{"id":1257,"date":"2006-06-27T19:21:06","date_gmt":"2006-06-27T19:21:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1257"},"modified":"2006-06-27T19:21:06","modified_gmt":"2006-06-27T19:21:06","slug":"all_bits_are_cr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1257","title":{"rendered":"All Bits Are Created Equal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Net neutrality, once an issue that was discussed primarily on tech sites like Slashdot<\/A> or Ars Technica<\/A>, is now receiving coverage in more mainstream<\/A> news outlets.  For the uninitiated, the debate surrounding net neutrality (or “network neutrality”) centers on the following question: should the major telecom companies (Comcast, AT&T, etc.) be able to charge Internet companies like Google and Amazon a premium for access to their high-speed networks.  Advocates of net neutrality believe that government regulation is necessary to prevent the telcos from restricting access to content that isn’t on their “preferred” list.  They argue that a provider like Comcast could restrict customers’ access to a streaming video site that didn’t pay a “Preferred Access” fee to Comcast.<\/SPAN><\/FONT><\/DIV>
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Opponents of net neutrality do not want to see any government regulation.  They argue that the telcos should be able to recoup the billion-dollar investments they made to increase the network’s capacity and that they should be able to charge bandwidth hogs like Yahoo to fund any future network upgrades.  <\/SPAN><\/FONT><\/DIV>
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Both sides have been engaging in massive amounts of spin to win favor in the court of public opinion, which only serves to confuse the issue further.  Opponents of net neutrality neglect to mention that major internet companies already pay big bandwidth fees to the telcos.  And advocates of regulation probably overstate the likelihood that the telcos will restrict access to content and risk a consumer backlash.  On the whole, however, I’m in favor of at least some minimal regulation to ensure that all content is equally available to the public, regardless of the content’s source or the ownership of the network pipes carrying that content.  While I don’t think the Internet is likely to become a proprietary network, most telcos are quasi-monopolies in their respective geographic regions, which requires society to exercise a higher degree of vigilance in this sector of the marketplace.  <\/SPAN><\/FONT>
<\/DIV><\/DIV><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Net neutrality, once an issue that was discussed primarily on tech sites like Slashdot or Ars Technica, is now receiving coverage in more mainstream news outlets.  For the uninitiated, the debate surrounding net neutrality (or “network neutrality”) centers on the following question: should the major telecom companies (Comcast, AT&T, etc.) be able to charge Internet […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-kh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1257\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}