Net Neutrality-The debate gets hotter

By Renjith VP, SiliconIndia   |   Thursday, 14 October 2010, 13:54 IST
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Net Neutrality-The debate gets hotter
Bangalore:While Network Neutrality is waiting for its fate to be delivered, a campaign is slowly taking shape in the vast net space asking it to be a fair play ground. When the whole world is enjoying the benefits of information at the fingertips, many unaware of the threat, daring initiatives like the Mozilla Foundation and other entity websites on network neutrality are gaining momentum. Websites, videos, blogs on the topic are all increasing day by day to prevent the looming Damocles sword from hitting. Now let's accept the fact that internet is as much a trade pact as an invention. And behind each trade pact lays a business motive and with business motive comes market monopoly and thus begins the story of attempted murder of network neutrality. The internet trade route seems to be clear as of now. All traders seem to have fair access of the trade route. But when the big guns start making a new trade route and the minnows succumbing to them to do trade, well it smells of capitalism. Well, ISPs like Comcast and Verizon - want to create a special high-speed 'trade route', where internet providers can decide what you'll be able to see and do on the internet, and how fast. The phone and cable monopolies aka service providers, who control almost all Internet access, want the power to choose who gets access to high-speed lanes and whose content gets seen first and fastest. They want to build a two-tiered system and block the on-ramps for those who can't pay. Now who sketched a perfect plan to sue the network neutrality policy? As we put the facts together, the search giant Google seems to have 'searched' out the perfect 'we lead-you follow' plan. While the government fumbled through alternate paths to preserve net neutrality, Google cozied up with Verizon to make sure those YouTube videos loaded faster than, say, Vimeo. Google couldn't beat the ISPs. So they joined them. Google is trying to sword at the very guiding concept of whatever we get to do on the web i.e. Net neutrality, the assurance that access to the Web and its content will not be blocked, slowed down, or sped up depending on where that access is based or who owns the access point(s). We can't deny the pros to a strict internet regulation which can curb the innumerable illegal activities over the net. Internet regulation will also help to prevent the large number of financial frauds, phishing, identity thefts, credit card thefts and many other illegal activities, which are possible because of the unregulated and unrestrained Internet activities. But it's time to worry about who will pay for the death of net neutrality. Answer seems to be us, the users because we will be forced into a tiered pricing structure which to be noted would not be like how we pay for extra cable channels today. Smaller content providers, who can't compete monetarily with monoliths like Google, will be punished with slower load times for it. And innovation as you term what you see online will be consolidated even further into the hands of the internet oligarchy. Turmoil has taken seat in the FCC who has to decide on net neutrality's fate and U.S. government is examining its financial, legal and social implications. Whatever sides you take, regulation versus free market always tells the story of the weak getting hurt real bad.

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