November 10th, 2006
Robert Pepper: Net neutrality's false choice
Vint Cerf, one of the creators of the Internet and Google’s vice president and Chief Internet Evangelist, and Robert Pepper, the FCC’s chief of policy development after 19 years and now Cisco’s senior managing director of global advanced technology policy, faced off on the topic of net neutrality at the Web 2.0 Summit. It was a draw, and without the telecoms on stage, the fireworks were mostly two people who have known each other for years taking sides that were not all that far apart. After the debate, I interviewed Pepper about his views on Net neutrality. “The false choice is whether you are going to have tyranny or chaos. That’s a really silly choice,” Pepper said. “It’s a question of new regulation versus using regulatory tools and a case-by-case approach.” Cerf comes down on the side of regulation and Pepper advocates the case-by-case approach.
Dan Farber, editor-in-chief of CNET News.com, has more than 20 years of experience as an editor and journalist covering technology. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
