Today is a net-neutrality kind of day — media activist Jeff Chester sent me a link to his piece in The Nation entitled “End of the Internet?” And while it’s arguably a worthy contribution to the net neutrality debate, I would caution advocates of this notion to not overstate their case, as Jeff does.
For example, Jeff contends that all kinds of ills will befall society if some form of two-tiered Internet evolves, including, and I kid you not, harm to the environment, civil rights, our political system and more.
Without proactive intervention, the values and issues that we care about—civil rights, economic justice, the environment and fair elections—will be further threatened by this push for corporate control.
This is just not credible.
Later, he posits a scenario that seems to suggest that a two-tiered Internet will allow cable companies and telcos to “spy” on its customers. Selectively quoting from a Cisco white paper on deep packet inspection, which allows network providers to distinguish among the kinds of packets flowing over their networks, Chester says
Such tracking and billing is made possible because they will know “the identity and profile of the individual subscriber,” “what the subscriber is doing” and “where the subscriber resides.”
He doesn’t come out and say it, but the implication is: If we don’t get net neutrality, your broadband company will know what you are doing at all times. Please. As if they don’t already have that capability today.
Cynthia Brumfield at 10:29 AM|Comments(1)
Cynthia: The pay as you go monetized model for broadband delivery will hurt all forms of civic expession (inc. dissent) in the era of multimedia applications. As for the data collection, its clear that the business model that the telco's and cable have developed include extensive forms of data collection for personalized marketing. I urge your readers to come to our website and read the documentation on the issue first hand. It may not be "credible" to you--but (as the documents make clear)--it will happen.
Posted by: Jeff Chester at February 12, 2006 12:13 PM
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