As Tim Berners-Lee points out, net neutrality means:
"If I pay to connect to the Net with a certain quality of service, and you pay to connect with that or greater quality of service, then we can communicate at that level."
It's a simple rule, it's foundational to all that's creative and innovative about the net, and it's under assault.
Posted by hessma at June 22, 2006 10:26 AMMary, I'm trying to figure out why net neutrality is important and I'm finding in my searches a lot of hype but little helpful content aside from a good article on wikipedia.
Why is this an important issue for you?
Posted by: Ryan Torma at June 22, 2006 06:30 PMHi Mary,
I think the neutrality of Internet is the crucial point in the discussion about this. Is very dangerous one country can have the control over Internet, this stuff must be in a Internacional Council.
Internet must be free and democratic, because this a present a future society.
Cheers!
I'm not sure what you mean by hype, but you might consider the reality that a vast number of organizations on multiple sides of various spectra are advocating for net neutrality, while only the big distributors want to get rid of it (of course, they have a lot of lobbying power on their side). One way to think about net neutrality is to consider the difference between the rules phone companies are run by, and those of cable companies. Phone companies can't charge you different rates based on the content of your phone calls, only on the kind of service you've contracted for. Cable companies, on the other hand, can and do charge you differently depending on whether or not you've ordered HBO or some other premium content. So... do you want your internet service provider to charge you a higher chunk of change if you use google to do a search, than if you use their own search mechanism? I'd prefer our "pipelines" to be content neutral.
Posted by: Mary Hess at June 28, 2006 12:04 PMTo make matters worse, these giant network operators (the big telecom's like AT&T, Verizon and cable operators like Time Warner and Comcast) are using their corporate mussel and deep pockets to clog the internet and mainstream media with a false definition of "Network Neutrality" and what it stands for, creating conflict and confusion to an already difficult situation. They claim that Network Neutrality is in the way of them building a better internet, one that can handle the future of the web, but this just isn't so. They just don't want to pay for it. They would much rather banish Network Neutrality laws and charge Web site operators high fees in exchange for faster connections to consumers. In other words, have the ability to "cut deals" and assign priority to Internet traffic based on financial arrangements with Web sites.
www.savenetneutrality.com