Pro Net Neutrality: Op-Eds and Editorials
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Can the FCC fix the Internet?
April 17, 2008 - link >>Seeta Pena Gangadharan and Shinjoung Yeo, The Stanford Daily
When the Federal Communications Commission takes the stage at Dinkelspiel Auditorium for its second hearing on broadband, it’ll be taking a trip down memory lane.
For one, the precise topic of the hearing — what types of control broadband owners have and ought to have over content, applications or technologies that run on broadband infrastructures — is relevant to Stanford history. More than thirty years ago, innovators like Vinton Cerf (now Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist) were likely to be found considering the value of neutrality in the design of ARPANET, one of the precursors to the Internet. It was Cerf who, together with Robert E. Kahn at the University of California-Los Angeles, pioneered the TCP/IP protocol suite. This protocol is the original lingua franca of the Internet, enabling data to travel without discrimination from server to server throughout the Internet until that data reaches its destination.
Public must fight to maintain net neutrality
April 17, 2008 - link >>Lawrence Lessig, Ben Scott, San Francisco Chronicle
The Internet is an engine of economic growth and innovation because of a simple principle: net neutrality, which assures innovators that their next great idea will be available to consumers, regardless of what the network owners think about it.
No previous mass media technology has been so remarkably open. Traditional media - newspapers, radio, TV - have gatekeepers standing between consumers and producers, with the power to control content. The Internet eliminates the gatekeeper.
Now, however, the Internet’s unprecedented openness is in jeopardy.
Beyond Net Neutrality
February 23, 2008 - link >>David Weinberger, Boston Globe
WHEN the Federal Communications Commission meets on Monday at Harvard University to investigate Comcast’s alleged blocking of particular types of Internet traffic, supporters of an open Internet will be out in force arguing for Net neutrality. Good. Net neutrality is vital. However, we must not let ourselves be distracted from the bigger issue: the struggle to preserve the open Net itself.
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The idea behind Net neutrality is simple: Decisions about what information should move over the Internet most expeditiously should not be made by those who benefit financially from those decisions. The companies that provide the bulk of the nation’s Internet connectivity should not be allowed to decide that, for example, YouTube videos are less important than their own Hollywood blockbusters. They should not be allowed to skew the market in favor of large companies by charging for delivering their bits faster than those of a start-up. Net neutrality is basic to keeping the Internet the greatest seedbed of innovation in history.
Net neutrality’ good policy for everyone
February 14, 2008 - link >>The Sentinel
Back in 1933, Congress passed a Communications Act in response to the growth of radio, telegraph and telephone usage.
Today, telegraph is no longer considered a mass communications medium, television has taken over from radio as the predominant carrier of entertainment, and today’s usage of radios and telephones is far beyond anything legislators could have imagined at the time.
As we grapple with issues relating to today’s mass communications media, it’s interesting that the issues aren’t a lot different and yet we seem to be rearguing the same points our great-grandparents did back then.
Net Neutrality is Necessary for Free Exchange of Ideas
February 10, 2008 - link >>City on a Hill Press
The magic of the Internet is not lost on us. We are the YouTube generation, cursed with the capabilities of extreme multicrastination.
We surf, we Digg and we blog, all without realizing the ongoing fight for control of the web.
Currently, the Internet is “neutral,” which means that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) cannot prioritize one website over another. According to net neutrality, cityonahillpress.com has just as much right to deliver information to its viewers as the website of the New York Times or of Microsoft. The Internet portrays a true definition of free speech to an extent that our parents could only have dreamed of, but this is being threatened.
In 2005, AT&T suggested allowing some companies to pay for preferential treatment to prioritize access to their web content. After heavy protest, however, this notion fizzled.
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