Net Losses

[SOURCE: The New Yorker, AUTHOR: James Surowiecki]
[Commentary] While “tiered access” never influenced the spread of the telephone network, it is becoming a major issue in the evolution of the Internet. The logic of the tiered-access approach is simple: broadband companies do the work of providing Internet access, so they should be able to charge what they can for it. Telecom executives say that the revenue from tiered access would let them invest more in adding bandwidth and improving download speeds, and argue that Web sites are parasites taking, as AT&T’s chairman, Edward E. Whitacre, Jr., put it, a “free ride” on the pipes the broadband companies own. But these companies have pipes into people’s homes in the first place only because of a long history of government regulation, and people want to use those pipes only because of all the value the so-called parasites have created. And it’s that value which tiered access—even if it does improve the Internet’s infrastructure -- will put in harm’s way. Decisions that once were made collectively by hundreds of millions of Internet users would now be shaped in large part by a handful of telecom executives. It used to be said that the Internet was all about “disintermediation.” With the end of network neutrality, the middlemen are striking back.
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/060320ta_talk_surowiecki

See also --
* Universities as Providers of Neutral Networks?
http://www.mediageek.net/?p=1365