Hmmm… another conundrum.
On the one hand, you have ‘Network Neutrality’. Check out Save The Internet.
On the other hand, you have ‘Network Bureaucracy’. Check out Hands Off the Internet.
The first group, pro-Net Neutrality, points out that the Internet is what it is because it has, up til now, been a completely fair playing field. Market competition on the Internet has more to do with a website’s ability to attract visitors, and more importantly, repeat visitors. Content providers didn’t, up til now, worry about whether their site(s) could be accessed or not. Anyone who wants to get there can do so.
However, the big fear from the pro-Net Neutrality group is that the Verizon’s and AT&T’s of the country are going to start delivering service to its subscribers based on which ‘content providers’ pay the fees to be considered ‘premium’. These ‘premium’ content providers will be prioritized on the networks over blogs and smaller start-ups that aren’t willing to or can’t afford the additional fees. In some cases, they may be blocked altogether. The result is that the ‘big guys’ get all the bandwidth they need while the smaller guys suffer. It’s a lot like cable TV. Unless you have the money to pay the cable companies what they ask, there’s no way anyone is going to pick up your "Fat Guys Drinking Beer at Home" channel.
So, in a nutshell, they are pushing for legislation to prevent such activity. They want ‘Net Neutrality’, a government enforced policy to prevent companies from discriminating site availability based on whether, or how much, the content provider pays them.
The other side… well, it’s hard to say they are really against ‘Net Neutrality’. Instead, they focus more on the bigger picture (as they see it, anyway). First, "big government is bad". They don’t want any unnecessary legislation over anything. Second, "free market is good". Companies who stand to potentially make a profit by providing services consumers want and are willing to pay for is what makes our economy different than nearly every other nation in the world.
Compare it to the near $3/gal you are paying for gas today. Most European countries, due to government involvement and taxes, pay $6 or more per gallon. If the U.S. government decided tomorrow to really get into the business of regulating gas prices, I’d guess we would be paying close to $6/gal, just to cover the wages of the inspectors, auditors and other bureaucrats to make it happen.
It’s interesting, but this lobby pushes the same argument that ‘the Internet is what it is because it has, up til now, been a completely fair playing field’. But while the first group are talking about content providers, these guys are also talking about service providers. From their perspective, it’s appropriate and good that service providers find ways to provide the kind of content their customers want. If you, as a customer, are willing to pay more so that CNN, MSNBC and MySpace load faster and other sites (like mine) might load slower due to the overall demand for ‘premium’ services… well… that’s the nature of the market. People (aka, consumers) would really prefer to visit MSNBC with assurance of availability and peformance than to know pissant sites like mine are around and available at all. That’s a service many are willing to pay for. But, keep in mind, in this scenario YOU aren’t paying any more. Instead, the priority given to content providers is paid BY the content providers.
To, again, make the cable television analogy… assuming you subscribe, would you not pay more to ensure the channels YOU want to watch are available and didn’t have to compete with the crap? What if everyone who wanted their own channel could have one, would you want to browse through all of those to find what you enjoy? What if the total number of channels you could watch had an adverse effect on the quality of reception of the channels you want to watch? If you’re like most consumers, and the cable companies have figured this out, the answer is "No". You want an ‘a la carte’ menu of choices. And even your ‘a la carte’ menu is narrowed down to what the average consumer is looking for. In other words, if you subscribe to cable or satellite television, you are already paying more to ensure the content delivered to your TV is "filtered". You don’t get the MetaphysX.com version of "Wayne’s World" on your TV because I can’t afford to pay the cable companies to distribute it.
It’s analogous to competing for advertising space, really, because, for the most part, no one makes money simply by being on the Internet. Behind the website, people are doing the same things that any other company is doing. They’re providing some kind of service or delivering some kind of product. I would guess that some companies are paying $100k+/issue to advertise in the larger distribution magazines that only publish once a month. If ‘Net Neutrality’ applied to printed media, I would start publishing a monthly newsletter and expect those same advertisers to pay me the same as they do to anyone else.
In conclusion, I don’t have a conclusion. I really don’t know. In principle, I’m against the government getting involved in anything the private sector can handle. And I don’t see the fact that "one can’t get his message out due to market constraints’ as an infringement on 1st Amendment rights. But, at the same time, I own a small start-up company that so far has no chance in Hell of getting any Internet ad-space because I can’t afford it. And it’s totally discouraging to think that my company might be blocked by 1/3rd of the country because a large competitor could pay the service provider enough to effectively make my site inaccessible.
Ugh.
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