for aggregation and display of data. Each point is a logical end for the task to be performed. The real extension of the theory is not the dumb netowrk. The real extension is a network that delivers high performance for the task at hand. In my world, "high performance" and "dumb" don't usually go togehter.
The infrastructure of the Internet is not a public domain. To discuss it as such is a taking. I think talking about the Internet in terms of it being a utility is more accurate and more fruitful. The electric and telephone companies did not provide service to remote customers until they were given monopoly status in return for providing the service.
Richard's terse comment above is not flamebait. To treat this as a consumer issue misses the point. This is a battle between two groups who want to control the hearts and minds of the Internet. Neither group cares about open access. The fight is about which giants get to control the access.
DeGette certainly did not frame the issues clearly. But at least she's beginning the dialogue, and trying to show the hypocricy of the MS/Disney clique. Rather than vilifying her, perhaps we are better served to gracefully extend her argument for her so that the real consumer issues are brought to the fore.
The past ten years or so of the Internet have been a pioneer experience. Civilization is catching up. Control and regulation is inevitable. The challenge is to craft the regulations so that individual freedoms trump central control. It's just another chapter in the ongoing struggle that is is the promise of the democratic experiment.
Amos, I disagree with "Richard�s terse comment above is not flamebait". Flamebaits and trolls aren't always characterized by content. His tone was inflamatory and accusative, and was written to illicit an emotional response. But then again, I wouldn't expect any different from a hardline conservative.
Do you see my point?
Apparently the blog script removed my troll tags for my last sentence (But then again...)
Well then that begs the question: is the Professor's headline and comment flamebait?
Amos, just FYI, "begs the question" does not mean what you seem to think it does. "Begging the question" is someting you'd say an argument is doing when it assumes what it is trying to establish.
I'll stand symantically corrected, but the question remains.
Amos, I see his post more as inflamed than inflamatory, but I can see where you'd see something inflamatory in there. I, however, don't assume that most politicians haven't become the voice of their biggest lobbyists. However, calling the Professor a Disney sell-out because he seems to side with them on this issue, that's just plain wrong. It's also very poor reasoning (a-la "you're either with us or against us" type of very black and white thinking).
The DeGette article is not good. The main problem is that her arguments have little to do with actual network neutrality proposals. The proposal is to give users the right to use any non-harmful application or network attachment they want. Calling it a proposal to "prevent ... broadband providers from teaming with other companies to offer consumers joint products and services" is inaccurate. Companies are free to offer joint products; they just can't use their control over the infrastructure to infringe on the user's right to choose what applications or content he wants.
More generally, her arguments show that telecom law needs to go where antitrust law already is: to an discussion of consumer, as opposed to competitor, welfare. As it stands, her idea of an infringement of broadband operator's rights makes little sense. Taken seriously, it is an argument against antitrust law generally, or perhaps anything that Microsoft does.
It is, in sum, a confused and confusing article, and I feel badly for whoever was forced to write it.
The CBUI is a lobbying group funded by Microsoft, AOL, Disney, Apple, Amazon, Ebay, and a host of similar ilk. Larry Lessig is apparently in their employ as he was a featured speaker at a presentation they made in Washington, DC, earlier this year. So this "cable lobbyist screed" business is a matter of the pot calling the kettle black.
Given the track record of the CBUI members, I'd be hesitant to endorse any plan they put forward. These companies have, after all, done more damage to the Internet than any other collection of businesses one could assemble, and the net effect of the regulations they propose would be to stifle innovation on the Internet infrastructure and ossify it as the pathetically inefficient network it is today, in perpetuity.
Face it, all Ebay, Amazon and the others want to do with the Internet is use it as a gigantic catalog order system. They don't want e-mail that's free of spam, they don't want real-time applications like VoIP and Video on Demand, they don't want mobility; all they want is secure credit card transactions and lots of eyeballs on their pages because people have no place to go that's any more interesting than an Ebay auction.
Cable TV networks are large, complicated, and expensive, and they're never going to grow toward full broadband with QoS if their business model is continually assaulted by lobbyists representing companies with no stake in their evolution because they're doing so well today.
The Internet need not be about consumers spending money on crap they don't need. It can be about advanced communication and entertainment, but it will never grow in that direction as long as these short-sighted profiteers have their way.
Richard, which short sighted profiteers are you referring to, the cable or the open access folks?
BTW, I think you'd be hard pressed to find an industry that treats their customers worse than cable, one of the reasons that DSL seems to be on the verge of passing cable despite being more expensive.
I don't trust cable companies not to start charging web sites for some sort of "preferred access".
In reality, such "preferred access" is a shakedown, as in "pay us, or your page takes 10 minutes to load, and your SSL order page crashes 8 times out of 10."
All the regulations say is that they have to treat all packets the same.
It doesn't prevent them from running ads on the default web page, or from sending bulk emails or popups to sell upcoming PPV programs to their customers.
The "draw by crayon libertarianism" that posits that companies like Comcast or Microsoft should be allowed to run wild because the market will cure all is delusional.
I am not "in the employ" of any lobbyist organization -- never have and never will be. I was a featured speaker at the event because the message of the event was the same as I've been giving from the very beginning.
Disney and Microsoft are on the right side of this issue. You understand that by understanding the issue.
So I assume you paid your own expenses for speaking at the Disney/Microsoft/AOL event. Did you shower immediately afterwards?
Lessig posits that there are two sides to this issue. I think there are at least 3. The cable companies want to restrict access for their profit. MS/Disney want to prevent this so that they can restrict things in another way for their profit.
A third position is the consumers's position, which wants open choice.
It sounds like a case of the enemy of my enemy, and that's always a dicey position to be in.
Richard, I just read YOUR blog, and I feel like taking a shower.
It looks to come right off the Republican blast fax.
Mr Bennett, the ad hominem nature of your comments is an embarrassment. Surely you have more informative things to add to the discussion. Frankly after reading Congresswoman DeGette's article and the comments here, I would still find it helpful if anyone would more explicitly lay out what innovation is being stifled by the coalition. Also, being responsible for the assertion "pathetically inefficient network it is today" makes it appear your real world knowledge of networks is limited. Perhaps you have design goals for which a packet switched network is not a good fit (e.g. broadcasting)?
I'm thinking that engaging him is a lose.
Read his blog, it's linked from his hame.
It's right wing/Fox tautology, and that's what we're getting here.
My synthesis of his point is that anything that prevents a private entity from exercising what could be monopoly power (in some areas with cable) to maximize profit will cause the collapse of the economy, cats sleeping with dog, the end of the world as we know it.
This is why they think that electricity deregulation in California worked.
Amos, you wrote, for the most part, what I was thinking in your last post (you seem, however, to be contradicting part of your post from yesterday 6:01PM). As you said, both of the corporate opponents have vested economic interests in this match, and the consumer is stuck in the middle. However, at this point, I see this battle as keeping the status quo. So it's not an "enemy of my enemy" position. In the end, it doesn't matter who's against the cable companies on this issue, as long as the requested outcome is to stop a change for the worst. I'm pretty sure that if MS/AOL/Disney tried pulling something similar on their end with legislation, that those here who are against the cable companies now, would be against the coalition then.
This is politics. People don't take sides with people, they take sides with issues. It's also common sense. If you want to do something I agree with, then I agree with it and let it known. If you want to do something I disagree with, it doesn't matter who you are, or how much I like you, or who else disagrees with what you're trying to do, I'd still disagree with it.
Saroff, put down your ad hominems just long enough to show me where I said the California energy deregulation worked.
Mr. Bryan, the coalition seeks to stifle the kinds of economic deals that will be necessary to finance the upgrade of cable Internet to full broadband, which would be 100 Megabits/home. They're making money on the creaky, chaotic Internet we have today, and they don't want to see it upgraded to something that will unleash applications they can't control.
The Internet of today can't support real-time applications such as voice and video to significant numbers of users, it can't protect itself from DoS attacks, and it can't filter spam because it wasn't designed to carry out those functions. It was designed to transport e-mail in an era when spam was non-existent and the user community was very small, and we've already outgrown it.
If you have information that contradicts what I've said here, by all means get down off your high-horse and share it.
Richard... I'm glad to see you're backing away from the 7th grade-level name calling, you must have seen how it's so much like shooting yourself with an Idiot Gun.
Those issues you brought up: spam, DoS's, realtime video...it's as if you're somehow implying that either:
1- those issues would be solved if the coalition went away, or
2- that simply by bringing 100mbit to the home would solve them.
I'm sure your not implying either of those things, but please confirm it. Because I'm sure you know that before this coalition, we had those issues. After this coalition gets what it wants, we will still have those issues. And simply having bigger pipes won't effect what happens on either side of them. I'm sure you know that, too.
Again, you seem to be attempting to rope people into a discussion which is besides the point. Lessig's comment was that DeGette has her perceptions of the issues a bit upside-down and sideways, which is true. By arguing here, are you implying that her article is correct in facts, right in perception, or right in her assumptions ? I'm going to assume you stand by every word she wrote.
The fact is, it really doesn't matter what Prof Lessig posts, you have a problem with it. You have proven time and time again that you're only interested in name-calling, argument winning, and pedantic and semantic throwdowns, instead of actually listening, learning, and discussing, which is what smart people do, even if they are opposed to the ideas.
What you might learn is that Lessig's not the only one with these ideas, and other organizations are getting hip to these same ideas on these issues. What separates you from Lessig is that he speaks intelligently and refrains from the bitter diatribes that you so love to spin. Either argue with facts that are related, or don't argue....discuss.
Sorry Mike, but you're full of it. I often agree with Professor Lessig, and I say so on my own humble little blog. When he admitted that he was wrong to oppose the Davis Recall, I agreed with him, for example.
I don't see anything objectionable in Congresswoman DeGette's article. It appears to me that she's on the right side of the issue, insofar as she wishes to keep the cable companies independent of regulation by Microsoft, Disney, and AOL (which happens to be a cable company, BTW.)
The Internet needs to be upgraded to 21st century status with better protocols and fatter pipes. Those who wish to make a Holy Icon out of TCP/IP and the status quo are standing in the way of progress, and they need to be shot down.
Lessig's analysis of the Internet is actually very simple: he says "the sky is falling" in several different ways, and always argues for preservation of the status quo from 1981. I think this is harmful to the progress of the Internet, and therefore harmful to the consumer, the technology industry, to American competitveness, and to each and every citizen of our democracy.
I don't question Lessig's right to hold opinions about network architecture and to advocate policies based on these opinions. I don't think his opinions are well-grounded, so I endeavor to engage him in debate in order to educate him, because I see everyday in my work as a network architect the influence that his opinions have on the younger generation of network engineers.
If you don't value free and open debate, Mike, perhaps you should stay off the Internet and entertain yourself watching reruns of The West Wing on your VCR.
Just trying to be helpful.
I do value free and open debate, Richard, when it's productive and mature. Saying that Lessig works for Disney is just plain ignorant.
I count on less than one hand times where you have agreed with Lessig, especially on your blog. Prove me wrong. I think that in the places where I have seen you try to 'educate' Lessig about networking issues, you place broad statements about his position which makes many assumptions and disparaging remarks that draw yourself to be quite an attack-oriented person.
I don't see in his comments, or in his books, for example, that he attempts to make a "Holy Icon out of TCP/IP", or anywhere that he is arguing for the "preservation of the status quo from 1981"......that is a crude and incorrect characterization, and from what I can tell, very representative of the majority of your remarks here. I'll also go further to say that Lessig has been almost overly cautious to defer to more technical people when it comes to networking protocols, in the past, including yourself.
"The Internet needs to be upgraded to 21st century status with better protocols and fatter pipes." I do value free and open debate, Richard, when it's productive and mature. Saying that Lessig works for Disney is just plain ignorant.
I count on less than one hand times where you have agreed with Lessig, especially on your blog. Prove me wrong. I think that in the places where I have seen you try to 'educate' Lessig about networking issues, you place broad statements about his position which makes many assumptions and disparaging remarks that draw yourself to be quite an attack-oriented person.
I don't see in his comments, or in his books, for example, that he attempts to make a "Holy Icon out of TCP/IP", or anywhere that he is arguing for the "preservation of the status quo from 1981"......that is a crude and incorrect characterization, and from what I can tell, very representative of the majority of your remarks here. I'll also go further to say that Lessig has been almost overly cautious to defer to more technical people when it comes to networking protocols, in the past, including yourself.
"The Internet needs to be upgraded to 21st century status with better protocols and fatter pipes."
I'm also not arguing that you don't have something useful to say, in light of your experience....but your "contributions" are, for the most part, not useful additions...they are diatribes.
p.s. West Wing is recorded on MythTV in my house, not a VCR.
about my quote of yours above "The Internet needs to be upgraded to 21st century status with better protocols and fatter pipes.�... no one is arguing against that, including Lessig.
Richard wrote, "The Internet of today can't support real-time applications such as voice and video to significant numbers of users..."
This is, not unsurprisingly, an untrue statement. The net can and does support real time video and audio.
In the US, there is a problem with the "Last mile", which is not adequate to the task.
It does so in much of Japan, and most of South Korea, and it does so because the last mile is operated either by or under the close observation of the governments there because it is viewed as critical infrastructure.
It's understood that the last mile is inherently a monopoly, like electricity transmission, and thus it either needs to be state owned or operated as a tightly regulated monopoly.
There is plenty of capacity available in the competitive areas of data transmission right now, that's why you can buy a multibillion telco right now for a bunch of magic beans.
The advocates of privatization claim that when one deregulates an inherent monopoly, the industry and consumer prosper. This is a flat out lie, and the history proves this with electricity.
When Thatcher style electrical deregulation was implemented in the UK, you got blackouts, price spikes, and an eventual price (pre tax, so comparing apples to apples) 3x that in the US.
This is what happened with electricity in Brazil, Chile, and California (still in process) too. It's also happened with WATER with Bolivia, which is why the population there is so hostile to outside forces.
Insanity is when someone does the same thing over and over again, and expects a different result.
Adding to Matthew's post:
"The advocates of privatization claim that when one deregulates an inherent monopoly, the industry and consumer prosper. This is a flat out lie, and the history proves this with electricity."
Same for telco's. How many CLEC's still exist today? It's pretty hard to compete when you're forced to buy from your main competitor...
You guys have some interesting fantasies about Japan and Korea; they're off my a couple orders of magnitude. While some of Japan and Korea have super-broadband, it's not universal and it's not 100 Megabits/sec. Details, details.
The issue about monopolies, natural or unnatural, with respect to super-broadband rests on some fairly basic problems of democracy and equity. If you say that the government has some sort of obligation to run fiber to the home, you're saying you want the taxpayers to foot the bill for this service. Given that most of the taxpayers aren't interested in it, at least not right now, what you're really saying is that you want the disinterested majority to subsidize something that you want for your own purposes, which amounts to passing the bill for your hobby on to a bunch of people who could care less about it.
Now it's one thing to do something like this in a part of a small country where housing is very dense, and the government and industry have a very cozy relationship through a national industrial policy. It's another to do that in the United States, where Democrats would go insane about welfare money lining the pockets of router companies. It's never going to happen.
The only way we're going to get super-broadband to the home in the US is by private companies such as Verizon deciding to invest their own funds in the project. If you want that to happen, then back off the telco- and cable-bashing. If you're happy with the status quo, join Microsoft and Disney in stifling innovation. I don't see another option on the menu, from a practical point of view.
In the interest of fairness to Neocons and Milton Friedman (full disclosure, I know his kid, David) groupies, it's not their fault that they lie.
If they didn't they'd have nothing else to say.
"You guys have some interesting fantasies about Japan and Korea; they�re off my a couple orders of magnitude."
my source for today's post about Asian broadband:
http://www.itta.com/staffedit08.01.htm
I'm open to seeing sources and facts where I'm wrong about that, Richard. Please cite your facts about broadband in Asia.
It would almost seem that you're contradicting yourself. First you say that the market can take care of itself, and we should let it, and now you say that the market (at least in the US) won't cut it. Another incorrect assumption is that I'm implying that the government would have an obligation to run the fiber, or somehow be responsible for it...I'm not. I haven't suggested that the government pay for anything. Having the FCC make good decisions has nothing to do with the US gov footing any bills for building networks.
Another assumption in your world of binary thinking is that this issue is about cable or telco "bashing"...it is not at all. It's not about being anti-anything. If it wasn't for both cable or dsl, some technologies would not even exist today, technologies that have improved the (as you might put, 'broken', or 'antiquated') Internet as we know it today. If you took the time to see what Lessig's presentation was at the CBUI conference, you'd see that his point is not chicken-little, no more than the hyperbole you have spouted in the past.
In typical fashion, your effort to make an issue black and white is very great, although dizzying to watch. Here's another place where you are apparently shadow-boxing with yourself:
"The only way we�re going to get super-broadband to the home in the US is by private companies such as Verizon deciding to invest their own funds in the project." --- welcome to another point that no one is arguing with you.
My point is, the market certainly does take care of itself, but without some key decisions by the FCC in the past, the market would not have brought to the consumer many modern conveniences, both as a requirement and innovation.
Read the study you cite, Mike. It says: "Broadband growth projections in Japan are high. In January 2001, the IT Strategy Council's e-Japan Plan set the ambitious goal of achieving the world's most advanced Internet network within the next five years." It's still a plan, not the concrete reality you believe it to be.
Now on to the other point, you're saying that private enterprise will magically build out super broadband in the US, and the government (guided by Microsoft, Disney, Lessig, et. al.) will regulate it, and they'll regulate it quite severely. While you're free to believe in the Easter Bunny, I don't think that the people who run the small number of companies with the capital to do this are interested in losing money on the deal.
The feedback from Japan suggests it's not very profitable: "Not surprisingly as competition increases and investment costs rise, profit margins are shrinking. Incumbent telecom operator NTT (East and West) will weather the storm but several new entrants will likely fold in the coming months." Short of forcing such an investment at gunpoint, it's not going to happen without a reasonably certain expectation of profit.
Now I wonder if Japan and Korea let Microsoft regulate their broadband systems, and whether they have an "end to end" law and a "network neutrality" law. I'd bet against it.
High horse? Hell, I was trying to be courteous while asking for clarification. In any case I've had a chance to browse through your blog where you spend more time informing and less time sparring. On the issue of what you call full broadband I wonder if the real impediment is that no one wants to spend their own money on it as you also seem to suggest, rather than some conspiracy by Microsoft et al to prevent it. Andrew Odlyzko wrote an interesting article on the topic of the slow pace of broadband adoption which is easy to find with Google if you haven't read it already.