This week, a key federal official cautioned against calls for net neutrality, the effort to expand government reach in the Internet marketplace. It’s a wise move to keep the Internet free of red tape. So why are lobbyists pushing for new rules?
Net neutrality holds that Internet network providers such as AT&T and Verizon should remain neutral with respect to their online content. Although the issue appears to be how best to ensure an open Internet, it’s obscuring the hidden agenda. Web sites and online content providers seek to use federal regulation to tie the hands of their broadband providers and prohibit them from charging businesses more for future services.
Some Internet giants like Google and Amazon.com would like elected officials and the public to believe that network providers will block consumer access to their Web pages if they refuse to pay for future premium services, projecting scary scenarios of an “Internet ghetto” or a “two-tiered” network. Other rhetoric invokes science fiction doomsday visions.
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