An Unrelenting tension

Cecile Lusby
429 words
An Unrelenting Tension


Network neutrality may end soon, the SF Chronicle’s Business section warns us.
Todd Shields and Brad Stone begin their discussion of August 15, 2010 with the word imagine. The concepts involved are clouded by corporate practices and techno-jargon, which make for difficult reading and slow processing. But imagine resisting before your attention begins to wander.
In 1985 Stewart Brand wrote, “Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive...that tension will not go away.” This tension also stems from the notion of corporate dominance / corporate personhood and the fact that the web serves as a money making vehicle as well as a source of information and communication. Cable companies now want to offer (sell) layered services. Some advances in technology require a broader bandwidth, so cable companies are considering faster service or superior service for some customers, for a price. Google, once a powerful advocate for net neutrality, and Verizon, a phone service and a cable provider, are forming a partnership. Imagine that, Such a partnership likes or wants tiered pricing, as we would expect from phone and cable companies. This development is ominous for ‘neutrality.’ Customers willing to pay will get better stuff; the others, oh well.
The anticipated changes have sent public interest attorneys scurrying. But the prospects for the average internet user are bleak, so exploring this topic is hard. Not just because your eyes travel down the page at a slower pace, but the heart and mind want to be free and resist. Consider the following sentence from Shields and Stone:
“Verizon’s willingness to agree to clear net neutrality rules for its wired business was ‘pleasantly surprising.’” “Clear the rules?” Excuse me? Does this mean ‘ignore the
rules’ or ‘set aside the rules’? The reading bothers me. What is being bargained with here? Is this about the average citizen’s access to information or entertainment.
Paying more to be entertained with a better presentation is fair enough, I suppose, but information and news content are a different matter.
Shall corporations decide this issue? I hope the public interest still matters to us. Free enterprise advocates say that regulations would delay innovation and investment, but the issues involve more than charging extra for special content, such as 3D movies or special sports events, to travel faster on broader bandwidth. The distinction between information and entertainment is crucial to the resolution of this problem. The tension between information being free and information being expensive is similar to the tension between Democracy and Capitalism. Which interests get served; which are wasted.