By Bob Sullivan
Published August 5, 2010
In this article Bob Sullivan addresses both sides of the net neutrality debate. He proposes the following two nightmare scenarios; the first is from the perspective of a net neutrality proponent, and the second is from the perspective of a net neutrality opponent.
“One day, you log on to the Web, and only 20 or 25 Web sites built by brand-name Net companies’ fire up quickly. Everything else—all the mom-and-pop sites, all the niche retailers, all the alternative blogs you read—dribble out onto your screen like it's 1996 all over again.”
“You log on to the Web after work, and nothing seems to be working. That's because the people living in the three other apartments in your building are busy downloading one pirated Blu-ray movie while watching another. Or spammers have taken control of your neighbors' machines and are pumping out millions of e-mails, totally clogging your Internet pipe. You call your ISP and complain. An operator there says, ‘Sorry, those pirates and spammers have just as much right to the network as you do’.”
Both of these scenarios I suppose have the potential to become reality, but I’m just not too sure which one would be more probable than the other. Bob Sullivan, it appears is in the same boat as I am. He really is skeptical of the big corporations occupying both sides of the argument, and this skepticism has enabled him to presents a very well-written, reality based article that attempts to considers the various implications of these dueling outcomes. While he remains hesitant to fully accept to implication of passing net neutrality into law, it is apparent that his tendency is to favor the side of a net neutrality proponent.
Mr. Sullivan perceives net neutrality to be an extremely important issue that is vastly misunderstood due to the sloganeering and extremism that have become prevalent within this argument. It is his belief that neither side of the net neutrality debate has the best interests of the American public in mind, and I have to agree with him. There is a lot of money at stake to be made, and because of this, Mr. Sullivan fears that companies will come to exploit the consumer even more than they have in the past.
Where I disagree with this author is in his statement that the real fight for net neutrality “should involve guaranteed minimum service levels;” to me that is just not America. In America, we are free to pursue any path to happiness that we choose, but this path is not going to be the same for everyone. Just because we are all born equal does not necessarily mean that we all deserve to have equal stuff; we deserve what we work for and what we earn. To me, this is what separate the United States from every other country in the world, and is why we have been able to experience true individual freedom. I do however agree with Mr. Sullivan that “the FCC is awful and ineffective at directly helping consumers.”
He concludes this article with a discussion of his distaste for aspects from both sides of the net neutrality argument. He fears that if the side of the opponents is allowed to win, “Google and Verizon will be allowed to make the telecommunications policies for the rest of the country,” but on the flip side, he has found that “some of the net neutrality proposals floated so far would actually make it harder for Internet service providers to filter out Internet traffic that degrades service, such as hacker attacks.” Neither of these choices is a viable option for the future of our Internet, and unfortunately, right now Mr. Sullivan is “afraid that this battle over buzzwords is distracting us from the real problem, and in essence, allowing companies an even easier way to take advantage of the consumers.”
No comments:
Post a Comment