Net Neutrality
Posted on July 25, 2006
Filed Under For Argument's Sake |
This paragraph from savetheinternet.com encapsulates the net neutrality issue better than anything I’ve read so far.
Congress is pushing a law that would abandon the Internet’s First Amendment — a principle called Network Neutrality that prevents companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast from deciding which Web sites work best for you — based on what site pays them the most.
Save the Internet : Fighting for Internet Freedom
Net neturality is often phrased in terms that misrepresent the dangers and the logic of charging. As an example, will an operator charge me for accessing Google? Highly unlikely. Will it charge me (or Google) for accessing google video - much more likely.
The TV era of the Internet is going to change how the telecoms backbone is organised and managed. In fact at the workshops I’ve attended network managers worry about this more than any other issue.
The broadband interactive entertainment future, user-driven of course, means unprecedented interaction between people, groups and machines and new network management concepts will be needed to deal with that at a time when many network operators are seeing cash cow revenue decline. They are part of a mature/declining industry engaged with a dynamic new industry yet one that also must invest in radical new concepts and infrastructure just to keep up.
You can understand the frustration at this being an unchargeable investment. Is it enough just to say net neutrality has to be preserved, without trying to figure out how the world’s former monopolists swim with the the tide rather than drown?
I think the issue is one shared by many sectors where the public good is at risk from a competitively driven economy. Tobacco is surely a good parallel.
We know society has to dump on the tobacco industry for its own sake, but tobacco industry leaders are stil responsible for increasing corporate profits.
We know net neutrality is an indispensable public good but how do we deal with the other side of the equation?
Many of the changes we face are of this quasi-philosophical nature. Copyright and rights management is another good example. A creative commons solution is holding good for some but socially valuable creativity is held up by copyright laws that extend rights unreasonably.
Net neutrality needs a similarly creative approach though. It can’t be left to a legislative solution. Where are the committee men and women when we need them?
Comments
Leave a Reply