Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

This day is without food blogs

But access to the Internet is not exactly equal now, is it? People pay for varying speed of connection to the Internet, dial-up, DSL, T1, etc. Those with more money can access the Internet at much faster speed than those with less. That’s what you think, yes?

That is something different though. Currently, consumers can pay for different speed of connection, but once they are connected to the Internet, there is no difference between accessing the massive Yahoo.com or the little chezpim.com. But when the new law is passed the service providers will be allowed to dole out different websites or services at different speed.

Net Neutrality and Lying

There’s been some debate lately about whether or not to run the ads from the telecom companies Astroturf campaign “Don’t Regulate the Internet.”

Those who think blogs should run them tend to believe that one shouldn’t stifle free speech – and hey, why not take their money and then write against them?

For me, the issue is simpler – they’re liars. They’re advertising a fundamentally dishonest idea – that the Internet has never been regulated, and that we shouldn’t start now.

The Internet has always been regulated. It started off as a government network designed to survive nuclear attacks (which, as everyone notes, is why it’s so good at routing around damage, including censorship) and along with government research labs its initial backbone was universities.

All through that time, and indeed through the 90’s and almost up to the current day, there was a simple rule – you couldn’t discriminate against traffic. You couldn’t give some packets priority over other packets.

That was the rule. It was the regulation.

The FCC recently got rid of that rule. However they can put it back any time. . . .

If it’s not neutral it’s not Internet [via Jeff Pulver]

The customers of AT&T and Verizon did not ask to get cut off from the Internet. . . . There exist no examples of success with the “walled garden” approach, because the nothing can match the breadth of content and innovation of capacity of the public Internet. The decoupling of connectivity from use and user associated with neutrality makes this breadth of content and innovation possible.

The opposition to net neutrality arises like all regulatory debates as themeans to raise prices, but people in the US already pay more for lessbandwidth than citizens of Europe and Asia.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE