[Reader-list] This might interest Sarai readers

[charu soni]

Commercialisation of the internet and its pitfalls - I think quite a 
few Sarai readers might find this interesting....

cheers!

Charu Soni

INTERNET 'NEUTRALITY' VITAL FOR FREE EXPRESSION
Reporters Without Borders said today it is backing the principle of 
Internet 'neutrality' as the US Senate Commerce Committee is due to 
meet on Thursday to discuss renewal of the 1996 telecommunications 
law.
"The way to defend freedom of expression is to defend this 
principle," the international press freedom organisation said.

Senators Olympia Snowe (Republican) and Byron Dorgan (Democrat) have 
presented a draft law (Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2006) to 
force telecoms operators to respect the principle of neutrality, at a 
time when US operators show signs of seeking to break the principle 
so as to offer faster services, such as video on demand.

"Rejecting the principle of neutrality would have direct consequences 
for bloggers and Internet-users worldwide," the organisation said.

"If telecommunications operators are allowed to offer different 
services according to the price paid by content providers it is 
likely that small online publications, particularly blogs, will be 
relegated to a second class Internet, with an output greatly inferior 
to that of commercial concerns."

"There would be a risk that websites without financial means would 
disappear to the benefit of big content providers. The neutrality 
principle has made the Internet an open, creative and free media.  It 
is already being put under threat by the world's authoritarian 
states, led by China. It would be disastrous if the United States was 
to give it up as well," it concluded.

Under the neutrality principle operators (such as Verizon, France 
Telecom) are not allowed to make any distinction between people and 
organisations which provide a Net service. For example, Internet 
service providers would not be allowed to sign contracts with blogs 
or websites to provide them with a better service than it provides to 
others.

The US telecoms operators wanting to provide video on demand for 
example would require a significant bandwidth. At present a blog uses 
the same network as the CNN website, so a step in that direction 
would mean creating two Internets: one high speed, for commercial 
concerns; the other slower for all those without the means to pay for 
the operators' services.

In this scenario, Internet-users could reject blogs or other "minor 
sources" of information in favour of looking up pages which are 
faster to access.

Many countries already violate the principle of Internet neutrality 
by blocking access to online publications which displease them. The 
Net should serve to transmit information, without reference to its 
origin or destination. Only the users should be able to decide which 
content they want to access.

Therefore, abandoning the neutrality principle in the United States 
would increase the risk of spreading the Chinese model - a more 
centralised network in which access providers would have improper and 
decisive power over content transmission.