What bloggers are saying about the latest in information technology

The thing I like most, and dislike most about the Internet is that anybody can publish an opinion. But as in much of life, you must take the bad to get to the good, and so I willingly wade through the inevitable and prolific web sites created by half-literate hatemongers, and am usually able to find those pearls of wisdom that I require.

A new Congress is waiting in the wings, and so today I take the issue of net neutrality to you. In all reality, I don't expect the new Congress to be any different from the old one, and the difference between Democrat and Republican is in practice, marginal. But hopefully it will be just different enough to give us a few basic guarantees of "net neutrality." Net neutrality preserves the framework that exists today, where anybody with five bucks to pay their ISP can start their own web site, and be on a more-or-less equal footing (technologically speaking) as even the largest content provider. The big telcos and cable companies, always looking for a new source of revenue, hit upon the idea of charging larger content providers more money for access. Now as a capitalist myself and an observer of the telecom industry, I can't blame them for trying, but this is a dog of an idea that deserves to die a quick death. If for no other reason than to preserve goodwill and create some positive PR for themselves, the telcos should just let this one go.

The Save The Internet blog seems optimistic though, calling the end of the 109th Congress "the demise of entrenched corporate efforts to legislate away our Internet freedoms." Let us hope that it is so. While the telcos and cable companies are still lobbying hard against the principle of net neutrality, there are an equal number of powerful companies that stand behind it. Google, for one, is a strong supporter of the concept. In the Google Blog, Google notes that if the cable companies get their way, a new regulatory bureaucracy would be created, and that a new framework of fees and permissions for Internet usage would run counter to the basic freedoms that Internet users have always enjoyed.

Of course, as The Only Republican in San Francisco notes in his blog, Google too is a moneyed interest, and without net neutrality, would face having to pay significant fees to continue providing the content that they do. True enough, but whether Google's motivations are monetary or altruistic is irrelevant. I suspect it's probably monetary, but free market advocates would not argue with the proposition that the free market would be the best arbitrator in this case. In reality, I don't think that a two-tiered system proposed by the telcos would survive very long -- competition and consumer demand would soon call for a return to the current state of equilibrium. Curiously, the Only Republican believes that the Internet is dominated by the Left, an unlikely proposition indeed given the freewheeling nature of the beast.

The vast majority of Internet commentary is in favor of the principle of Net Neutrality, with the exception of a group called "Hands Off the Internet", which is in reality a front group for the telecom industry. Interestingly, the Hands Off blog injects a bit of confusion into the argument by quoting somebody named Tim Lee as being opposed to Net Neutrality. Of course, you all know Tim Lee (Sir Tim Berners-Lee) as the driving force behind the very creation of the Internet itself, and the Tim Lee quoted by Hands Off is not the same Tim Lee. I'll set the record straight here. The Tim Lee we all know and love who gave us the Internet writes about Net Neutrality in his blog, noting that although the Internet has always thrived because of the lack of regulation, "basic values have to be preserved," and Congress must act to protect Net Neutrality.

ITworld.com

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