[GRLUG] new Comcast mail blocking?

[John-Thomas Richards]

On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 03:01:10PM -0500, John-Thomas Richards wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 02:17:16PM -0500, Tim Schmidt wrote:
> > > I agree it's stupid, but it's not the same thing as draconian new laws.
> > > Censorship is what *governments* do, not businesses.  If I own a radio
> > > station and I don't want to play any songs about drunken brawls in bars,
> > > that ain't censorship.  It's my business and I choose which products to
> > > offer and in what manner to offer them.  If the government tells me I
> > > cannot play songs about drunken brawls in bars, that is censorship and
> > > completely unacceptable.  As much as I dislike what Comcast is doing,
> > > it's their business.  I could always get DSL or U-Verse.
> > 
> > This logic fails when the business you are talking about is a
> > government-sanctioned monopoly / duopoly.
> 
> I love competition in business.  I hate the notion of nationalizing
> businesses (especially the Big 3 auto companies).  I dislike the idea of
> the government bailing out any business.  I strongly support free market
> economics.  The government should not have given massive tax
> breaks/incentives to companies for the laying of coax or fiber or copper
> or good ol' interweb tubes.  But the fact is Comcast is free (and should
> remain so) to offer whatever services they want to offer, in the manner
> they want to offer them.  I think blocking any ports and preventing me
> from hosting a server with the bandwidth for which I pay is a really,
> really dumb idea.  I recognize that the alternatives are limited for
> most people (though I would argue that we're really just talking about
> discrepancies in bandwidth, to wit, DSL speeds vs. cable speeds vs.
> dial-up speeds and not in actual choice).  If I had the only radio
> station on this side of the state, the government should have no right
> to tell me what music to play.  Even if Comcast was the only ISP
> available, the government should not be able to tell it how to run its
> business.

[This is me disagreeing with myself.]  The government should recognize
that internet access is a utility and should enforce net neutrality.  If
internet access is truly a utility, then ISPs should offer pipes to the
net with no filtering or port blocking whatsoever.  Let them compete on
service and speed.

> The actual point I was trying to make, however, is that businesses
> making business decisions (the merit of those decisions notwithstanding)
> is not in the same category as government censorship or government civil
> rights abuses.  I was not trying to argue whether Comcast is or should
> or shouldn't be a government-sponsored monopoly.  Because it is a
> privately-held (even if publically-traded) business, it can make
> whatever decisions it wants to make.  That's not draconian.
-- 
john-thomas
------
Men are idolaters, and want something to look at and kiss and hug, or throw
themselves down before; they always did, they always will; and if you don't
make it of wood, you must make it of words.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., poet, novelist, and physician (1809-1894)