On the morning of
OneWebDay—which occurred, in case you were
too busy actually using the Web to notice, on
Sept. 22—I had breakfast with Susan Crawford,
the Cardozo Law School professor who organized
the global event, and Craig Newmark, founder of
craigslist, who would speak at a lunchtime rally
at the southern tip of Manhattan. Crawford explained
to me that the day's festivities were a first
shot at what she hoped would develop into a geeky
parallel to Earth Day—annual worldwide celebrations
of an invaluable resource.
It's a snoozeworthy term, but a useful one. Neutrality
describes the way the Internet works now. All
the digital bits that move on the Net, whether
they are podcasts, SEC filings or articles in
NEWSWEEK, are treated the same, with no fear or
favor. This allows a level playing field that
promotes innovation, as the humblest start-up
or the most modest nonprofit organization can
be assured that its content gets the same access
to an audience as anyone else's does.
But recently the big telcos and cable companies
that basically hold a duopoly on Internet service
in a given area indicated they'd like a new scheme.
They would charge big companies like Google and
Yahoo big fees to guarantee that their content
got to customers at higher speeds. In other words,
there'd be an elite toll road alongside a free
but crowded interstate. This loss of neutrality
is what upsets the Net community. Google might
be able to afford to pay extra, but what about
craigslist, which serves millions of people on
minimal revenues? Nonprofits and government couldn't
come up with the dough to get their content treated
favorably. And an innovative start-up like YouTube
would never have gotten its audience if its video
clips ran in slow motion compared with those of
its competitors.
Though some lawmakers are interested in writing
legislation to preserve Net neutrality, in the
Senate the effort failed. A key opponent is Ted
Stevens (Republican of Alaska), who heads the
Commerce Committee. "[Legislating] Net neutrality
is unnecessary government regulation," says
Stevens via e-mail, "and is an attempt to
shift the high cost of innovations from large
companies to everyday Americans who log onto the
Web." Stevens's committee is touting a survey
that claims that consumers don't care about neutrality—but
the respondents to the survey weren't told what
neutrality meant, or that it is the current standard.
Nor were they asked to consider what would happen
if nonprofits, activists, start-ups and citizen
journalists lost their audiences because they
were stuck in a digital traffic jam—while
the big guys paid their way out of it by fattening
the wallets of companies like Verizon, which funded
the survey.
OneWebDay is a great idea, but why not use it
to address this threat to the Net's freedom? Can
I suggest a theme song for next year's party?
It's that Joni Mitchell tune where she sings,
"You don't know what you've got till it's
gone."
- Steven Levy
source: msnbc.com |
