SEL: Net Neutrality Loophole Remains: Telecoms Could Still Add Charges for Online Content Providers

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April 27, 2006

Net Neutrality Loophole Remains: Telecoms Could Still Add Charges for Online Content Providers

I pieced the "what" portion of this post together from CNET's article, Democrats lose House vote on Net neutrality.

Reason for the Net Neutrality ammendment:
"the Federal Communications Commission must be given power to prevent broadband providers from doing things like charging content providers extra for the privilege of faster delivery or other preferential treatment."

Telecoms say:
"major broadband providers have repeatedly pledged not to block traffic or censor Web sites. Instead, they say, it will only be economically feasible to invest in higher-speed links if some bandwidth can be reserved for paid content."

To reiterate, why the ammendment was added to the bill:
"...it does not do what Amazon, Google, Barry Diller's InterActiveCorp, Yahoo and their allies want: to forcibly prevent by law a two-tier business model from ever being adopted on the Internet."

Om Malik brings perspective onto the situation: "These companies are fighting a battle against highly organized phone companies, who use their immense knowledge of legislative procedure as a competitive strategy. The real innovation, for oligopolies is lobbying. The big web companies it seems are busy fighting the petty battles, when they stand to lose the war."

Also he points out the US-centricity of the net neutrality movement: "I admire the work being done by the activists, but I have some what will be unpopular observations. For instance, the campaign has a very US centric view of the Internet, especially at a time when the global Internet is becoming bigger and bigger."

And he closes with a comment from the FCC's Michael Powell (who sounds, from this quote at least, as if he wouldn't mind charging content providers...): "It is too facile to say the Internet belongs to the public. People are married to the metaphor of the public space, but they run into trouble when it comes to who should pay for this stuff. They think it should be the government. That’s not going to happen. The government is broke, It’s going to stay broke."

Read Om Malik: Save The Internet. Why? And For Whom?

via mSHIFT: Should the ISPs Decide Which Websites You Visit? (reasoned speculation there on what could potentially happen from a technical perspective).

Keep your eye on this one... It's looking to me like the free party may be coming to a close? Also see: Google Going after Dark Fiber

Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

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