Please make your comments on your answer in the discussion section below.
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But what does “free as a public water fountain” really mean? Public water fountains are owned and operated by some organization, which makes decisions about access, bandwidth, etc. For example, the public water fountains in are municipal parks are owned and operated by our municipal government, which makes decisions about which when they will function and when they are turned off (for the winter). Public water fountains in the mall are presumably owned and operated by the private corporation that owns and operates the mall. They make decisions around bandwidth (water pressure) and access (hours of operation).
We’ve all chosen “No one”, but isn’t that really a cop out? Maybe the real answer is all of the above, in terms of providing, and none of the above, in terms of limiting.
@Harlan Wax- Sorry about that- that’s the setting I have turned on for all of my blog posts. I’m not trying to regulate anyone! 🙂
@David Tallan- I think you make a good point; however, cloud (grid) technology now allows us to solve any real issues of upkeep. If there were volunteer “nodes” that comprised the grid for the entire Internet, it may be feasible that no “oversight” would be necessary. Kind of a shared access thing… if everyone participated in the “you have to pay to play” node-cooperation thing, it would also cut down on hacking, worms, trojans, spam, spyware, etc., because EVERYONE is invested in the upkeep. By the default design of a grid, you can’t hack it very easily- the information is scattered out among the nodes, (to piece something together, you need the node pieces to fit like a completed puzzle to make any sense of the information). Just my thoughts. 🙂
I see Skynet written all over this… duh, uh. lol
~ Arvind
Would offer that a case could be made that some level of government should have the ability to manage content adhering to various court decisions as to what falls under the description of free speech.
Would offer that Service Providers with oversight from the government should be in charge of bandwidth.
My suggestion is that access would probably fall under the Service Providers, BUT IMO anyone could become a Service Provider as long as they are willing to pay for that privilege
IMHO…
The internet for personal use should be no more than 20.00 per person per year. That includes home and cell phone access. That includes your user authentication and unlimited access to the internet. Let’s see that would be $6 Billiion or so…the revenue would go to the FCC.
If you don’t buy this plan (opt-out), then you can pay what the carriers want to charge you. Businesses would still have to pay for their internet access…
As for content regulation I am in favor of self-regulation and not letting the FCC or others decide what should or should not be on the internet.
I don’t know how to answer your poll question…maybe you could break it into three separate questions….