Time Warner Cable tries metering Internet use

You certainly have an altruistic view of these companies. I could understand these upcharges if these companies were drastically improving service or improving our telecommunications infrastructure, but that does not appear to be the case. Not to mention the fact that they have been making money off of the use of what I consider to be the commons (considering the fact that cable does run under and over public property) and most U.S. residents do NOT have a choice when it comes to broadband. Some may be able to choose between two of the telecom giants, but there don't seem to be ANY middle or small market ISPs anymore. Not like when I first jumped online in 1996. Just look at the mobile market, there are competitors sure, but they all seem to offer the exact same rate packages. Much like other oligopolized (new word!) industries such as mobile, oil, and pharmaceuticals, there is a revolting amount of collusion to keep prices high so that everybody wins--except the consumers.

Damn beedee! WORD! You're throwing it down my friend. SO WELL PUT.

All good points, beedee. Your post actually complements mine quite well because it rounds out the perspective from the consumer point of view.

I don't think that any level-headed consumer would be IN SUPPORT OF these upcharges, but I just don't understand why people are so shocked and outraged by them. Time Warner and its competitors are not really in business to provide us with terrific internet access to keep us connected to the world. That is just the means to an end, and that end is to make money.

The same is true in other industries. Whole Foods isn't really in business to provide us with great tasting organic food. That is just the means to an end, and that end is to make money.

Southwest Airlines isn't really in business to help us travel the country quickly and safely at a price that we can afford. That is just the means to an end, and that end is to make money.

Often, as in the case of Whole Foods today (or in the case of ISPs ~10 years ago when they first started offering broadband access), the opportunity to make money lines up well with the opportunity to nobly meet a critical consumer demand. But often, it doesn't. And it is almost paradoxical in the case of any ISP that, 10 years ago, would have been seen as a sort of savior for providing us with fast enough internet access to enable us to download music and watch video online in the first place. And now that those same companies have moved on to the next logical avenue to make money in a sequence that began as a seemingly (and possibly truly) noble endeavor, we deride them.

We're all in the same consumer boat here, but I think it's important for people to realize the reality of business and balance it with consumer, humanitarian, and environmental concerns rather than always diminishing the former as an automatic response, which I've seen on Current quite often. It's not a "fault" of businesses or of capitalism that this occurs, it's just a fact. If we can work with government to establish reasonable regulations on business practices that severely threaten consumer, humanitarian, or environmental rights, then I'm all for it.

So if I'm understanding you correctly, we should not be surprised that a corporation will put profit over the best interests of the common welfare, which in this case would be an expansion of Internet accessibility. After all, can anyone deny that this medium has been proven to be absolutely essential to the health and vitality of our democracy considering the historic candidacy and campaign of Barack Obama? If this sort of metering is allowed to be implemented across the board (as I'm certain it will), it is democracy that will suffer through the diminished usage of sites such as Youtube, Current, and other essential people-powered media. 15gigs ain't shit when you're as active a participant in this movement as I tend to be.

I also would not be surprised to see the telecoms start to allow users to view select 'partner' sites that will be exempt from this metering. It is this stage that will be the undoing of all our hard work to bypass and eradicate the traditional establishment media stranglehold on our socio-political discourse.

BTW, thanks so much for the spirited debate. I'm loving it!

Round 3 again goes to beedee......

DING DING!

I'm more trying to facilitate the debate than take a side in it, but either way, I like it. THIS is what I want Current to be all about, at least for me.

Anyways, you have now touched on the most fundamental struggle that exists today in corporate business. Profits vs. common welfare. Corporations, and the people that work for them, generally WANT to create products and services that are in line with the common good. However, their #1 job, both corporately and individually, is to make a profit. They can then use that profit to either reinvest in the business to help it grow, or to pay it out to shareholders/creditors in the form of dividends/interest. Recognizing that profit is their #1 priority, there is then a second struggle between immediate short term profit and sustainable long term profit. It is pretty safe to say that short term profit and "the common good" are incompatible. However, often the creation of sustainable long term profit is very much aligned with "the common good." I'll use everybody's favorite enemy, the oil companies, as an example. They are selling LOTS of expensive gasoline right now and making a ton of money doing so. But you know, and I know, and most importantly THEY KNOW (most of them, anyways), that that model is not sustainable. So the smart ones are reinvesting an increasingly significant chunk of that short term profit into technologies that are both in line with environmental interests AND have the potential to generate sustainable long term profit.

Without ever having set foot in any oil company boardroom, I can guarantee you that any oil executive worth his salary (side note: some are, some aren't) has considered the strong possibility that, 25 years from now, the company will no longer even be selling oil. And in 25 years, who knows, we might even be praising U.S. "energy" (vs. oil) companies for their record profits -- which, at that point, might be a good sign for both the environment and for the economy -- rather than villainizing them for it.

BTW, I think Current needs to fix the reply-thread formatting. The words are cut off on the right side and the logo badges are missing.

Also, back to the actual topic of this mini-debate rather than the abstract discussion, I completely agree that internet accessibility is something that needs to be VERY carefully reviewed by government to ensure that the interests and rights of individual users are upheld. Because, without government regulation (or the threat of regulation), the logical end state of the ISP business model is pretty clear, assuming that it follows the precedent of every other industry before it.

"Profits vs. common welfare. Corporations, and the people that work for them, generally WANT to create products and services that are in line with the common good. However, their #1 job, both corporately and individually, is to make a profit. They can then use that profit to either reinvest in the business to help it grow, or to pay it out to shareholders/creditors in the form of dividends/interest. Recognizing that profit is their #1 priority, there is then a second struggle between immediate short term profit and sustainable long term profit. It is pretty safe to say that short term profit and "the common good" are incompatible."

There lies the main problem with Capitalism.

The scary thing is that the world has a breaking point.

Your optimism is nice, but I fear their reinvestment into cleaner energies will only really show its face long after the damage of unsustainable energy consumption (ie, the LAST DROP of oil) is spent.

What if all the money in the world for conversion is too little too late?

Furthermore, most energy companies are proposing switches to other DIRTY forms of energy, like coal, and nuclear (with leaves waste that NEVER goes away).

So, likewise, with other corporations (like Time-Warner) this model fails common interests and the common good.

I don't mean to be such a pessimist but I just think this Capitalist/shareholder business model, corrupt government deals and greedy corporate pricks are the main culprits.

Again, I appreciate your position, but I still feel that you are giving corporations the benefit of the doubt to an improper degree. We cannot rely on some mythical 'benevolent corporate leadership'. The public must DEMAND that they act in the public interest by insisting on regulation, not merely hope that everyone play nice and behave with compassion and logic. I don't want to make any assumptions about you personally, but I don't get the sense that you've personally witnessed the power of greed to poison people's minds to the degree that I have in my life. It is a poison against which we must remain constantly vigilant.

Do you at least agree that we should demand some sort of hearings and independent analysis of the this supposed unbearable strain on their network? If we are going to allow something as important as the Internet to be drastically altered, don't we deserve some transparency?

I appreciate that you seem to be playing devil's advocate to a certain extent, I've never verbalized a lot of my concerns about this issue and you're posts have given me that opportunity. It is a welcome breath of fresh air from sites like DailyKos where you are attacked by people left and right if you don't express your views in exact parity with their own.

If you'd like to join the discussion, I've posted this story in diary as well.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/6/4/141246/8439

p.s. I can live with the current method of threading, but it's driving me bonkers not being able to use basic html tags.

Oh, I should have mentioned one more thing. It is the #1 responsibility of corporations to try to earn a (short term or sustainable long term) profit WITHIN THE LIMIT OF THE LAW. This is an important distinction, because the logical deduction is that if and when new laws are enacted to prohibit or limit corporate decisions that are contrary to "the common good" (e.g., establishment of tougher fuel standards or net neutrality laws), then corporations will continue to find ways to succeed under those new conditions, as they always have. They will stretch and bend and test their boundaries as often as possible, but businesses are good at finding ways to compete no matter what. It might hurt one business in the short term, but another one will soon emerge that can succeed within the new legal limits.

Now, in response to both beedee and onechance. To explain my personal position - I am severely PESSIMISTIC about the willingness of PEOPLE to personally stand up to and/or organize a boycott against and/or demand government intervention to stop the practices of some businesses before they become irreversibly destructive. I am pessimistic because most people today seem to have lost or suppressed the ability to THINK critically about an issue like this and see it through to its possible, logical conclusion(s). As a result, they are constantly reacting rather than actively anticipating and trying to influence the outcome, and only after the new reality slaps them in the face do they get angry about it. That said, I (perhaps naively) am still OPTIMISTIC that "the systems" - democracy and capitalism - are in fact the right models that will ultimately lead us to the life that we all want. But it all comes back to the people - people must be willing to think and work and care and just generally stop being a bunch of reactionary, gullible, complacent, and aimless globs. Until then, the PEOPLE are going to let the duty-bound corporations and the corruption-prone government continue to dominate their lives, when it should be the other way around.

Actually, I think China learned everything they know and use from watching and collaborating with US Corporations... (and the Us Gov. ...SAME THING?)