Why Net Neutrality Matters…
OK, I’ve generally stayed away from this topic, but this provides a glaring example of why everyone on the ‘Net needs to concern themselves with Net Neutrality. Do we really want the net to end up looking like the cable industry? Really? Yeah, I didn’t think so either.
Some evidence exists (here and here) that House representatives will ignore a form letter, so follow the guidelines at Save The Internet and contact your representative directly. You can find who that is via House.gov. The internet may be a series of tubes, but I’d hate to see it flushed down the pipe simply because we don’t care enough to act.
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Tim, I work on net neutrality issues, and once again that phrase is being misapplied and employed as a buzzword to simply generate attention and baseless concern. In the case you cite, Turner Broadcasting (the content provider) is demanding that EchoStar (the content distributor) offer them more money for the right to broadcast CourtTV to Dish network subscribers. If anything, this situation is actually representative of what some have referred to as reverse net neutrality. George Ou over at ZDNet has a great post on ESPN.com committing just such an act: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=251. As George says, “If the Net neutrality proponents can get so worked up about non-existent and fabricated cases of abuse on the part of the ISP, would they get as passionate about the real possibility of reverse Net neutrality?”
Hands, you caught me, um, red-handed. This is what happens when you post in haste. I think both Net neutrality and reverse Net neutrality are bad for the Net overall. The point I intended (and mangled) here is that the cable industry as a whole (content provider and content distributor) is the perfect example of what we don’t want the Net to be. Can you imagine having to switch ISPs because they couldn’t arrange a content deal with Google or vice versa? George’s point is entirely valid. The Net neutrality advocates must have equal passion in support of the ISPs as they do the content suppliers, otherwise, the Net result (pun intended) is a potential nightmare.