I was having router problems all last week and had to buy a new one. Perhaps I should have waited because the way we’re going, parts of the internet I cherish may be unreachable to everyone in the near future. Late last week the US House of Representatives voted against an amendment that would enforce network neutrality, the principle by which all packets traversing the network are treated the same, regardless of their content or source. savetheinternet.com has published some choice responses from network neutrality advocates that are well worth reading.
While this does not bode well for a free internet, support for the principle in the Senate is somewhat stronger.
It seems that Congressional reluctance to address this issue is based upon the realization that this might be a solution without a problem. They note that there is no demonstrated implementation of selective routing of internet traffic. Maybe we have to wait until until AT&T reincarnate makes a move in that direction before there will be any movement in the network neutrality efforts.
In many cases, I’d agree that new legislation is not the optimal solution. In this case, however, immediate and clear legislation is called for. All of the telecommunications and cable companies have gone on the public record, clearly stating their intent to erect tollbooths on the network. I’ll be writing a longer piece about this next week with the proper citations.