skippy the bush kangaroo: nobody's really neutral on net neutrality

Sunday, June 18, 2006

nobody's really neutral on net neutrality

matt stoller wrote at mydd in response to skippy's questioning the value of matt's decision to run an anti-net neutrality ad. the gist of his response came down to he feels it's an "editorial/advertising" standard that is well-practiced in journalism, and he's pretty damn broke, too boot. skippy replied that he wasn't trying to bust matt's chops, but felt that the issue is important enought that if we lose, we all lose access to blog.

we at skippy international think this issue is too important to relegate to "philosophical differences." as the sfchron explains the details quite well:

to grasp the net neutrality issue, one must realize that there are two chunks to the internet: the long-haul wires between cities, and the short-haul wires that lead from the greater internet to the home.

in the long-haul wires, often called the internet "backbone," there is a glut of capacity. due to heavy investment during the dot-com boom, as well as cutthroat competition among these long-haul carriers, there's plenty of bandwidth to handle the coming rush of video files that will flood the internet as the network is increasingly used to deliver video -- i.e., tv -- to people's homes…

the only place where differential pricing and net neutrality matter is the "last mile" of wire that leads to the american home. about 29.4 million u.s. households get high-speed internet access from their cable provider, according to a recent report by the emarketer research firm. another 21.5 million homes get their high-speed connection via phone company digital subscriber lines, commonly known as dsl. (about 26 million americans still had slow dial-up connections as of 2006, but that number is expected to shrink rapidly.)…

while the cable industry has been relatively quiet in the internet debate, daniel brenner, senior vice president for law and regulatory policy for the national cable and telecommunications association in washington, d.c., framed the question that underlies the industry's argument:

"is the only potential payer going to be the end user, the customer, or are there other ways to finance infrastructure by asking content providers to pay as well?" he asked, adding, "this debate is about whether congress should prevent us from doing that."

vince vittore, a telecom analyst with the yankee group, said the telephone companies have led this debate because they face the greatest needs to revamp their wires -- and not simply to boost their broadband offerings. instead they want to deliver television and internet signals on the same wire, just as their cable competitors do.

"the telcos want to compete with cable operators to provide video entertainment,'' he said.

so, the ability of end-users, like you, to read low-level content, like ours, will be dependent upon the multi-national corporations' largesse to let you access our product at the same rate as the big websites.

rest assured, we have no money to pay for higher-speed access, and matt at mydd certainly doesn't (he's worried about having furniture, he told skippy).

so pardon us if we feel this issue is of paramount importance to bloggers everywhere, and that blogs which take a few hundred bucks up front now to run an ad that extols the viewpoint which is detrimental to our operation in the future, are short-sighted and seriously mistaken.

be sure to call your senators tomorrow, and visit savetheinternet.com today.

addendum: thanks to chicago dyke for getting our back!

posted by skippy at 8:17 PM |