Saturday, July 07, 2007

Net Neutrality as explained by NTodd

Basically telling those of us who have panicked and are running about screaming to calm down. Read for intelligent overview and explanation. NTodd finishes:

The funny thing is that ultimately being able to charge for differentiated services ain't gonna do providers much good anyway. The real money is in developing applications, not delivery per se. But they do need to recoup investment in the network now to bridge them to the application-centric era in which they will be competing.

Long post boiled down: decisions by governing agencies to reject adding Net Neutrality regulations does not mean "we're fucked," as I've seen some in the blogosphere breathlessly claim. It's reasonable to avoid imposing anything new and unnecessary as we continue to develop a modern networking infrastructure (not unlike the moratorium against Internet taxation that was in force for so long).

NTodd's post is comforting and hysterics over Net Neutrality is not needed. Although I insist I get to hold on to my new found skepticism. And suspicion. Especially with this government. Or any government or corporation. They are not for us. They are for themselves and for the all mighty dollar. So they just might do something really weird that we won't like. So I'll keep my skeptical and squinty suspicious eye on them.

But I feel better.

Update 7/8: Bryan of Why Now? warns us not to expect goodness from corporations. It's not in their scorpion-like brains.

Dammit. And I was just getting all comfortable and non-hysterical.

5 comments:

Steve Bates said...

But I feel better.

I don't.

ellroon said...

/goes into hysterics....

Anonymous said...

A nice overview of the technical issues that leaves out the business reality.

I'll be posting the reality of working with these people later. NTodd has never been a customer trying to buy real broadband from these people.

I've done it for several large enterprises, and the telecoms built their chunk of the backbone with other people's money.

Steve Bates said...

ellroon, please read this post on firedoglake by Phoenix Woman. She has good examples of the kinds of things that can happen... that are ALREADY HAPPENING in some places and with some ISP's... when network service providers are permitted to tamper with the transport based on the content.

As much as I admire NTodd, he is simply wrong on this one.

ellroon said...

Thanks for the link, Steve. Going to go read.