Thursday, October 22, 2009

Know No Net Neut

clipped from reason.com

But the truth is that there
are big corporations, and big corporate interests, on both sides.
On the pro-neutrality side
are the companies whose businesses operate at the edge of the
web: Silicon Valley Web services like Facebook, Amazon, Google,
and Twitter. On the other side are the companies who manage the Internet's core:
ISPs like Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon.


Much of the debate comes down to a power struggle between these
two interests: Will network owners and administrators be allowed
to determine access rules, prices, and traffic-management
mechanisms on the networks they control? Or will the government
step in and regulate those networks, forcing them to operate more
or less as dumb pipes, thus shielding the edge-network,
web-service companies whose business models rely on those
networks from  management practices that they don't like?


With the installation of Julius Genachowski in the top spot at
the FCC, it increasingly looks like the answer will be the
latter.