Lamar Owen wrote:
Charles Wyble charles@thewybles.com wrote:
We know they can partition at any time. We know that certain players have a history of causing this to happen more then others.
What I haven't seen discussed in any great detail, is how to limit those events.
There are three ways that I know of (feel free to add to this list) to limit the events: 1.) As you mentioned, regulation (or a government run and regulated backbone);
Right. But what do we want this to look like?
2.) Economic pressures of a free market (cause event, lose customers or cause customers to multihome, thus costing you upgrade money; or other market 'pressures' a la the recent Intercage Capers);
Mmhmm. That is what we have now right? I think it's worked well enough to avoid the need for regulation and hopefully it will continue to do so.
3.) 'For the good of the Internet!'
I would much prefer option 2 since regulation is too easy to mess up,
As would I and it seems the rest of the community does as well.
and option 3's realistic chances of occurring are slim to none, and Slim done left town.
LOL. :)
<snip verbage about some existing law>
Hmmmm. I need to read that over. Thank you for the reference.
Endusers who just want the thing to work would be all over it. The FCC certainly has the technical expertise in-house to write regs to deal with it. The Commission would issue an NPRM, gather comments and reply comments, issue maybe an FNPRM or three, gather comments and reply comments, mull over it for five years or more, and then issue an R&O that very few will want (at least this is what happened with AM Stereo, HD Radio, and Digital Television). People will file objections to the R&O, the process will churn for a while, maybe with an FR&O, etc. Welcome to the world of regulation. The RFC process is a model of streamlining compared to anything before the Commission. Hmm, on the other hand, maybe that's not hyperbole after all.
Very well thought out comments Lamar. Thank you for taking the time to share them. I think the current whitespace debate is a good example of what you outlined in the above paragraph.
You and Randy are both right; this issue gets rehashed a lot (this is most certainly far from the first time I've seen the discussion pass by). But the reason it keeps coming up is because it is a real problem, and it hasn't been fixed by the people who can fix it, if they will, without getting the cumbersome beast called regulation into play.
Naturally. Now I have something to look at and see how I like it and if I would want to suggest extending the coverage of that regulation. I presume others on the list will want to look at it as well, if they weren't already aware of it. If anyone has evaluated it, I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on the law and how it might apply to the net.