What is Net Neutrality?

Opinions on net neutrality are quite extreme. Thanks to a Gnomedexer liveblogging this discussion (thanks Kathy), we have a better idea as to what’s really happening:

Telecos want to resell access to you – the consumer – to the people who develop content. They will use their market power to restrict consumer choice. Example: Canadian teleco blocking access to union site during strike.

Telecos have proposed a two-tiered plan. First, a closed fast lane, which they own, for their content. It’s what cable does now. Telecos want to become video providers. [Note: look at ownership of cable teleco and corporate media.]

And second, there will be an open, but slow lane. Paid police escort exists in the slow lane — if you pay the police they will escort you thru the slow lane. [Like the frequent flier "skip the wait" line at airports.] However, the telecos will limit available police escort and auction it to the highest bidder. There is no incentive for telecos to do this any other way.

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Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon.com, holds a Ph.D from the Virjie Universiteit in Amsterdam and is responsible for driving Amazon’s technological vision. Before joining Amazon, he worked as a research scientist at Cornell University where he was a principal investigator in several research projects that target the scalability and robustness of mission-critical computer systems.

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