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Dark Web or Net Neutrality. Do Something About It?
5/24/2006
The opposing viewpoint seems to be this:
The TV4US Coalition is advocating on behalf of American customers who deserve new choices, better service, and lower costs in their television service.
It’s kind of hard to find out any more details on that Web site. The message is that Congress has to act to allow more competition and less regulation, which will mean cheaper television for the masses.
Just a few minutes browsing those two sites – TV4US and SavetheInternet – can give you a clue as to which “side” actually wants to let people know details and information and nuances. Hint: It’s not TV4US.
At SavetheInternet.com, however, there is a rough transcript published from a telephone call that is apparently part of a large phone campaign going on to scare consumers into supporting the telecoms. Here’s how it g'es:
I just got a phone call by a nice lady that tried to persuade me that Net Neutrality is bad. Because there is an Internet price increase coming really, really soon, and Google wants me to pay for it.
The dialog went something like this:
(obligatory awkward call center pause)
Her: “Hello, I’m calling from a nonprofit organization called TV4US, and we call consumers about an upcoming Internet price hike. The big Internet companies, like, (small pause) Microsoft want you to pay for that. Do you think that is fair?”
Me, confused: “Uhm, what are you calling about?”
Her: “The Internet is going to be more expensive, because big companies like Microsoft and Google are wasting all our bandwidth. Do you think consumers should pay for that? Or should the big companies that are wasting the bandwidth pay for that?”
At which point I tried to argue that companies use bandwidth because consumers use their services, but of course she was trained to end her call as soon as she would hit a road block.
Now, at our end, we know that Google and Microsoft support Net Neutrality, which is not a phrase that will ever come out of that lady’s lips – at least while she’s on the job. (She is just doing her job.) And we should be pretty darned glad that some large corporations do support Net Neutrality, otherwise the changes would be a done deal.
Here’s a portion of the alert I received this week from EDUCAUSE and Internet2:
Having paid for their network connections, Internet users should be able to send and receive all lawful content, without additional charges or limitations based on who they are communicating with and why. The large telephone and cable companies, however, have developed business plans that would radically alter this model of the Internet, interfering, for example, with distance learning, inter-institutional research, and even day-to-day class participation by off-campus students.
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