The failure of the present de-regulatory scheme has finally moved Google to enter the political fray.
The entrance came in the form of "chief evangelist" Vint Cerf (a Medal of Freedom winner lauded as "Father of the Internet"), in testimony before a Senate Commerce subcommittee.
It’s a powerful statement.
Allowing broadband carriers to control what people see and do online would fundamentally undermine the principles that have made the Internet such a success.
Cerf noted that most Americans no longer have a choice of broadband carriers. Letting monopolists dictate what they can access, and how, for their own benefit puts them in control of the Internet experience. But this is what really laid the smack-down:
It is also critical to our nation’s competitiveness – in places like Japan, Korea, Singapore, and the United Kingdom, higher-bandwidth and neutral broadband platforms are unleashing waves of innovation that threaten to leave the U.S. further and further behind.
After detailing the history of the Internet, and the threat posed by other countries passing using policies the U.S. itself pioneered a decade ago (requiring wholesaling in England, for example), Cerf got to the main legislative point, namely that the present bill claiming to support network neutrality, known as BITS II, in fact does no such thing.
The key is a footnote to Cerf’s talk which covers both Ensign’s current bill and its original draft, known as BITS I:
Both drafts include provisions requiring broadband providers to allow consumers to access content, applications, and services, and to connect devices. Both versions also contain a number of important exceptions to those duties, related to elements like value-added services and enhanced quality of service. Unfortunately, as written the exceptions in each of these bills are so broad that they undermine the underlying neutrality requirement.
Sen. Ensign is up for re-election in 2006. It would be interesting if Cerf’s words became an issue in his re-election campaign.
