Net neutrality affects us all. You may not care but I’m betting that is because you don’t understand it. If you do then you have the same concerns I have and I have the same concerns that Fred Wilson has.
I don’t want to see the Internet regulated. I don’t want rules that require oversight and adjudication. But given that we now have an on ramp that is tightly controlled by a small set of access providers with almost identical interests, I would like to have one basic rule that is so simple that everyone understands what it means and we can simply follow it. – Fred Wilson in Regulation Strangulation via AVC
How would you like your home Internet access to be controlled by big government, big business, or in fact, big anything? Pay attention or it might be. You may say that it doesn’t affect you. Not true. Do you use Internet banking? Do you listen to music or use a particular social network? Do you play games or watch videos on the net? How ’bout your communications? Do they depend on the Internet? Point is, everyone is touched by the Internet these days. Society would suffer a serious setback if it had to return to the pre-Internet days.
In the 60′s and 70′s the government gave cable companies monopolies to build out their cable systems. That was just for entertainment. If you talk to “the old fogies” you hear the stories about how we were promised lower bills, more channels, and better access (no real definition but try getting cable where there is no monopoly involved). We’ve been paying for those decisions ever since. Net neutrality is the same issue for the New Millenium only now we’re talking about not just the cable companies wanting control but banks, entertainment companies, “The Government”, and a myriad of miscellaneous power “players” trying to gain control over your freedom to use bandwidth anyway you see fit.
Remember when… “We need this now!” was a rallying cry of Health Care, or Financial Reform, or the Bailout Spending. What we were told is that we needed these things even before the public had a chance to review all the bills that were being passes and the shenanigans that was going on behind closed doors. Lobbyists and particular government interests were really the only things that got discussed. If you think the powers that be got those right and did things only in the interest of the American people then you can ignore this issue. If you think that things, anything, was done wrong then you’ll want to watch this net neutrality issue with all the muster you can, well… muster.
If you are new to this issue then Fred points out as a very simple solution as it is described by Barbara Van Schewick, Professor of Law at Stanford, which states:
“A non-discrimination rule that bans all application-specific discrimination, but allows all application-agnostic discrimination.” Discrimination is application-specific if the discrimination is based on the specific application or content (e.g. Skype is treated differently from Vonage), or based on classes of applications or content (e.g. Internet telephony is treated differently from e-mail).
I think Fred and Barbara nail it here (Regulation Strangulation). I’m proud to be able to lend my support to the cause.
Additional Links:
Net neutrality: a buzzword that’s duping us via The Red Tape Chronicles
