The Internet's Future

THE INTERNET'S FUTURE
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Editorial Staff]
[Commentary] The Senate will hold hearings tomorrow on "net neutrality," the idea that the pipes and wires that form the Internet should treat all content equally. An alliance whose membership ranges from the Christian Coalition to MoveOn.org is demanding that Congress write this neutrality into law; the groups fear that the pipe owners -- cable companies, phone companies and so on -- might otherwise deliver corporate content at high speed for high fees, while consigning political Web sites and hobbyists to a slow information byway. These arguments are amplified by the big Internet firms -- Google, Microsoft, eBay -- that want their services delivered fast but don't want the pipe owners to extract fees from them. Although this coalition lost a House vote last week, its prospects are stronger in the Senate. The weakest aspect of the neutrality case is that the dangers it alleges are speculative. It seems unlikely that broadband providers will degrade Web services that people want and far more likely that they will use non-neutrality to charge for upgrading services that depend on fast and reliable delivery, such as streaming high-definition video or relaying data from heart monitors. If this proves wrong, the government should step in. But it should not burden the Internet with preemptive regulation. (The Washington Post Co. owns broadband networks that might charge Web sites for fast delivery. It also produces Web content that might be subject to such fees, so it claims it has interests on both sides of this issue.)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/11/AR200606...
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