Old battle, meet new battle. We've spent eight years having to oppose what should be unthinkable–a president lying us into war, American torture, domestic spying, the unitary executive, Vice President Evil, on and on. So we deserve a respite. But this may prove a far easier battle, if Obama's position turns out to be the right one:
The celebrated openness of the Internet — network providers are not supposed to give preferential treatment to any traffic — is quietly losing powerful defenders.
Google Inc. has approached major cable and phone companies that carry Internet traffic with a proposal to create a fast lane for its own content, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Google has traditionally been one of the loudest advocates of equal network access for all content providers. …
For computer users, it could mean that Web sites by companies not able to strike fast-lane deals will respond more slowly than those by companies able to pay. In the worst-case scenario, the Internet could become a medium where large companies, such as Comcast Corp. in cable television, would control both distribution and content — and much of what users can access, according to neutrality advocates.
Maybe I'm just pessimistic, but I predict an over-arching commitment to the right ideals degraded by a gradual slide toward a pro-big-business position–it's still true, no matter who's in the White House, that enormous corporations have better access to lawmakers than we the people. It's all wrong, but readily apparent. Over time, they will likely wear down their opponents until we have a pay-to-play Internet. Oh, joy. So madman Bill from Milwaukee no longer gets equal access and equal speed when you visit his site to download the latest Podcast about how the Greys are arriving in their Dorito-shaped spaceship to turn us all into newts or whatever. And as far as I'm concerned, that's the real beauty of the Internet.
Like all things American, I guess, it will, if we're not careful, eventually be turned into an antiseptic big box experience, just another medium through which one can be advertised at and sold to. We seem to have the ability to turn everything into a transaction instead of a mere experience.(Turns out the same stuff that frustrated me endlessly before Bush is still true–it just got eclipsed by the dark juggernaut of his administration for a while.)
But hey, maybe I'm wrong. I hope I am–maybe the Internet will remain equal access to all comers, a wacky place full of people doing what they do just because they can and offering to other people for free. That would be a glorious thing.
Because otherwise, I wouldn't get to visit sites like this. Or maybe this.
UPDATE: Google's position appears to be more complicated than what the Wall Street Journal portrayed. Here's a very fine explanation of the details. But there's more to this than Google, so "forest for the trees" and all that:
Separately, Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. have withdrawn quietly from a coalition formed two years ago to protect network neutrality. Each company has forged partnerships with the phone and cable companies.
UPDATE 2: The plot thickens. Why did the WSJ write this story? Timothy Karr at Huffington Post thinks it might be an attack of sorts by those who oppose net neutrality. He also points out this very comforting fact:
The president-elect has made numerous public statements on the campaign trail and published a detailed policy document placing Net Neutrality as his top priority. He's explicitly opposed paid "quality of service" arrangements and was also a co-sponsor of the Dorgan-Snowe bill that is the strongest Net Neutrality legislation ever proposed.
