What has made the Internet the success it is today has been the principle of Net Neutrality.
What Net Neutrality means is simply that every bit of data that cruises on the Internet is considered the same. This principle has allowed the Internet to be a level playing field where small businesses can compete head-on with competitors many times their sizes.
All this may be about to change if telecoms have their way and succeed in lobbying US Senators in voting against Net Neutrality.
Never mind that Net Neutrality is already law in England, Korea and Japan.
Never mind that influential people who had a hand in creating the Internet and the World Wide Web have weighed in in favor of maintaining Net Neutrality.
It can be a tad complicated to understand.
We already pay for access to the Internet. If we pay for fast, broadband access, we zoom on the Information Superhighway. If we pay for dial up access, we crawl in the slow lane.
But once we are on the Information Superhighway [whether zooming or crawling], we are free to access any sites we wish. For example, if we access a text-only site, our viewing experience is practically the same. If we access an image- or video-intensive site, the one with broadband access enjoys a better visual experience than the one with slow dial-up access.
But we both have access to every site.
The telecoms want to change that.
They want to charge the sites extra for the privilege of being accessed by web surfers. If a site doesn’t pay up, it will be, for all practical purposes, invisible to web surfers. If it pays a little, web surfers will only be able to access the site on the slow lane [never mind that you may already have paid for broadband access]. If it pays a lot, web surfers will be able to access it in the fast lane.
In practical terms, it means that the Internet will not be a level playing field anymore!
Sites that can afford to pay a lot will now have an advantage over sites that can only pay a little.
In other words, the telecoms want to charge a business depending on how valuable a bit of data is. In other words, they want to differentiate between a transaction based on its perceived or real value. In other words, they want to get a cut of every business transaction effected on the Internet.
It also means that even though Net Neutrality is law in England, Korea and Japan, a business from any of these countries will still have to pay extra for a web surfer originating in the US to access its site. It is the equivalent of US telecoms putting tolls on the Information Superhighway.
If the US Senators are stupid enough to vote against Net Neutrality, we might well see an exodus of web sites moving out of ISPs located on US soil and to foreign soil where Net Neutrality is guaranteed. We may well see the decline of US-based web businesses — and the US economy — and the economic rise of Europe and Asia, connected in a free Internet.
Talk about killing the goose that lays golden eggs. Greed is definitely not good.
Link to this post:
