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Jeanne Criscola Criscola Design
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The Threat: A Net without Neutrality
The telecom companies are not interested in a "bottom-up" model that would continue to support innovation and participation in the Internet. They already charge for access to the Web; now they are claiming the right to charge for "preferred status," which would result in one company's content loading faster than another's:
William L. Smith, chief technology officer for Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp., told reporters and analysts that an Internet service provider such as his firm should be able, for example, to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc. (click here for full story)
In effect, this would create a two-tiered Internet, destroying the "information superhighway" as we know it to make one preferred high-speed lane (with plenty of tollbooths), and a dirt road for those of us who can't afford it. Some content will load faster — and some perhaps not at all — based on deals made behind closed doors.
As phone and television services begin to reach us over the same cables that now deliver high speed Internet, companies like Comcast could leverage these new laws in order to make using other companies' services inconvenient or altogether impossible, all in order to promote their own products and agendas. And although it represents a true worst-case scenario, an Internet without network neutrality would be vulnerable to outright censorship, if these companies decide to make it more difficult to access information they — or those who pay them for preferred status — find inconvenient, such as content from advocacy groups, whistleblowers, or political opponents.
We've seen this kind of discrimination in action:
In 2005, Canada's telephone giant Telus blocked customers from visiting a Web site sympathetic to the Telecommunications Workers Union during a contentious labor dispute.¹
Suppression of this sort could become the norm if we do not act now to defend network neutrality.
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