Archived Trumps Supreme Court pick, Brett Kavanaugh: ISPs have 1st Amendment right to block websites (arstechnica.com)
submitted ago by oddjob
Posted by: oddjob
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Archived on: 10/9/2018 10:00:00 AM
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Archived Trumps Supreme Court pick, Brett Kavanaugh: ISPs have 1st Amendment right to block websites (arstechnica.com)
submitted ago by oddjob
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[–] WestEnd99 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
The issue is the corporations want it both ways. They want the right to "police" their platforms but they also want common carrier protection. As far as I'm concerned, as soon as they start choosing what goes over their lines they are now responsible for all it. They become a party to any illegal activity performed on their network (if they are person they have to accept personal responsibility). That would be where I draw the line. Make the choice optional. They can accept net neutrality rules and be protected under common carrier designation or reject net neutrality and be responsible for everything on their network.
There are no easy solutions. The barrier to entry for telecom is huge. You need tens of billions of dollars (probably hundreds of billions) to build out a network that would be competitive with the incumbents (which were built via government subsidies over decades) . You can try mandating open access to incumbent networks (treat them more like utilities) but that can get messy fast (although it has worked in other countries). Or you could try lowering the barrier to entry by mandating free access to right of ways for installing telecom infrastructure (but even with that the barriers will still be high and some resources like radio spectrum are finite and already mostly allocated).