The WGA and New Media – or – The iCarly Paradox
Posted by Craig Mazin on 12 Mar 2010 at 01:23 pm | Tagged as: The Craft & Trade, WGA Issues
She's not smiling because of the internet...
My daughter loves iCarly. For those of you without young children, iCarly is a sitcom on Nickelodeon about three middle-schoolers who create and webcast their own show on the internet. The webcast is extremely popular, and it gets them into all sorts of hijinks. How popular? In one recent episode, a Howard Hughes-ish billionaire invites the kids from iCarly to travel into space and do their web show in orbit.
Now that you’re up to speed on what my preschooler watches, let me whiplash segue to the WGA.
For a while now, the WGAw has been deeply enamored of New Media. Part of its interest has centered around proper residuals formula for the creation and exploitation of works by the companies. That’s largely what we struck over.
However, it’s just as fascinated with the creation of independent internet content by WGA members. At first blush, it all makes sense. Writers have always (and properly) insisted that we are the prime originators of motion picture entertainment. Why shouldn’t the WGA promote a brave new world in which WGA members own their own product…a world that eliminates the need for the rapacious companies? The internet kills the middle man! The stronger we are on the internet, the weaker the companies’ hand is during negotiations.
These are all reasons why, for instance, the WGA has taken a position in favor of net neutrality; the union wants to make sure there’s an even playing field for its own members as they create the new Foxes and Warner Brothers of the great cyber future.
There’s just one problem with all of that.
We don’t need the WGA to help us put material on the internet any more than we need the companies. That’s the point of the internet. Middlemen be damned. If I have an idea for a great web show, and I get it on the internet, and it becomes a real life iCarly that people visit in droves, then I certainly don’t require the assistance of a labor union. The WGA exists to represent employees of a cartel, for lack of a better word.
And, of course, the folks running the union understand this. So why all this evangelism of “stop being an employee” from an institution that does nothing but service the needs of employees?
Resentment.
Sometimes, the WGA goes after the companies because it wants more for its members. Thank God it does. Credit determination, residuals, health care, pension, creative rights, separated rights, minimums, parity in advertising…these are just a few of the benefits we enjoy because the union (i.e. leadership and membership together) did its job and did it well.
Sometimes, however (and more and more since 2005), the WGA goes after the companies because it just presumes that “if it’s bad for the companies, it’s good for us.”
Usually that’s true. But not always. And not this time.
It’s fun to promote a vision of the future where sisters are doin’ it for themselves. “Screw the fat cats! We don’t need them anymore!” is a great chunk of red meat to throw to a group of people who are understandably aggrieved. Unfortunately, and perhaps counterintuitively, we’re probably just making things worse.
How? Well, consider the paradox of iCarly. It’s a show about a really, really popular internet webcast. That part, of course, is an absurd bit of fiction. There is no such thing as an independent variety show on the web as popular as iCarly is implied to be. There are blogs like this one, there are podcasts that occasionally light up in exciting ways (Kevin Smith of late), but an actual show that people watch episodes of for entertainment? The web just isn’t very good at that kind of persistent viewing experience. It’s great for sketches, bits, one-offs…but a show with consistent characters working over the course of multiple episodes, season after season?
Not really. There have been some (I enjoyed Red vs. Blue for a while), but did any of them actually make it out there in the way that a hit TV show does?
And there’s the paradox. iCarly, a show about the cutting edge world of cyberentertainment, is actually incredibly old school. It’s a half-hour sitcom. Running on a cable network.
And because it’s a sitcom running on a cable network, it is vastly…and I mean VASTLY…more popular than any webcast out there.
As exciting and empowering as the web suggests it can be, there’s still no real money out there for us. It’s not like people haven’t tried, but the exceptions seem to prove the rule. Dr. Horrible was an internet hit and pretty much the best thing anyone’s done for the web (IMHO), but any given episode of Buffy was probably seen by more people.
Remember Strike TV? Well, that was WGAers doin’ it for themselves…but the bright future seems to still be in the future.
The lesson of iCarly is simple, to me. The idea of internet programming is cool and interesting and fresh. The reality is that traditional programming still dominates the culture. It’s fine for the WGA to find and use wedges against the companies, but let’s not shoot ourselves in the foot. iCarly, which I believe is covered under the guild, generates so much more for its writers than any web show ever has.
So shouldn’t we be concerned primarily with protecting the actual writers of iCarly, as opposed to the theoretical writers of internet shows like the one portrayed on iCarly?
If net neutrality reduces the companies’ ability to monetize their programming on the internet, it reduces the basis upon which we draw residuals from internet reuse…which was the thing we all struck over back in ’07/’08. Is that really what we want?
When it comes to negotiating the formula, what’s good for us is bad for them. It’s a purely adversarial relationship that must be negotiated, and occasionally resolved on the field of battle.
But when it comes to protecting the revenue on which those formulas apply…what’s good for us is what’s good for them, and we can’t let our resentment get in the way of that.
I love the internet (obviously). Still, the WGA needs to carefully evaluate its approach to New Media. The kids on iCarly are actors, and their webcast is make-believe.
But the men and women sitting in a room writing the cable program about that make-believe?
They’re real. They’re employees. They’re supporting our membership with real dues and real P&H contributions.
And they should come first.
Right. So net neutrality is bad? Or it’s bad for the studios? Technically it’s great for mankind, because it cuts out a way for the conglomerations to monetize their proprietary bandwidth. It doesn’t really do anything to limit the studios’ ability to monetize their programs, but it might limit the amount of bandwidth their subscription based systems get, thus the “broadcast” quality. Now, if the argument is that the WGA shouldn’t really have taken a side in this fight, because it doesn’t really matter to the best interests of the WGA and it seems to just be a way to piss off the studios, then, yes, that makes complete sense. There was no need for the WGA to pick a horse. But to draw from that that net neutrality could bad for the guild? That’s a bit of a stretch. Now, I might have spoken too broadly when I said net neutrality is great for mankind, but net neutrality is great for the internet, the information, equality of voices, and for small companies trying to launch video streams. If it’s a stretch to say that information and equality are good for mankind, then yes, it’s a stretch. I don’t think so though.
Net neutrality, coupled with residuals, allows us to have our cake and eat it too. If we create internet content for someone else we receive residuals. If we create for ourselves, we have total control. It might seem schizophrenic, but we’re really just covering all of our bases in a medium that has not yet been fully explored.
Independent mainstream entertainment via the internet isn’t as far away as you think. All it is going to take to crack the dam is for your DVR to be able to record Red Vs. Blue from the internet right alongside Burn Notice from USA.
We need to give the WGA some credit here. They have been notorious for closing the stable door after the horse has already bolted when it comes to technology. It’s good they ‘re trying grab the internet by the horns now, whether it’s ultimately necessary or not.
Think of George Lucas and Bill Gates.
Fox, “Merchandising rights? Those are useless. Sure, take them.”
IBM, “There’s no money to be made in software. Sure, you can keep your operating system.”
Fortunes are made by thinking just far enough ahead of the other guy. That is what the WGA is trying to do right now, while the studios are still treating the internet as a niche market.
Here’s my concern with net neutrality. Let’s say the companies want to strike a deal with ISP’s for tiered service. That is, you can get broadband from ATT for $X a month, but for $X + a premium, you can get Broadband Plus Streaming HD Shows!
If the ISP’s can carve out the programming we create and charge more for it, and that money flows to the companies, and our residuals take a piece of that money, then I’m going to argue that this is the best chance of actually monetizing the internet for writers…and we do not want to be standing in the way of that.
Net neutrality would, as I understand it, make the above structure an impossibility.
Furthermore, as writers, we have a stake in any technology that negatively impacts piracy.
Piracy reduces our residual rate to 0%. This is one of the rare circumstances in which our interests align perfectly with the companies. Fighting them on this feels shortsighted to me. I’d rather fight them on health care, pension, creative rights, minimums and general working conditions.
This one is one we can actually agree on.
“Net neutrality would, as I understand it, make the above structure an impossibility.”
For broadband + streaming shows, yes, that wouldn’t be impossible, just bandwidth limiting. You could package a Hulu subscription with a broadband deal easily, but you wouldn’t be able to relegate extra bandwidth to Hulu because they’re paying the ISP more money than, say, google. So it wouldn’t be impossible, but it would be impractical and unlikely.
What is still possible, and already happening left right and center, is broadband packaged with cable complete with Video On Demand. I assume the agreement covers VOD, as that’s a better quality way to regulate and package subscription media. Now, it’s just up to the ISPs to offer that for a fee without needing the broadcast cable service and you have exactly the same service you’re mentioning- only instead of it streaming over the internet, it’s VOD from the ISP/cable provider. As they are one and the same company in the near future, if not already.
If I understand it right, consumers can still pay more for extra bandwidth, but net neutrality keeps the ISPs from charging high bandwidth demanding companies (Hulu, Youtube) extra to be carried on a ‘premium’ line. It wouldn’t affect ISP -> home service offers. It would affect how the individual websites/server farms interact with the physical lines laid by private ISPs which connect to the internet at large.
At least that was my understanding of net neutrality when the issue first arose over a year ago.
Craig – I’m not sure I follow how piracy issues and genuine net neutrality issues are linked. I don’t mean this rhetorically, I’d really like to hear the expanded, not soundbite argument of how the sort of net neutrality the WGA or responsible Internet interest groups advocate precludes successful anti-piracy measures. Your post doesn’t give any concrete illustrations of what the problem might be. And on reflection, I’ve never actually seen a concrete description of the problem in the media or the tech magazines – just sloganeering.
Yes, to be sure, if the Internet were entirely privatized and a handful of companies allowed to monopolize its content, there would be no piracy. But there would also be no private email (email attachments would have to be scanned to be sure they weren’t communicating pirated content), etc. I know you’re not advocating that, but short of that, how concretely does piracy and equal access by non-criminal users on the Web interact?
As for maximizing the revenue of the surviving major media companies on the net by allowing a degree of monopolization, that’s a point I’m ready to debate. I agree that no one should want out of spite to reduce the revenue pool that writers and other talent share in from the major companies. But I’d much rather see independent and specialty production and distribution companies also thrive on the Net. Having worked for several years at Cannell, a successful writer-owned TV production and distribution company that expired along with fin-syn “broadcast neutrality”, to coin an analogy, I’ve directly experienced the model of how net neutrality can restore an era of independent production that creates enormous opportunity -and revenue – for writers.
If you think the future of the Internet is 5 minute webisodes, sure, there’s no point in paying it any attention. If you think in the next 5 or 10 years Netflix-like streaming or rapid mail delivery services are going to continue to grow in market share, and that independent producers may produce directly for these services and by-pass the studios, then you may care much more about Net issues, and really not want to encourage economic concentration on the Net.
As another example, about the time Farscape was canceled by Sci-Fi, we made the simple calculation that if our hard-core fans made a micro-payment of 25 or even 50 cents an episode and there was a way to distribute it to them…we’d be in profit on the first day of release…and without broadcasters or cable services taking a share, giving notes… or canceling us. This wasn’t a daydream about writers owning the company or cooking up something in their basement, it meant that six sound stages in Australia and offices in the US and Britain, etc., originally founded by Jim Henson would be producing the same show with the same values and same budget…and that the same numbers watching us just in the US – not even the rest of the world – coughed up a direct tiny payment.
Some of this makes me wonder if your perspective as a tent-pole feature writer may differ from the perspective of a TV writer or feature writers who want to work on smaller budget, independent films. Sure, to make a big-budget feature film, it’s handy to have very big studios around to finance them. But i think you may be underestimating the negative impact on every other category of production.
In general, extreme concentration isn’t a good thing for an economy. We’ve all seen what banking and investment concentration, defense industry concentration, even concentration of seed production for farmers (see this week’s LA Times) has done. The ultimate concentration, after all, is state central planning like in the good old Soviet Onion. Perfect capitalism requires a perfectly efficient marketplace with an infinite number of sellers and buyers with perfect knowledge – a neutral Internet is just about the most perfect capitalistic marketplace one can conceive. I really think we ought to give it a chance.
I love you, Craig. And I generally agree with your assessment of the current economic state of the Internet. But Carl just said it better than I ever could.
Carleton Eastlake (and Ian):
Thanks for the thoughtful response. I have strong opinions about almost everything you raise, and I’m happy to better explain my positions as well.
First, however, I have to get some pages done.
I hope to respond to your comments tomorrow as a new blog piece specifically on the topic net neutrality…and the WGA as agent for the non-employee.
The single biggest thing that the providers should be doing to kill piracy, but can’t under net neutrality, is throttle peer-to-peer. To death, preferably. I’ve yet to see a legitimate use for it – it’s just a way to share pirated material without hosting it on a server that can be shut down.
Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.
Interesting point re “removing the middleman” applies to unions as well. I hadn’t really thought of that before. It’s true tho.
As a guy who has worked 25 yrs for a membership association of professionals, in middleish roles re decision making, this sort of strikes me two ways. I know those people. I am those people. We want to do our best for the interests of the membership, and strive for that every day. We work with “you” every day. If we’ve been there any length of time we know and like a goodly number of “you” on a personal basis, and take pride in our service in your interest. Ego pretty much requires that, yes?
Two levels above me, I can see where they’d be more in “survival for the entity” mode.
Tho, come to think of it, WGAw morphing over time into a professional association that provides services (including group rate insurance), research, and advocacy rather than a “union” is a model that could develop.
Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.
And of course, the elected or appointed (committess and such) volunteer (rather than professional staff) leadership of a union or professional association is a fill in the blank first, and union warrior a distant second.
Jeff – I don’t have much love for most peer-to-peer either (my wife’s novels are all on pirated download sites; one of her cousins is a pretty well know musician who I’d guess has lost millions to pirating). But I don’t understand how throttling makes much difference to pirates. If you really don’t want to pay anything, you’ll be patient. if you want to make a real dent in piracy, I’d expect you’d have to actually prevent, not just slow, downloads.
What throttling does do is let something like a NBC-Comcast or Time-Warner prevent rivals from successfully selling streamed content and make rivals’ paid, licensed downloads relatively less desirable since they take so long. Piracy will continue, but legitimate competition will be strangled in its bed.
At least that’s my (possibly flawed) understanding of the issue. But I’d be very interested in hearing any discussion of how unregulated throttling could actually be beneficial. Most of the time one just hears sloganeering from companies who clearly have as much or more interest in preventing competition than they do in thwarting piracy and don’t seem to have any interest at all in offering a full explanation of how throttling would be beneficial to anyone except them.
I download hella shit offa the internets, often in hella high quality.
Don’t none you all stop that shit or I’ll be forced to mix a bitch.
The phrase “net neutrality” is a bit slippery, since there doesn’t seem to be a standard, agreed-upon definition. So let me ask a specific hypothetical:
You’re at your computer. You pay your Internet Provider a fee for access to the internet, at a guaranteed, legally-enforceable. minimum speed. You decide that the content you want to look at it is a specific movie.
So there’s a website that offers that movie as streaming video. You have two choices: you can watch it for free, or you can pay $1. If you watch it for free, it will steam at normal network speed — meaning, depending on time of day and network traffic, it may be subject to pauses and buffering.
However, if you pay the $1, its guaranteed that the movie will stream with no buffering. You will be able to pause, fast forward and reverse, just like on a DVR.
This can be guaranteed because, at the other end of the pipeline, the distributor has paid the IP a premium to prioritize certain data (say, data that uses its speciality player application) at the high end of the broadband spectrum. It has no effect on the low-end traffic — ie, everything that is not this data is still guaranteed to move at no less than the minimum speed.
So the IP is not throttling transfer speeds, its not discriminating among subscribers, and its not discriminating in regards to content.
Would this scheme be compatible or incompatible with the WGAW’s position on “net neutrality”?
-Ted
Ted – I agree. Net neutrality can mean many things and often seems to be discussed in vague terms, possibly for the same reasons the supposed linkage to piracy is left so vague.
But first I ought to caution that I can’t say how any of this applies to the WGA’s position: I’m not a spokesperson for the Guild. I’m only asking my own questions so I can arrive at a more informed understanding. Sure, that will inform my votes on the board in the future, but I’m only one of twenty members.
Anyway, I don’t think I have a general objection to pure, unadorned tier or volume pricing as illustrated by your specific hypothetical. It exacts compensation for maintaining and expanding the Internet in proportion, roughly, to the value to the user. It internalizes their costs. This is fully consistent with a true free enterprise economy.
But…big but…having said that, my answer only applies if the right answers are given to the following mostly loaded questions:
= Will any distributor be allowed to pay the $1 and stream? I.e., will the charges as such be in that sense neutral?
= If only certain distributors are allowed to stream at high-speed at that price, how will they be selected? (Will I be allowed to purchase a preferential stream at that price, or will only my rivals?)
= To qualify to steam at that price, will a provider also have to pay a million dollars in registration fees and a share of their gross to the ISP? or nothing or something in between?
= Will it only be $1, or will it become $10 dollars and then $20 dollars until users are forced in a practical sense to only buy content from the one ISP?
= How will this effect piracy? I suspect for $1 instead of $5 or $10 for a legitimate copy, most pirate customers will just wait for a slow download anyway. So why is this (very vaguely) being endorsed by some as an anti-piracy measure?
(If the answer is that the ISPs won’t give passage to pirates at all, how will they know someone is a pirate? Will private security companies have to investigate you before you’re allowed on the net? Who will pay for the investigation? Will an ISP be allowed to select its own political content providers? Or determine that no pro-creationism or pro-evolution content is transmitted? How will they police you so once registered you don’t switch to being a pirate – will all data streams be unencrypted and open to warrantless examination by the ISPs security operatives? And why not just have the actual real police agencies do these investigations now and arrest and prosecute the pirates – what does any of this have to do with tiered pricing or other issues related to net neutrality?)
=How do we allocate compensation among the end-user’s ISP, the content provider’s ISP and intervening backbone carriers?
=How do we actually guarantee a content provider that if it pays a higher-speed fee, the unrelated ISP on the other side of the world will actually be able and willing to deliver at that speed? But if we only charge the end-user a premium, well, back to the question above – how does everyone else get compensated?
= Who determines the answers to all these questions and then enforce the answers? A state or federal agency? An international agency, since so much is streamed internationally?
= If no one enforces this and we just hand over the Internet to private near-monopoly or monopoly ISPs, well we’ve seen what unregulated privatization did to the California electric power market and Enron, and to the derivatives market, and to health care. And the Internet has become pretty much as essential a utility as electric power, an international banking system, or health care. Wouldn’t a lack of regulation lead to territorial monopolies as destructive as the original Standard Oil Trust that ultimately monopolizes much of the economy, including news, on-line retailing of all goods, etc. – and not just entertainment? How would an Apple ever emerge in competition to IBM if major existing companies were permitted to negotiate a fee structure with ISPs that in practice excluded startups? And, too, what will prohibit established companies, etc., from going to war by negotiating exclusionary deals with ISPs, rather than compete on quality and price?
Seriously – these just a few of the questions. I support anti-piracy measures (and when I was a lawyer addressed one of the first Anti-Piracy conventions at Disney World on the need for far better law enforcement after I supervised a fairly massive federal investigation of a life-critical product counterfeiting case) and pending a better analysis, I think I support pricing in proportion to consumption, just like with a water bill. But I suspect it better be neutral consumption pricing, the neutrality of which is strictly enforced, or we’ll end up very quickly with a catastrophe.
But…what are the arguments pro and con that I’m overlooking? What do you and Craig think?
Carleton -
I should have added, “to the best of your knowledge?” to my question. I’ve been trying to figure out what the WGAW’s position on net neutrality actually is. But, setting that aside for a moment (and acknowledging that you are not in any way speaking for the WGAW):
In my hypothetical, its the end-user the pays the $1 directly to the distributor The distributor pays the IP to “push” the data through at a higher speed. The “push” service would be available to anyone, but since the market would determine the cost, it may not affordable to all.
This is the reverse from the kind of tiered system usually contemplated, where IPs can’t charge anyone anything extra to upload and distribute content, but can charge end-users extra for above-minimum services — pay more, get faster access rates, that kind of thing. While that’s likely to be the way things shake out, I don’t think that’s the best possible system.
But, either system amounts to the same thing: the end-user pays to receive content at a faster-than-standard rate. The difference is, in my hypothetical, the IP does not receive any of that extra money directly from the end-user; in the more common example, the IP sets the prices.
If you can afford it, you get it. One the key rules that the FCC is (probably) going to propose to Congress on Tuesday is, IPs cannot unreasonably or unjustly discriminate among subscribers (which would include distributors, natch). That seems like a good rule to me (I do wish I knew where the WGAW stood on it …).
Again, it would be what the market can bear. In my hypothetical, the IPs would be competing for the distributor’s dollars for improved service, rather than the end-users dollars. All end-users pay their IPs X for the same service, with no additional charges.
I think people misunderstand how a tiered internet would affect piracy (either version). The real key to exploiting the copyright in any intellectual property comes down to, providing, controlling and limiting public access to the property. Some forms of access are in-and-themselves sufficient control — access via live performance, for instance. It can’t be duplicated, and while someone could record that performance, the very act of recording it would be illegal.
Exhibition of movies in movie theaters is another form of access that is subject to the same controls. An audience member can’t record what’s on the screen without breaking the law.
As this stands, those controls do not really exist on the internet. If a digital copy of a movie or tv show — actually, a perfect duplicate of the original is more like it — is made accessible to the public, then it can be copied and distributed to the public without any control by the copyright owner.
So the question is, how to give copyright owners the ability to limit public access to digital content made available on the internet?
One possibility: make access to the content – here, the digital data itself — more difficult for the public than other data. Its not the cost that discourages piracy, or the lower delivery speed — its the fact that if you want the data that equals a perfect duplicate of an original, you can only get it by going to a specific website, licensing the exhibition according to the distributor (and, so, copyright owner’s) terms, and using that website’s special player.
In any system, the copyright owner has an interest in making technological innovations that improve their control over their content. In my hypothetical system, the IPs would likewise be encouraged to invest in technological innovation to the same ends, in order to attract distributors to their service, instead of others.
And, yeah, all technology can be defeated — but the more sophisticated the technology, the more specialized the tools necessary to illegally manipulate must become. When people used a piece of a rope and a peg to lock their doors, anyone could be a burglar. But as locks became more sophisticated, the tools necessary to crack a lock became more specialized. Just as it became possible to legislate and regulate the possession of specialized tools necessary to crack locks, so, too, could it become possible to legislate and regulate the specialized tools necessary to crack anti-piracy technology.
Anyway, the point is: tiered delivery in any form does not in-and-of-itself defeat piracy. However, tiered delivery in-and-of-itself could provide copyright owners greater control over public access to their content.
(Stupidest thing the studios ever did: sell-through video. It made ‘em a pile of cash, in exchange to decreasing the exploitable value of their libraries. If I have permanent access to Casablanca, then the copyright owner won’t be seeing a dime from me for future access).
I think government regulation of IPs is necessary, in the same way that government regulation of telecoms was/is necessary. I think part of that regulation should set standards for minimum access speeds, prices, and intra-IP compatibility and cooperation. I don’t think I should have to pay extra to receive data relayed across a server farm owned by someone other than my IP or the distributor’s IP.
Okay, at this point, I don’t understand your position. In your first post, you said:
Isn’t a “perfect capitalistic system” one that is free of any regulation or external control? (Of course, it seems to me that perfect capitalistic system would have to allow the development of privately-owned monopolies, too, so …).
See, this is what I was talking about at the start of my first post: the lack of agreement on exactly what “net neutrality” is.
See, I don’t think I’m favor of net neutrality … because even though I oppose any regulation or control of content transmitted via the internet, I am in favor of governmental regulation of the technological side of the internet. As far as I’m concerned, the fact that broadband is not already available to everyone nationwide means the free market has failed. Private companies don’t want to invest in expanding broadband coverage into markets they perceive as unprofitable. As far as I can see, they will only do so if the government takes a hand.
Which means, I guess, I’m opposed to the WGAW’s position in favor of net neutrality.
Even though, if the WGAW website is any measure, the only concern the WGAW has about net neutrality has to do with prohibiting IPs ability to discriminate among lawful content.
Which, like I said is actually one of the rules the FCC is likely going to propose to Congress as part of the Broadband Initiative.
Which, my understanding is, is not consistent with pro-”net neutrality” arguments.
I don’t get it.
I don’t know what Craig thinks about net neutrality specifically. I’d be surprised if his position is much different than mine, but, then, he has kids, so he may have a different opinion regarding availability to content.
But I do agree with Craig on the larger point of his essay — that the WGAW, as a representative for collective bargaining on behalf of employees who write content for use in motion pictures, should always put those interests ahead of any interests the membership may have in becoming producers of motion pictures.
(with “producer” having the meaning it does in “Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers,” and not the meaning it has in “Produced by …”).-Ted
Actually I think we’re mostly in agreement. The point about a free market is that markets controlled by a single private conspiracy or monopoly aren’t usually regarded by economists as free – the Adam Smith model of a free market is one that is competitive, which requires a significant number of true competitors. Monopolies are just a form of government for which we do not get to vote.
For me the essence of net-neutrality is equal pricing for equal service and no other restrictions for legal – legal, legal, yes, legal – content. No discounts for affiliated services, no political or religious or social or commercial favoritism, no volume discounts for providers which automatically favor established companies and exclude startups. You pay for your volume and speed of content and you get it. Pay a little more, get a little more. Microsoft and Apple, Universal and Ian pay the same fee per byte at the same speed.
That is not pure net neutrality as some may see it, but it makes the net neutral in economic, competitive terms, and preserves the essence of free competition and promotes the emergence of a multiplicity of employment opportunities for writers.
Anyway, this is fun and informative. Honest debate is the best way to test knowledge and opinions!
Carleton Eastlake:
So…just theorizing here…
You’re a baker. You have a factory where you make cakes by the dozens. You supply supermarkets with your cakes. They, in turn, pay you a base price for each cake they buy from you, and then an additional 5% of their gross sales of your cakes.
As a matter of principle, you don’t think it’s a good idea if Ralphs is able to charge more for your cakes than Vons or Albertson’s? It’s critically important that they all charge the same price? Is that really in your best interest as a cake seller?
Mmm. Cake.