As a starting point, if and as these services are becoming as necessary as other "utilities", and inasmuch as providers are screaming about and claiming issues of "expense" and revenue and whatall...
Let's, as we do for other utilities (at least, in my country), make them lay it out on the table.
Open your books. What are the real revenues and expenses.
We've all (again, in my country) watched our bills rise and rise, while some of us at least read about consistent, continuing drops in the price of backhaul/trunk capacity, as just one example of what we perceive as a fairly apparent dichotomy.
The practice to this point, has been that the consumer pays for access to those trunks, and hosts pay for their access, and the companies involved live off of that. Now, they want to collect collect twice? They want to pick and choose and charge "premiums" to "prioritize"?
Where is the basis for any of this, in actual, cold, hard numbers? Until this is presented, I'm not even willing to have the conversation.
AND... for one, I don't believe it actually exists -- or need exist. It is varying shades of what I will qualify on the farther end as extortion. It is not of necessity, it is of convenience and greed on the part of those who increasingly seek to hold the reins ever more firmly and exclusively, now that "the Internet" is big business and not merely "some geeky corner".
Finally, as varying flavors of "expert" in this field and topic, we carry I think some societal obligation as well as personal and professional interest, in seeing that this doesn't happen.
Many of our own lives and careers have been substantially enriched and enhanced by the relatively open digital ecosphere we have experienced.
When the same old... "bullies", frankly, show up to try to dominate it for their own interest and gain. It's up to us to keep it out of their hands, and to ensure that the next generation of technology is yet more resistant to that "same old same old".
This is not about shirking responsibility -- and there are responsibilities involved, serious ones including legitimate needs and approaches to e.g. security.
It is about properly identifying it, amidst a clamour of often disingenuous self-interest. And identifying proper, effective, and practical approaches. About empowering, once again, the participants and community themselves. As I see it.
Let's, as we do for other utilities (at least, in my country), make them lay it out on the table.
Open your books. What are the real revenues and expenses.
We've all (again, in my country) watched our bills rise and rise, while some of us at least read about consistent, continuing drops in the price of backhaul/trunk capacity, as just one example of what we perceive as a fairly apparent dichotomy.
The practice to this point, has been that the consumer pays for access to those trunks, and hosts pay for their access, and the companies involved live off of that. Now, they want to collect collect twice? They want to pick and choose and charge "premiums" to "prioritize"?
Where is the basis for any of this, in actual, cold, hard numbers? Until this is presented, I'm not even willing to have the conversation.
AND... for one, I don't believe it actually exists -- or need exist. It is varying shades of what I will qualify on the farther end as extortion. It is not of necessity, it is of convenience and greed on the part of those who increasingly seek to hold the reins ever more firmly and exclusively, now that "the Internet" is big business and not merely "some geeky corner".
Finally, as varying flavors of "expert" in this field and topic, we carry I think some societal obligation as well as personal and professional interest, in seeing that this doesn't happen.
Many of our own lives and careers have been substantially enriched and enhanced by the relatively open digital ecosphere we have experienced.
When the same old... "bullies", frankly, show up to try to dominate it for their own interest and gain. It's up to us to keep it out of their hands, and to ensure that the next generation of technology is yet more resistant to that "same old same old".
This is not about shirking responsibility -- and there are responsibilities involved, serious ones including legitimate needs and approaches to e.g. security.
It is about properly identifying it, amidst a clamour of often disingenuous self-interest. And identifying proper, effective, and practical approaches. About empowering, once again, the participants and community themselves. As I see it.