Thursday, December 07, 2006
Net Discrimination in the rest of the world
So what's wrong with a little Net Discrimination? In some countries, it is about more than "my pipes" and how's a carrier gonna make a buck. It is about "my ideas" and how's a government going to keep control. Ethan Zuckerman, in an article I blogged already, but which I'm blogging again because it is now available on line, reminds us
The principal of maintaining the Internet as a single, interconnected network with no preference for one type of bits over another--what geeks call "network neutrality"--is under assault. Foreign countries have led the charge. Saudi Arabia blocks content that runs counter to the clerics' interpretation of Islam. China bars its citizens' access to sites created by, among others, practitioners of Falun Gong.It's different here, right? It can't happen here, right?
Technorati Tags: Censorship, EthanZuckerman, Freedom, NetworkNeutrality
Comments:
David, I work on net neutrality issues, and the dangers you cite are nothing more than scare tactics. Governmental censorship and net neutrality are completely unrelated, as an entity such as the Chinese government can censor a neutral net just as easily and freely as a non-neutral net. If so-called net neutrality were good policy, its advocates wouldn't need to scare people into supporting it through blatant falsehoods.
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