The problem with debating net neutrality is most of us have never experienced it.
Doc Searls makes this point brilliantly in a Linux Journal article on the controversy.
This is important. Most consumers have only experienced asymetric links, controlled by the carriers, without the ability to run our own Web servers and mail servers. (Port 80 and port 25 are blocked by default.) Given that reality, it’s no surprise that most consumers don’t react to the "threat" that the Internet will be turned into another form of Cable TV by carriers demanding extra fees for specific services and demanding tribute from those they deem "content providers."
our best hope for saving the Net from the carriers and copyright
extremists lies in defining it, and understanding it, as a place–as
something everybody goes to and builds on, not merely as something stuff goes through.
The Internet is not the transport. The Internet is not content delivered to users. The Internet is an interactive environment where anyone can produce, and anyone can consume. Google and the other search engines, in fact, are making their money from consuming content, not really from providing it.
What the phone and copyright industries wish to do is maintain their
monopoly over those who wish to be heard. Theirs is a crime against
thought. And it must be fought, with every ounce of our being, because
we’re fighting for ourselves, for the same things the Founders fought
for. When you erect barriers to competition against thought, artificial
barriers to people being heard, you restrict liberty.
This is the angle that must be pressed and that resonates broadly:
“…for the same things the Founders fought for.”
Freedom. Of thought and expression. Against tyranny and monopoly.
This is the angle that must be pressed and that resonates broadly:
“…for the same things the Founders fought for.”
Freedom. Of thought and expression. Against tyranny and monopoly.