IP Democracy: Extremism in the Defense of Net Neutrality

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.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on February 2, 2006 10:29 AM to IP Democracy