I'm Slipping Through the Neutral Net
I'm not totally sure if I understand the net neutrality debate. As I understand it, it's about the telecommunications companies wanting to charge for how much bandwidth each site uses? If thats the case, it seems a ridiculous thing to all of a sudden demand payment for something you've been offering for free. I feel like that would give way too much control over what we're able to access online. I find it unsettling that a company could control what people have access to to such a degree (although I'm sure that they wouldn't restrict too much as that would seem to turn away customers). It also sounds like it would lean way too favorable to big companies. The people that really seem like they would be affected are the smaller sites, ones that are independently owned, I found it interesting in the Orlowski article the fact that Ed Whitacre commented on how unlikely a AT&T and BellSouth merger would be, then completed that merger a year and a half later. Orlowski really makes a strong case in the way he lays out the series of events that lead to that merger passing so easily. I was also curious what kind of organization the National Cable Association is.
Comments
If you want to see what kind of organization the National Cable Association is, just check the video link that is for this week. In other words, their video didn't really explain anything in my opinion. That just goes to show what kind of organization they are, just blindly pointing at the "silicon valley companies" without admitting to any fault.
Posted by: NickJ | May 3, 2007 09:52 PM
Yeah I felt the same way. I thought that was an odd sort of faceless corporation to point at and call evil. And they don't really detail where it is they fall on the debate. I thought because of the name of the association they were closer to the big corporate interests than the customers.
Posted by: tcarr | May 6, 2007 10:25 PM
I find it unsettling that we could determine that any entity should be owed anything in 'running' the Internet. Once that point were ever conceded, where would it end? Give and inch, take a mile. On the other hand, if access were to become to boring and limited, maybe a REAL web 2.0 could be born with another technology. There is no end to ingenuity. Cable came to pass when network TV became too dumb for most people.
Posted by: Ramonac | May 7, 2007 12:05 AM