Somebody Please Explain Net Neutrality in a Way That’s Going to Make Me Give a Damn
In the past year I’ve received something like 10,000 items in my RSS feed about net neutrality. I’ve ignored every single one of them. I feel bad about that—I like to think I’m a good citizen about these things, and every post I’ve scanned and then ignored gave me the impression that this is something Very Important. But holy crap is the Wikipedia page on the subject long. I was hoping that maybe Rock the Net: Musicians for Network Neutrality, a new CD from the D.C.-based Future of Music Coalition might help me out. True enough, it paints a not-so-pretty picture. (Disclosure: Casey Rae-Hunter, a CP contributor, works with FoMC, but didn’t nudge me to write about the disc.) Here’s the indie-rock-pocalypse that’s coming: “The big telecom companies want to charge content providers a fee for the faster deliver of their sites. It’s simply another corporate shell game—do business our way, or don’t do business at all.”
OK, though I get a little skeptical about rhetoric like “corporate shell game.” And Wilco’s no help: The lyrics to “Impossible Germany,” a live version of which is on the CD, are as abstract as anything Jeff Tweedy’s coughed up. So I gather that it’s a corporate battle—except when it isn’t. Help!
Photo from a Canadian net neutrality rally by JasonWalton.
5 Responses to “Somebody Please Explain Net Neutrality in a Way That’s Going to Make Me Give a Damn”
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July 15th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
I heard that the next Daniel Alarcón novel was about net neutrality. Or maybe it was Nell Freudenberger. I can keep going down the 2007 Granta list until I get to a really funny reference. But I have no clue who these people are.
July 15th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Here’s a good Net Neutrality primer: http://www.savetheinternet.com/=faq
Happy to help you if you can return the favor. Nearly two million people have taken action in support of Net Neutrality. You can join the fight too:
http://www.savetheinternet.com/=act
July 15th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
OK, I”ll bite.
The Internet was designed to be neutral: theoretically, any given user can access any given resource with equal ease. Because of this, anyone with an idea and a web page can create content or new technologies. Now telecom companies want to be able to regulate access different sites. So if, say, my access provider had a relationship with the Post but not with the City Paper, they could make my connection to the Post faster and my connection to the City Paper slower or charge me to access one but not the other. They could do the same with YouTube, iTunes, Facebook, your Presidential candidate’s page, whatever. That’s not how the net is supposed to work. It stifles competition, locks out new technologies, and leads us towards a future where the Internet becomes a series of “walled garden” networks set up like AOL had back in the day.
July 15th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
foo, excellent breakdown.
There’s also a new “idea” around to charge different amounts for different bandwiths. Sweet, huh?
July 15th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Foo’s got it.
What, you didn’t like my propaganda? I thought “corporate shell game” was a sweet line. But you’re the editor. ;-)
Seriously, though, you should care. The internet grew up on common carrier principles like the phone line, which meant that the phone company had no say over what you discussed and couldn’t stop other providers from using their lines.
Imagine you have a favorite local pizza joint, Joe’s Pizza. You call them up to place your order, and an automated voice buts in and says, “Please hold, while we fulfill orders for Domino’s.”
A non-neutral net would be like that, but more insidious. You’d have no idea why Saddle Creek’s site Dl’d like dial-up but Corporate Music Shack’s page was web lightning.
If content providers couldn’t afford to cut deals with the ISPs, they’d be pushed into the slow lane. It would be as if the only paved highway led to the mall, but the road downtown was dirt. Pretty soon, people would stop coming downtown.
And, like with the consolidation of radio station ownership, you’d likely wouldn’t notice until it was too late.
There’s a free speech and anti-competitive side, too, which I don’t have time to get into. . .