Development Seed

The battle for network
neutrality – the practice that all data must be transmitted over the internet
equally, no matter who created it or what format it is in – is coming to a
head. Last week two more bills were proposed (one in the House and one in the
Senate) to add a net neutrality provision to the telecommunications bill that
is expected to be discussed at a hearing this Thursday, bringing the total to
six. And today web inventor Tim Berners-Lee “strongly condemned” any measure to
infringe on net neutrality.

Berners-Lee is right. A major
reason, if not the major reason, that technology has grown so quickly is because
all content has been treated equally. If broadband providers are able to charge
for superior service, independent creators, activists, nonprofits, and any group
without deep pockets are going to be at a significant disadvantage. One of the
arguments of net neutrality opponents is that the Googles of the world can afford
to pay for better service and that those fees in turn can be used to help build
out the internet’s infrastructure. But that argument doesn’t hold up. If Google
had to pay for high transmission speeds eight years ago, would it of surpassed
Alta Vista, or Yahoo!? Who knows. Google won that fight because its technology was
better, not because it paid to have faster service than its competitors. And if
Google paid now for superior service for Google Video for example, what would
that mean for YouTube.com, which is more popular but doesn’t (yet) have the
same buying power as Google?

Tomorrow protests are taking
place in several major cities against the major telecommunications companies
who have proposed these “business models” and are lobbying Congress hard for
the omission of net neutrality language. I don’t know of anything that’s going
on in DC, but if anyone does please pass it on.

If you want to catch up on
the net neutrality debate, CNET has a good collection of articles. I’ve also
written about it here.