Congress to Take Up Net’s Future
Senior lawmakers have begun drafting legislation that would prevent high-speed Internet companies from charging content providers for priority access. [Link]
What is “Net Neutrality?”
In simple terms, net neutrality is the idea that all content is created (and accessable) equally - from the smallest blog to the largest corporation website. All that’s required is access to the Internet - from dial-up to the fastest broadband access to view this content.
The nation’s largest telephone and cable companies — including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner — want to be Internet gatekeepers, deciding which Web sites go fast or slow and which won’t load at all.
They want to tax content providers to guarantee speedy delivery of their data. They want to discriminate in favor of their own search engines, Internet phone services, and streaming video — while slowing down or blocking their competitors.
Tim Berners-Lee
(inventor of the World Wide Web and director of the World Wide Web Consortium)
Tim Berners-Lee’s position is that different levels of service have always been available and doubtless always will be. He defines Network Neutrality as: “If I pay to connect to the net with a given quality of service, and you pay to connect to the net with the same or higher quality of service, then you and I can communicate across the net, with that quality of service,”.