 Thursday, 22 June 2006
 Net Neutrality = the Internet as it was meant to be
There's a fight in Congress right now over changing a fundamental piece of how the Internet works. Tim Berners-Lee (yeah, that guy) explains the fundamental issue briefly and clearly:
Net Neutrality: This is serious
When I invented the Web, I didn't have to ask anyone's permission. Now, hundreds of millions of people are using it freely. I am worried that that is going end in the USA.
[...]some telecommunications companies spent a lot of money on public relations and TV ads, and the US House seems to have wavered from the path of preserving net neutrality. There has been some misinformation spread about. So here are some clarifications.
Net neutrality is this:
If I pay to connect to the Net with a certain quality of service, and you pay to connect with that or greater quality of service, then we can communicate at that level.
That's all. Its up to the ISPs to make sure they interoperate so that that happens.
Net Neutrality is NOT asking for the internet for free.
Net Neutrality is NOT saying that one shouldn't pay more money for high quality of service. We always have, and we always will.
There have been suggestions that we don't need legislation because we haven't had it. These are nonsense, because in fact we have had net neutrality in the past -- it is only recently that real explicit threats have occurred.
The companies pushing against the principle of Net Neutrality are depending heavily on the general population's lack of familiarity with that history -- a few years ago, net neutrality was the rule of the road, enabling all sorts of invention and communication to flourish.
They also a typical U.S. meme that 'regulation is bad', which is incredibly oversimplifying... Berners-Lee handles that this way:
Yes, regulation to keep the Internet open is regulation. And mostly, the Internet thrives on lack of regulation. But some basic values have to be preserved.
For example, the market system depends on the rule that you can't photocopy money. Democracy depends on freedom of speech. Freedom of connection, with any application, to any party, is the fundamental social basis of the Internet, and, now, the society based on it.
Let's see whether the United States is capable as acting according to its important values, or whether it is, as so many people are saying, run by the misguided short-term interested of large corporations.
Josh Marshall has a page tracking which Senators support/oppose/haven't-said.
Firedoglake has a list of Senators it would be useful to call (if you are a constituent of theirs), with phone numbers.
Politics--Policy
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hi, We wanted to design a place that feels like your home,” says Zuckerberg.“A place you’re proud to call your home.
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