Information Doesn't Want to Be Free by Cory Doctorow

Author:Cory Doctorow
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
Tags: Nightmare
ISBN: 9781940450230
Publisher: McSweeney's
Published: 2014-11-11T00:00:00+00:00

Net neutrality

Two thousand fourteen was the year that “net neutrality” sprang into the public consciousness, and not a moment too soon. At its heart, net neutrality is the idea that ISPs should deliver the bits we ask for as quickly as they can get them. ISPs, on the other hand, are petitioning for the right to give favorable treatment to some kinds of Internet data. For example, if YouTube bribes your ISP for “fast lane” access to its customers, you’ll have great, speedy access to YouTube—and all its competition will be jittery and sucky.

ISPs say that anyone who objects to this arrangement wants something for nothing. Why should YouTube’s competitors have the same access to AT&T’s subscribers if YouTube is willing to pay extra for “premium” access?

The reality is that ISPs are trying to get paid three times for the same service through network discrimination. You pay for your home broadband connection. The website you’re visiting is also paying for its connection. The ISP then wants to treat you as its hostage and ransom you to that website.

A useful parallel here would be voice service. Imagine that your corner pizza shop makes the best pizzas in town. It’s so good that it’s got ten phone lines with phone-answerers standing by to take your order. But it hasn’t paid the phone company for “premium” access, because it couldn’t outbid Domino’s. So when you call it, about half the time you’ll get a busy signal—even if it has non-busy lines, with people standing by to answer them—and you’ll have to call back. Meanwhile, every call to Domino’s gets put through right away.

You paid for your phone, and in return you want the phone company to connect you to all the phones you dial. Joe’s Corner Pizza paid for its phone lines, and in return it wants to be able to talk to anyone who calls. But AT&T wants to pick the winners in the pizza wars, handing over the ability to reliably receive orders to the deepest-pocketed pizza shop on the block.

Joe’s doesn’t want something for nothing, and neither do you—you both just want the phone company to do its job.

The ISPs say they can’t afford to upgrade America’s pitiful, trailing-edge garbage networks unless they can extort these ransoms from Internet users and services. This is such an obvious lie that it’s amazing anyone takes it seriously. According to the carriers’ own investor filings, their major profit centers are already their Internet businesses, and yet they devote only the barest minimum to capital investments in maintenance and upgrades.

The carriers are creatures of regulation, companies that couldn’t exist without some of the most valuable government handouts this side of the defense industry. That’s because the cost of negotiating for every yard of road and sidewalk they have to dig up to lay their wires would cost trillions. Instead, governments use regulations to give them access to “rights of way” that make this cost bearable.

A robust regulator could solve the problem of net neutrality at the stroke of a pen.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.