28 December 2003

Think about what could happen if your broadband provider could discriminate

Federal Communications Commission commissioner writer says FCC forces are pushing to clamp down on the "open access" that the present day internet offers.
A new battle is brewing at the Federal Communications Commission. It's about the future of the Internet. Entrenched interests are threatening open consumer access to the Net and stifling innovation and competition in the process.

The Internet was designed to defeat government or business control and to thwart discrimination against users, ideas or technologies. Intelligence and control were consciously placed at the ends of a non-discriminatory network. Anyone could access the Internet, with any kind of computer, for any type of application, and read or say pretty much what they wanted.

This Internet may be dying. At the behest of powerful interests, the FCC is buying into a warped vision that open networks should be replaced by closed networks and that the FCC should excuse broadband providers from longstanding non-discrimination requirements.

Proponents of eliminating non-discrimination rules claim that allowing dominant broadband providers to build walls around the Internet is just ``deregulating'' and ``letting the market reign supreme,'' deploying the rhetoric of Libertarianism to serve decidedly parochial interests. The truth is that these corporations -- so fond of railing against government picking winners and users -- are now asking the FCC to do precisely that.



Comments

No comments yet

Add Comment

This item is closed, it's not possible to add new comments to it or to vote on it