Net Leaders: Discrimination Is Bad for Business
June 25th, 2006 by tkarrTwo of the Internet’s top business innovators made a case for Net Neutrality today in an op-ed written for the San Jose Mercury News:
“Reinstating the Internet’s core principle of net neutrality won’t stand in the way of innovation,” write John Doerr and Reed Hastings. “Indeed, net neutrality has, until recently, been the very foundation of Internet innovation.”
Top venture capitalist Doerr joined NetFlix co-founder Hastings to call on Congress to prevent the nation’s largest phone and cable companies from gutting Net Neutrality and squashing the innovation that has made the Internet an economic force.
Phone companies have stated their intention to give favored nation status to their own or allied businesses’ Web sites, thereby slowing or, even, blocking access to rival search engines, music dowload sites, social networking communities, online phone services, or other applications. Net Neutrality would prevent this discrimination. The most profitable online business ideas would rise as a result of user preference, and not by special selection of the companies that control the pipes.
Doer and Hastings write:
“Because of the unfettered power of phone and cable companies to control consumer access to Internet content, we need tailored safeguards that prevent network operators from discriminating in the delivery or prioritization of content based on source or ownership. We are not proposing a new, heavy-handed set of regulations. Consumers deserve tailored safeguards that prevent network operators from affirmatively blocking, degrading or impairing consumer access to the Internet content, services and applications of their choice or discriminating in the delivery of Internet content.”
Until recently, they write, Net Neutrality has ensured the Internet’s growth into a vibrant and non-discriminatory marketplace:
“Today, we take for granted the convenience of the Internet. But we should not overlook that the basic principle of net neutrality has enabled the Internet innovations that produce great benefits for consumers and economic prosperity for our nation.”
Hastings reports that it’s because of Net Neutrality that his Netflix grew from a small online business into one today that serves 5 million subscribers.
Doerr and Hastings argue that other business innovations are now under threat by moves by the likes of AT&T and Verizon that would stifle the openness that has been a hallmark of the Internet:
“Cable and phone companies are currently working on Capitol Hill to protect their ability to discriminate in the delivery or prioritization of Internet content based on its source or ownership. The giant cable and phone companies don’t want Congress to limit their power to discriminate against Web sites. They want to be able to pick and choose the Internet content that travels via high-speed broadband.”
This discrimination defies the Internet’s stunning evolution toward an end-to-end system, where control resides not with middlemen but with those of us who go online.
Under this revolutionary system, rewards go to the businesses that enhance our choices — not those that restrict them.
Moreover, when choice is left with end users, the best businesses rise to the top as the result of a true and virtual free market. When monopoly ISPs discriminate, new economic ideas aren’t given a chance to compete against the status quo. Innovation is snubbed out. Economic growth slows to a halt.
June 25th, 2006 at 9:15 pm
There’s a book called “The $200 Billion Broadband Scandal” that tells how the Telcos were given $200 billion in taxpayer dollars, and in return were supposed to wire america with high speed 45 mbps connections. This was in the 90s, and the telcos kept the money but didn’t keep their promise.
The author of this book is making it free for one week from the web site http://www.newnetworks.com .
June 26th, 2006 at 8:52 pm
John07 and all: this is a great book. It’s worth a read. I reviewed it here:
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2006/06/net-neutrality-and-telcos-broken.html
Check it out.