6/12/2006 Washington Post Editorial.
Monday, June 12, 2006; Page A20
THE SENATE will hold hearings tomorrow on "net neutrality," the idea that the pipes and wires that form the Internet should treat all content equally. An alliance whose membership ranges from the Christian Coalition to MoveOn.org is demanding that Congress write this neutrality into law; the groups fear that the pipe owners -- cable companies, phone companies and so on -- might otherwise deliver corporate content at high speed for high fees, while consigning political Web sites and hobbyists to a slow information byway. These arguments are amplified by the big Internet firms -- Google, Microsoft, eBay -- that want their services delivered fast but don't want the pipe owners to extract fees from them. Although this coalition lost a House vote last week, its prospects are stronger in the Senate. (The Washington Post Co. owns broadband networks that might charge Web sites for fast delivery. It also produces Web content that might be subject to such fees, so it has interests on both sides of this issue.)
[...]
More than 60 percent of Zip codes in the United States are served by four or more broadband providers that compete to give consumers what they want -- fast access to the full range of Web sites, including those of their kids' soccer league, their cousins' photos, MoveOn.org and the Christian Coalition. If one broadband provider slowed access to fringe bloggers, the blogosphere would rise up in protest -- and the provider would lose customers.
It makes some good points, but minimizes the fact that Google and Amazon and the other big information sources already pay a lot for their ability to provide lots of information to lots of people quickly. It also minimizes the lack of competition that many of us see in broadband. E.g. My only choice is cable even though I live in the [link|http://www.fairfaxcountyeda.org/industry_sectors.htm|"Home of the Internet"]. DSL isn't an option due to my neighborhood being partially wired with optical fiber (or some such thing), satellite internet has too many issues, there's only one cable provider, etc. I would guess that for most people, the only reasonable choices are DSL (which is ultimately tied to the local telephone company) and cable and moving between them isn't something that one does like changing brands of gasoline.
Ultimately, they come out against the Net Neutrality amendment. We'll have to see what comes out of the Senate.
Cheers,
Scott.