defines<\/a><\/p>\n"common carrier" as "the term used to describe a telephone<\/p>\n
company." But the underlying idea (which the FCC may have forgotten<\/p>\n
in this deregulatory era) would apply just as well to railway lines or<\/p>\n
postal services as to AT&T. A true common carrier agrees to move any<\/p>\n
good, message, or person (depending on the medium) from anywhere in its<\/p>\n
system to anywhere else for a price that depends only on factors that<\/p>\n
affect its own costs, e.g., distance and weight or duration. A common<\/p>\n
carrier may not discriminate on the basis of the content<\/i> of the<\/p>\n
message or the identity<\/i> of the customer. For example, a telephone<\/p>\n
company may not refuse to carry a phone call because of the speakers’<\/p>\n
political views, nor may it charge different fees for different kinds<\/p>\n
of speech. A common carrier railroad would have to carry any passenger<\/p>\n
from any point A to any point B.<\/p>\n
To preserve the common carrier ideal, regulations traditionally prevented<\/p>\n
owners of communications systems from providing other services. This was<\/p>\n
because firms that provided "content" as well as the "conduit"<\/p>\n
would tend to discriminate in favor of their own services. For example,<\/p>\n
if the telephone company provided 1-900 services, then it would be tempted<\/p>\n
to give its own calls preferential treatment. For similar reasons, cable-TV<\/p>\n
providers might give their own channels favored treatment, if they were<\/p>\n
allowed to offer programming.<\/p>\n
A common carrier telecommunications system is an important base for the<\/p>\n
Internet, because it allows digital messages to be transmitted regardless<\/p>\n
of their content, thus keeping the Internet uncensored and flexible. But<\/p>\n
is a common carrier system a commons? We experience a classic commons<\/p>\n
as collective property or as no one’s property—as "free."<\/p>\n
I do not think that we view telephone lines as common property. If they<\/p>\n
resemble a commons, it is for a combination of three reasons: (1) the<\/p>\n
common carrier rules; (2) the very low marginal cost of each minute of<\/p>\n
use, at least for local calls; and (3) government programs that have brought<\/p>\n
telephones into most homes, even in rural and poor urban neighborhoods.<\/p>\n
If any of these three conditions were missing, then the telephone system<\/p>\n
would not feel like a commons. This is a significant conclusion because<\/p>\n
it suggests that three types of regulations are necessary preconditions<\/p>\n
of the Internet as we know it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some people regard the telephone network as a "commons," because the telephone companies have been regulated as "common carriers" by the FCC. Today, the Commission simply defines "common carrier" as "the term used to describe a telephone company." But the underlying idea (which the FCC may have forgotten in this deregulatory era) would apply just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet-and-public-issues"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}