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Did you just suggest that "Net Neutrality" as an idea is a good thing
but somehow those who are pretending to enforce it are (a) not legally
authorized, (b) incapable of enforcing it for the reason you described?
Let me start here: Net neutrality is a fundamentally flawed idea.
The idea of Net Neutrality as bad idea and killer of innovation in
market and technology was settled as rejected, at least in the United
States, until the content providers like Facebook, Google, Netflix,
lobbied US government and FCC to get it reopened. Not yet settled but I
do not know how it will pan out in short term. Politics is strange
animal. Eventually, those who oppose net neutrality may find a
workaround to their issues. If such thing does happen, I can bet you it
will be at the cost of consumers. Eventual winner will be content
providers who will be able to ship their pay load across to consumers
without paying a single dime for the carrier charges. We should never
underestimate the power of rivals to collude and close ranks. Not a bad
thought by itself, but not good for consumers if the only purpose of
such a collusion is to escape the unresonable demands of Net Neutrality.
To explain how the special and corporate interests take control of
government and its agencies to answer your question, "what power", I
wish to point to a quote attributed to William Conner.
/"We are living in a sick Society filled with people who would not
directly steal from their neighbors but who are willing to demand that
the government do it for them." /
Let me reword it to highlight the nature of this debate. Allow me to
use name of stakeholders in American Market because I am not very
familiar with the players in Indian market and their positions on this
matter.
We are living in a sick Society filled with people [ like Netflix,
Facebook, Google ] who would not directly steal from their neighbors [
like AT&T, Verizon, Comcast etc] but who are willing to demand that
the government [President, FCC, Congress, Senate] do it for them [in
the name of consumers, the "public good" fallacy].
What consumers need to understand is that they are the one who finally
pay all the bills and the free market works best for them. Tenets of
free market and non-intervention in private and business life must not
be abandoned even if a corporation of appears to acquire Monopoly
power. Monopolies rarely last for long because the lure of huge profits
attracts substitutes wishing to take some of market share away from
monopolies.
I have not been able to follow the latest developments in India very
deeply so I am not well versed with the details on the net neutrality.
But, knowledge of details is irrelevant. A bad thing is bad everywhere.
The sooner we get rid of the notion of the Net Neutrality, better for
everyone.
Also, I love the hackers you mentioned. But, I want them to operate
legally and without fear of law. Sure, some hackers know how to bribe
low level govt officials to bypass the ban. But, why put legal
restriction. Indian hackers are better situated to understand the Indian
markets and innovate new products that Indian consumer need, if we do
not outlaw them.
Most of the laws that get broken are the ones that should not have been
enacted to begin with.
Sincerely,
Ratnendra Pandey
On 12/31/2015 10:04 PM, Arun Mehta wrote:
> A key question that needs answering in this controversy, is what
> powers the government even has, to stop something like Free Basics?
> TRAI only has powers over tariffs. Unless you go back to the draconian
> Indian Telegraph Act -- what a country, that uses 19th century
> legislation to stop 21st century services...
>
> My attitude towards Free Basics is no different to any challenges to
> net neutrality. Looking at a packet to decide what to do with it, is
> highly counter-productive in an age of optical routing and fiber
> optics. It is cheaper to offer the full Internet, than to restrict it.
>
> Then again, hackers will find workarounds. Back in the days when you
> had email-only access, one way to gain some degree of web access was
> to mail the url to a particular address, which fetched the page and
> mailed it back to you.
>
> It's a bad idea, not the first in the Indian telecom space. I believe
> we should let the market deal with it, rather than setting a bad
> precedent.
>
> Arun Mehta
>
> On Thu, Dec 31, 2015 at 3:29 AM, Ratnendra Pandey <[email protected]
> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>
>
> But, it saddens me to note that business owners have to lie and
> spend money on lobbying with legislators and bribe government
> bureacrats just to be able to do honest business. Note the irony.
> You have to be dishonest to do business honestly.
>
>
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