Progress Towards a Democratic Internet
Posted: 04/04/2014 | Author: The Political Idealist | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: capitalism, democracy, EU, European Parliament, internet, Net neutrality, Technology |Leave a commentThe European Parliament has voted through the Connected
Continent Regulation, widely known as the “net neutrality” law. Subject to approval by a summit of culture ministers, the law will come into effect this winter. The move is a landmark parting of the ways between Europe and the US on policy as to the future of our Internet. But we aren’t all technology nerds: few people are aware of the battle taking place over the soul of the “people’s network” in legislatures and regulators’ offices around the world. So what is net neutrality?
In short, net neutrality is the principle that ISPs should treat all traffic equally, whatever its source. That means that websites should not be able to pay your broadband supplier to give them preferential download speed. Landline and mobile broadband providers should not block access to content that rivals their own “bundled” content. For example, Vodafone should allow its network users to use Last.fm even if it has a deal to sell Spotify subscriptions to its users.
The case for net neutrality legislation is solid. Without it, the world will suffer with a two-tier Internet in which established web services squeeze out start-ups by snapping up most of the available bandwidth. If web users stray beyond the “higher web”, where the Digital Establishment offers users lightning fast speeds but little choice, they will find themselves in a decaying, traffic-free and grindingly slow lower web. The level playing field that allowed innovative new services like Wikipedia, YouTube and WordPress to develop will be gone: the Internet will become a game for the big guys only, with everyone else virtually locked out. The process is already beginning, with Google conducting a multimillion dollar deal with Verizon, one of America’s largest ISPs.
A two-tier Internet might not have emerged yet. It won’t have by next year. But in 5 years or so, the trend will be entrenched and impossible to reverse. The European Union bloc has sufficient clout to ensure genuine net neutrality within its borders. But what about the other 92% of the world’s population? The Internet will begin to look quite different as regulations vary.
Some ISPs have warned that the EU has cut off a vital new funding stream needed to cope with the exponential growth in bandwidth-heavy traffic. They complain that they will have to pass on higher costs to consumers. That’s not true: those additional costs will exist anyway. If YouTube had to buy the bandwidth needed for users to access its content, it couldn’t cover that cost with advertising. It would be forced to charge for its service. Internet use would become dependent on a hundred little subscriptions, outweighing any saving made in broadband costs.
So I thank the European Parliament from remaining true to the democratic principles upon which the Internet was founded.
