For quite a few months a variety of telecommunications acts in congress and other events have repeatedly injected control of the internet into conversation. I haven't blogged much about it, but today there was a sudden burst of Net Neutrality talk in the mainstream. The NY Times and the Washington Post both ran opinion pieces on it. The nutshell of this issue is that the companies that control your access to the net want to influence what you do while using the net.
Discussions between cable companies and, say, Yahoo! conspire, for instance, to drive traffic to Yahoo!. This can be done in a variety of ways:
- Making it inconvenient to use competitors (slowing load times)
- Forcing users to "log in" to the web by using a proprietary browser and then forcing the homepage to be Yahoo
- Forcing users to "log in" to the web by interrupting the browser (much as many hotspots do) and then forcing the homepage to be Yahoo
- Forcing users to have a (for example) Cox Cable toolbar that is basically a branded Yahoo! toolbar
- Allowing tiered service where the lowest tier is blocked from Yahoo! competitors
In the end, cable companies are companies that distribute entertainment content. They are used to a pay-per-view or pay-per-stream business model that values the item being transmitted over the ability to transmit itself. It is a logical step for them to find "premium content" and offer that as a value added service -- rather than merely providing connectivity.
You can see the spin between the two op ed pieces above. The Times Article is arguing for public access to the internet. Mr. Litan's article in the Washington Post is arguing that too many people watching movies will drown the Internet and people will suffer.
Many others are pointing out the technical and institutional issues with both articles. I'd like to mention this in regards to my post yesterday on the tension between corporate and on-line community interests.
This is a good case-in-point that for-profit-entities (especially those with existing business models) will have a variety of motives to squelch the growth of community. This is not to say that a for-profit entity can't be an ISP or that a private entity can't create a great on-line community. But these companies need to start with the mindset of creating a community or providing a public good. It is clear that most of the majors are not primarily focused on community.
As this progresses, we see bizarre in-fighting like the recent whining by Google about Microsoft making MSN the default search engine on IE 7. Why would this move be even remotely surprising? And, it's a default. Users can just change it. I fully agree with everything Jeremy Zawodny says in his piece above.
Google's and Microsoft's actions (fighting for screen real estate to control search hits) is a corporate move that does not foster community or user comfort. This is important, because the more that Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, eBay, Amazon and Newscorp suck up the tech on the Internet, the more they will be driven to sign deals with ISPs to ensure the promotion of their brands. As that continues, the ability of the Internet to support community will be greatly impaired.
Photo: Donny Harder Jr.
Technorati Tags: google, microsoft, yahoo, amazon, newscorp, netneutrality, net neutrality, brookings institution, community_indicators, cooperation, business cooperation
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