Russell Shaw has a short, sweet, and spot-on blog item about Comcast blocking their customers' attempts to access legitimate BitTorrent web content: Free markets can be fine, but only if everyone behaves. But sometimes companies don’t behave, and their competitors who you might wish to run to if you get too ticked won’t behave either. Sometimes there isn’t a competitor you can jump to. I’ll say it again. Government regulation- as in Net Neutrality- is the only surefire brake against tech monopolists doing whatever they want with your packets and your money. So maybe some of you should deprogram your brains from the teachings of big business apologist/wack job Ayn Rand and regulation-hating Ron Paul and wake up to the real threats to your digital freedom. That’d be, big companies who do whatever they want because they want to please their shareholders more than their customers. Link: Reality check: Comcast packet forging proves you can’t have Internet freedom with limited government | IP Telephony, VoIP, Broadband | ZDNet.com.
And Steven Wellman reports that in addition to blocking BitTorrent, Comcast is also blocking and impeding its customers' access to Vonage and other VoIP phone services that compete with Comcast's phone offering, as well as Lotus Notes, Gnutella, and FTP applications.
Meanwhile, Comcast claims it is only "shaping," "prioritizing," and "managing" its network traffic. So that Vonage call you're making to wish your Mom a happy birthday today? Maybe her phone will ring next week?
Customers are a kind of shareholder in that they have chosen to support the company. If they consent to the company's service, they consent to the company's policies. In a free country, they can abandon that company according to whatever contractual agreement they agreed to. If the agreement is too onerous, they should not agree.
To advocate government control is to bind people to 'contracts' to which they have not consented. Consider the draft, the tax dollars spent by Bush on terrorism and religion, and the host of economic manipulations and distortions, private property regulations and takings caused by government interference and taxation.
"Wack jobs" are blind to those things, and are perhaps more motivated by resentment of successful company's, which have grown because consumers *elect* to support them using their hard earned, *after tax* dollars.
Electing representatives to take away that consent system is an invitation to economic and cultural decline, both of which are very obvious as are its causes through government intervention in, and disregard for, individual Rights. It is easy to put an X on a ballot, but a lot harder to put a dollar towards an agreement with a business.
One is better off encouraging General Motors to create a computer software division to compete with Microsoft, than using your 'X' to demand the government regulate Microsoft. The former promotes choice and freedom, the latter systematically eliminates them.
Don't be like the proverbial frog in a pot of water on the stove, as the water slowly heats to boiling, that does not realize it is in serious trouble until it starts to die. Americans are already suffering from the 'heat', but many, such as you, turn a blind eye to it.
You might benefit from a more careful reading of Ayn Rand.
Posted by: RnB | October 23, 2007 at 10:14 AM