Chris Stern, media policy analyst with Medley Global Advisors and former reporter for The Washington Post, has this op-ed piece in Sunday’s Post about the net neutrality fight. Given his journalistic background, Chris comes at the issue in an even-handed way but does raise the specter of a less-than-meritocratic web.
The telecommunications companies’ proposals have the potential, within just a few years, to alter the flow of commerce and information — and your personal experience — on the Internet. For the first time, the companies that own the equipment that delivers the Internet to your office, cubicle, den and dorm room could, for a price, give one company priority on their networks over another. This represents a break with the commercial meritocracy that has ruled the Internet until now. We’ve come to expect that the people who own the phone and cable lines remain “neutral,” doing nothing to influence the content on your computer screen. And may the best Web site win.
The piece doesn’t break any new ground for those who have been following the issue (perhaps by reading some of the “obscure” bloggers who Chris says scribble away about the whole two-tiered Internet debate) but he does raise something interesting. Hollywood, which has, perhaps, the biggest stake in a toll-gated Internet, isn’t really concerned.
In my job as a media analyst, I’ve been talking in recent weeks to lobbyists for some of Hollywood’s major entertainment conglomerates. These are people who know that consumers’ ability to download their studios’ movies and television shows as easily and cheaply as anyone else’s will be key to the studios’ future profits. Yet hardly any of them were more than vaguely concerned about the potential ramifications of network neutrality.
Cynthia Brumfield at 10:27 AM|Comments(0)
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