Thinking Out Loud, aka The Broad Gaze
Thoughts on the social impacts of communication policy and educational technology.
It has been far too long since I’ve blogged…
Online social networking and blogs have emerged as one of the heroes from the Virginia Tech shootings. The degree to which individuals and journalists turned to the Internet for up-to-the-minute personal information might be unprecedented. Otherwise, these articles speak for themselves.
University of Florida News – Study: Abandoning net neutrality discourages improvements in service and Study: No net neutrality, no ISP incentive
A game theory study out of the U Florida decision and info science department found a number of factors to support network neutrality. Based on the reports of the forthcoming article, many of the economics-like findings are sort of no-brainers (companies who have to double pay for access and consumers who prefer services which don’t pay for enhanced access are the “losers”). However, one interesting finding which also makes sense is that incentives for communications companies to enhance their infrastructure go down.
Improving the infrastructure reduces the need for online content providers to pay for preferential treatment, Bandyopadhyay said.
“The whole purpose of charging for preferential treatment to content providers is that one content provider gains some edge over the other,†he said. “But when the capacity is expanded, this advantage becomes negligible.â€
I hadn’t considered this, but again it makes sense. When controlling and charging for access to a limited commodity (bandwidth), the provider has greater incentive to keep that commodity limited. It seems as though, if we are to catch up with the better-connected parts of the world, removing incentives to upgrade our network infrastructure might not be a good idea.
I still truly enjoy how the breadth of this debate has brought out so many interesting perspectives. It may be occasionally painted as partisan, but in some areas the quality of reasoning has been remarkable.
The C-Span copyright issue was one I had meant to blog about, but missed the window of opportunity. Thankfully, C-Span has opened their window of allowable use of their expression to include attributed, non-commercial use on the web. This will likely take care of most of the demand for use, but I’m wondering if there are still a few cases where it may not go far enough. Fair use might protect the example of a corporation who wants to post a legislator’s speech for purposes of criticism, but it would not shield them from the threat of a lawsuit.
In my view, a few static cameras and creative software/server tricks could meet the demand for copyright-free governmental material, while still leaving space for C-Span to make quality government television. This could be done at little taxpayer expense and would go far to shed more sunlight on how government works. The problem: image conscious public servants would never go for the idea (on the chance that they might get caught taking a nap or rolling their eyes).
Nevertheless, as Lessig said, “More of course would be better. But first steps are progress [towards openness], and deserve sincere praise.”
Links
This is unbelievable. YouTube just can’t catch a break. 🙂
 