Sunday, March 05, 2006

Testify brother Holtz!

Shel Holtz:

In a recent interview with Eric Schwartzman, IT Conversations’ Doug Kaye referenced an old explanation of the Internet: It’s a dumb network. It just gets bits where they’re supposed to go. The telecommunications industry wants to turn it into a smart network by routing paid-for traffic through faster pipes than content that hasn’t paid for the privilege. I wrote about this last month and pointed to a must-read document by Doc Searls.

Today, Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden proposed legislation to keep the Net dumb. The goal was to ensure smaller startups couldn’t be pushed aside by larger ones (think Google or Yahoo) that could afford the access to the faster pipes.


A neutral net (Brother Holtz, neutral net is much more PR) is in the best interests of our industry. The carriers are proposing to degrade their present level of broadband service unless websites pay a premium. Our clients will have to pay extra just so their customers can access their websites easily. Does that sound like a good idea to you?

Edit-
Net Neutrality vs. Net Neutering

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