February 7th, 2006
Are you a pro- "Open Internet?" Libertarian or Republican? Better read this
I try not to get overly political on these pages, but I feel the need to make an exception here.
Reading my colleague Anne Broache’s excellent coverage of Tuesday’s net neutrality hearings before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, it is plain to see that those Committee Members who would prohibit broadband Internet service providers from imposing fees on bandwidth intensive services like, say, Google or Vonage are likely to be Democrats.
And those Committee Members who defend the practice or see no need for laws to prohibit it tend to be Republicans.
Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) said that he would introduce a bill that "will make sure all information (transmitted over broadband networks) is made available on the same terms so that no bit is better than another one."
Senator Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota), added that "it is not a free lunch… (broadband subscribers have) already paid the monthly toll.. Those lines and that access is being paid for by the consumer."
But Senator John Ensign (R-Nevada) worried aloud that compelling Internet service providers to carry high-bandwidth content without some sort of compensation for this load might wind up with these apps (taking) "all of their bandwidth."
And Senator George Allen (R-Virginia) doesn’t see the need for such a law because no broadband Internet Service Provider has actually tried to impose such a fee yet.
"The point now is, right now we don’t have a problem," Sen. Allen said. "Do you pass a law retroactively to try to put the genie back in the bottle?"
Well, I say yes, without such a law you will have "a problem." Big telecom and big cable never met a fee they didn’t like. And if they can impose those fees, then by golly, they will.
And to those readers who don’t want these fees but don’t vote for Senators and Congressmen who will block those fees from being imposed - are you still as sure of your vote as you were before?
Same if you are a Libertarian who doesn’t believe these laws are necessary. Do you really trust the telecoms and big cable to leave your Internet- our Internet, alone?
I know I don’t.
Oh, one more thing. For video of this hearing, click here. The high-speed broadband feed is free - for now, or up until the fee-mongers succeed.
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
