Jay Sulzberger is a loopy open-source advocate from New York and essentially a Marxist. His contribution about net neutrality to the FTC is about the funniest attempt at advocacy I’ve ever read. Here’s a little:
Now cable TV is not the Internet, but most speakers at the FTC’s workshop spoke of the Net in ways that treated it as if it were just a form of interactive TV, with some extra special services bundled with interactive TV, “web viewing”, email, and doubtfully, voice over IP.
Questions around building another, perhaps several other, cable TV networks, are not part of the issue of Network Neutrality, because the Net is not TV of any kind.
Use of the word “broadband” to mean both the Net and cable TV helps perpetuate the fundamental confusion.
He goes on to throw a lot of dirt at a “duopoly” and tout the wonders of the Quote of the Day port. How this guy manages to feed himself on a regular basis is a complete mystery to me, but David Weinberger calls his rant “lucid.” Clearly, that’s a relative term.
Sulzberger is confused about the scope of net neutrality in particular and broadband regulation generally. When AT&T said Google wasn’t going to be allowed to use its pipes for free, the issue under discussion was IPTV, a broadband service that is perhaps easily confused with Internet subscriber service, but not actually identical. IPTV runs alongside voice and Internet subscriber services on residential broadband networks, but not through the Internet service. AT&T couldn’t care less about messing with QOTD, but they’re very serious about making money from IPTV.
Misguided and nonsensical ravings of this type aren’t really helping anybody, but they’re never going to stop. The Jay Sulzbergers and David Weinbergers of this world need to believe that an evil conspiracy is out to shut down QOTD, and no amount of rational argument will persuade them otherwise.
I do get amazed thatthere is so much talk over this.
Google and its ilk want to be content providers.
Microsoft wants to expand its hegemony outside the PC.
Carriers want to be content providers. And they want to bilk the public but not upgrade their networks.
And content providers want to be everything.
Missing from all of this is what consumers want and deserve on their infrastructure.
Google has undeniably an outstanding business model, and while they’ve stepped on a few content providers’ toes (like they should complain – if anything they owe their viewership to Google) it’s closer to what ultimately serves the consumer than any of the other characters in this sorry state of affairs.
Ah, but I don’t care all that much; I can soon talk about all the neat stuff I’ve been doing…
You’re wrong when you say the carriers aren’t upgrading their networks, as they undeniably spend billions every year on fatter pipes, fiber to the home (Verizon) and fiber to the neighborhood (AT&T). Their investment is a matter of public record.
The so-called content companies want to leverage this investment for their own good, which is fine as long as they don’t get so greedy that it ceases to make financial sense for the carriers to continue doing it.
You wouldn’t buy AT&T stock at this point, would you?
I wouldn’t buy any tech stock till after the crash. This is a tempest in a teapot compared to the subprime thing.
I know it’s not your beat, but this is going to be the tipping point, as that gnome Gladwell would say.