In message <CAC6=tfYKBWBXMFHJo617q_qOMuOjEtoTDGK2pepfrMw3CybFuw@mail.gmail.com> Josh Reynolds <josh@kyneticwifi.com> wrote:
And then what? The labor to clean up this mess is not free... ... The ISPs won't do it because of the cost to fix... The labor and potential loss of customers.
Yes, and yes. Unfortunately, the economics of the current situation are rather clearly and rather sadly broken. And I feel sure that the same "cost" arguments were also advanced, in the 1970s, against the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. More recently, I'm also fairly sure that banks have pushed back strongly against anti money-laundering regulations, based on similar or identical "cost and loss of customers" arguments. Nonetheless, government regulation in these areas has advanced, and has resulted in a salutary leveling of the playing field. All players in the affected industries must comply, and thus none can undercut the others by reducing their costs, in a relentless race to the bottom, by simply shirking their social responsibilities. And since all players across an industry must bear the same costs, all should find it equally possible to pass along these costs their respective customer bases. (This answers the question of who is going to pay to clean up this whole mess we call the Internet.) To those who would advance the argument that government regulation simply will not work and/or that such is not actually possible on a globally dispersed Internet, I would only note that essentially the same concerns, issues and arguments apply equally to the globally interconnected banking system, and that although there still remain major challanges, mostly now isolated to a few specific locales, the global fight against money laundering has made impressive advances in recent years, and continues to make steady progress. I cite this fact simply to point out that globally interconnected industries are not inherently immune to prudent cross-border regulation in the interests of the common good. Given the Internet industry's abject, long-standing, and ongoing near total abdication of any resposibility for even a modicum of self-regulation, I, for one, look forward to the Clean Internet Act, whenever that may arrive. Regards, Ronald F. Guilmette (DDoS'd off the Internet, to little or no public fanfare, 2003)