Neutral Net?
If you’re still wondering what all the hoo-ha is about the Internet legislation, check out Wired’s Neutral Net? Who are You Kidding? Gives an overview and some perspective.
Giving the cable firms and telephone companies free rein to do exactly as they wish is almost certainly a mistake. But micromanaging their businesses by forcing them to treat everybody exactly the same would also be a blunder.
Of course, as long as we operate in a capitalistic economy (with us crazy humans pushin’, shovin’ and strivin’) there will never be a “level playing field” or fair and equal access to anything. We just don’t work that way, fiscally or emotionally. Yet - even if I didn’t care about a handful of companies getting a stranglehold on the Internet - I’d be very concerned about quality. The cable and phone companies have a difficult enough time delivering basic service and billing correctly for it.
Of course, it’s not all the old “bell heads” fault; they’ve got an incredible mish-mash of legacy systems behind the scenes, from internal IT (”I’m sorry, we can’t generate a single, consolidated bill for your company”) to cabling spaghetti under city streets.
The Wacky Worldwide Web is already (semi) organized chaos; we don’t need to compound the problems.
More: Tris Hussey’s take on all this over A View from the Isle Sums it up all very nicely with,”…If gated toll roads are put up on the old information super highway. A lot of us are going to need to start bumming rides.”
Tags: Internet, neutral net
View the Blog Roll
June 2nd, 2006 at 7:54 am
‘Net neutrality and the big picture…
The Internet looks very different when you look at it as a marketing channel or a commercial service than it does when you look at it as a communications tool with which to share ideas and, potentially, power and influence.
……