Antitrust lawsuits.

Google says it will bring an anti-trust lawsuit if the ISPs 
overstep their boundaries. (Link dead)

Hey, that’s actually a good thing. We do need a counterbalance to keep the ISPs from blocking content or degrading its performance until it is unusable. The internet should remain roughly the same as it was before or even better with regards to best-effort traffic. If its degraded then the ISPs aren’t doing their job as ISPs and they deserve to lose their customers and be called on it. That shouldn’t preclude them from providing more services to companies that can pay them to help add additional bandwidth though.

The most ironic thing about this is that the company that is bringing it forward is also the same one that got in bed with some of the worst of the worst as far as network neutrality / network censorship goes. A bit of the pot calling the kettle black eh?

Oh well. At least there’s a company willing to look at a non-legislative counterbalance to the ISP’s new powers. This may be the check and balance we need to keep them honest if the free market doesn’t quite succeed. (IE when there’s only a single broadband ISP in an area. Hopefully that will change with the national franchising system though.)

Also, I read another blog over the weekend griping about the conjecture that there’s not enough bandwidth, citing the dark fiber that is strewn everywhere. That’s exactly my point! There’s so much dark fiber because there’s no financial incentive to light it up. There’s no way to make any more profit than they’re making now because if anyone finances it, they don’t really get much benefit from it. Another example of how pure Socialism reduces the quality of life for all, even those on the bottom rung of the ladder. We’ll have to see how this experiment in bringing a mixed market to a previously forced socialistic system works out.