Good commentary from Craig Newmark of Craigslist on what’s important about Net Neutrality.
Here’s one good passage …
William L. Smith, the chief technology officer for Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp., recently told the Washington Post that BellSouth should, for example, be able to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc. or vice versa. “If I go to the airport, I can buy a coach standby ticket or a first-class ticket,” Smith said. “In the shipping business, I can get two-day air or six-day ground.”
In my view, executives like Smith forget that they get the use of public resources, like the airwaves and public rights of way, on which they have built their businesses and made a lot of money. As such, they shouldn’t be able to squeeze out some Web sites in favor of others. This would be a betrayal of the public trust.
What shipping speed do you think TPM will get? Kos? Redstate? Figure 6 day ground. And how about CNN and Fox? One way or another they’ll get guaranteed overnight. Or maybe Bellsouth partners with Fox, so the Fox site downloads faster in Georgia and CNN goes faster out west.
It changes what the Internet is and makes it into something more like Cable TV where the local cable company decides which channels are on the box.
