Seriously? This is the Redstate/Beck issue du jour and they oppose net neutrality?
Let’s take this slowly. Net neutrality is the idea that all Internet traffic should be treated equally. This means that neither Redstate nor MSNBC should be allowed to purchase a position of privilege when it comes to how fast their site streams.
By opposing net neutrality Redstate is saying that, because of free market principles, it is perfectly OK for MSNBC to pay Verizon and other ISPs to make sure the MSNBC sites stream quickly and the Redstate site putters along like a dial-up connection.
If there were no net neutrality there would be no Ebay, no Google, no Yahoo!, no Twitter, no YouTube, no Facebook, no Redstate, no Michelle Malkin, no Pajamas Media, no Blogger, etc. There would be no blogger media revolution, and we’d have our Internet news restricted to the New York Times and CNN.
Net neutrality is the situation we (mostly) live in today. So, if it’s what we have today, then why do we need a law? Because the ISPs have said they want to emphasize some sites, and diminish others.
“William L. Smith, chief technology officer for Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp., told reporters and analysts that an Internet service provider such as his firm should be able, for example, to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc.”
The Trib opposes net neutrality, and the reasons are obvious. They are looking forward to the day when they can use their dollars to quash the independent net. You might have noticed that Big Media is suffering and they see opposition to net neutrality as a way regain their dominance in the media market.
Love mainstream media? Then you’ll hate net neutrality. Think entrepreneurship is good for America? Then tell your reps to support net neutrality.
I know I shouldn't, but I'm going to bite. Isn't net neutrality, and free market principals in general, a bit like Spencer and Darwin's survival of the fittest? If we accept evolution (I do), why wouldn't we accept the theory in other aspects of our lives?
Evolution and free market ideas are alike in that they were created to address specific questions and are often misapplied to different questions. Darwin's theory of evolution is about species variation, and Spencer misapplied the theory to comparing cultures and ethics.
Similarly, applying free market ideas to telecoms (which get special breaks from the government and are in some ways stewards of limited public resources) distorts the purpose and value of free markets.
That said, it does seem like this is a situation where freedom for one side leads to unfair constraints on the other. I'm not sure what the solution might be. Perhaps if common carrier laws were applied to the infrastructure, but the ISPs were allowed to do what they want? So, Verizon could throttle your bandwidth all they wanted, but you could use your local independent ISP who promised net neutrality.
But whatever happened to all the independent ISPs? Way back in the Internet stone age I used to get my service from a small start-up that I visited monthly to pay my bill in cash. Do Verizon, AT&T, Brighthouse, and the other giant ISPs even have small, local, independent competitors anymore?