Mark Schubin posted:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/14/sunday-review/politics-disruption-media-technology.html
The article conflates broadcasting with "the Internet." Which is really
unfortunate, because it only feeds the ignoramus, for one, but also the
disingenuous phonies, like our current FCC, who should know better but
obviously do not.
"The Internet" is a telecom network - links, routers, switches, and the domain
name system. This infrastructure is thoroughly comparable to the telephone
network of the past, in terms of its fundamental functions. It routes packets
from A to B, globally, it also provides an automatic name to address
translation, sort of like dialing 411 to get a phone number, and that's the
extent of it, in a nutshell. Don't believe me? Go to the IETF site, and see
what the many working groups are doing. (Internet providers may also be
Internet users in their own right, like many other businesses are users. For
service requests, billing, e-mail service, and so on. In fact, for e-mail
service, one is not forced to use the ISP's offering at all.)
What the article is upset about is the lack of control, or oversight, of a
different and specific class of Internet users. Most users are people,
households, and I trust even far lefties don't want government monitoring of
Internet conversations or transactions, any more than is done on the telephone
system. But a very small minority of these users are companies that provide
what can legitimately be called "information service." They host large server
farms, and provide such services as social media sites, newspapers, political
sites, streaming sites like Netflix. This class of USERS is the only subject of
fretting. Oversight of such businesses may not even fall in the FCC's charter.
That's for the legal system to decide.
Confusing users with the infrastructure is not really excusable anymore.
Honestly, it's as nonsensical as to suggest that the Department of
Transportation should be in charge of making sure that your Giant Food store is
free of rodents. Just because you reach Giant Food via the local roads does not
make Giant Food part of the road network.
Perpetuating this confusion only serves to encourage cluelessness, or much
worse, to get the current disingenuous and technically incompetent FCC to pat
itself on the back, for being so righteously correct in not "regulating"
Internet users. When its main job from day 1 has been oversight over the
telecoms, to guarantee telecom neutrality.
Bert
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