The New Republic offers an excellent primer on why the current telecom proposal to charge content providers based on service is a bad idea for democracy. (Thanks to Talking Points Memo for this.)
Under current rules, the magazine writes,
Content providers from Google and Amazon to Daily Kos and TNR Online currently pay Web-hosting companies to put their content on the Internet. Consumers then access that content via Internet service providers, such as Comcast and Verizon. Under the new FCC guidelines, those companies will be able to charge content providers a fee to deliver their content to consumers and, in particular, an additional surcharge to deliver their content to consumers more quickly–that is, they will be able to create a faster toll lane on the information superhighway. If they want, the telecoms can favor their own services and penalize competitors–for instance, voice over Internet protocol companies like Vonage–by denying them faster service. They can even charge lucrative fees to companies for exclusive access to the fast lane at the expense of their competitors, giving, for example, L.L. Bean an advantage over Lands’ End. And, by making the fast lane prohibitively expensive, they can force start-up ventures and noncommercial providers (like blogs) onto the bumpy dirt roads of the Internet.
Net neutrality would prohibit all of this. Telecoms could make money the way they always have–by charging homes and businesses for an Internet connection–but they couldn’t make money from the content providers themselves. That is a perfectly reasonable proposition, and it has won support from Amazon and eBay, as well as the Christian Coalition and MoveOn.org.
The telecoms and their lobbyists argue that they need the extra cash to upgrade lines and say that consumers and content providers would still be free to shop around. The reality is more complicated:
[W]ith the industry dominated by a handful of companies, the typical American
has a choice of only two providers. And changing services often means losing an
e-mail address and facing new connection charges.
Ultimately, though, this issue should be about democracy:
Most important, as Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig has argued, the Internet is not only a tool for economic growth, it is also a public commons for the exchange of ideas. It is where Americans can not only search for the best deal on a new digital camera, but also debate the country’s future. Unlike the telephone, it is a medium in which thousands, even millions, of people can participate in the same discussion at the same time. Unlike television, it is interactive. But it can’t function optimally if content is prioritized or filtered by telecom companies. Allowing companies to levy a toll on information providers is not just a blow to consumer choice–it’s a blow to democracy.
The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
Hank Kalet 