Your Own Personal Internet (wired blogs)

I sually avoid politics on this blog (part of the reason why I have not yet stepped into the whole netneutrality nonsense), but I have a few excerpts from Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) that I would like to address so bear with me.

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.

So you want to talk about the consumer? Let’s talk about you and me. We use this internet to communicate and we aren’t using it for commercial purposes.

So, because you, Sen. Stevens, do not consider your job commercial, those with jobs that would follow such a consideration cannot use the internet?  Regardless of the elitism that you so quickly espouse, there are other problems with your argument here:

1. Unless the United States Government is using phone lines to route governement traffic, I can personally assure you as an IT professional that your email wasn’t delayed due to being “tangled up,” but due to poor management by your System Administrator.  For once, you can blame IT.
2. Also, unless you never visit eBay, Amazon, Fox News, or any other non-government web site, you are actually using the “commercial web.” How would you feel if you had access only to Cox Communications Bidding and couldn’t from those on Verizon Bidding?

And some more…

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a truck.

It’s a series of tubes.

And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Now we have a separate Department of Defense internet now, did you know that?

Do you know why?

Because they have to have theirs delivered immediately. They can’t afford getting delayed by other people.

Amazingly enough, the tubes isn’t that far off, but let’s simplify the metaphor even further.  The internet is a network of roads.  This metaphor allows me to really explain it fairly well.  Your ISP is, say your automobile manufacturer. 

So, let’s say that you drive a Ford and want to meet me at a McDonalds off of 95.  McDonalds is owned by Ford’s parent company (sounds odd, but this is common with media companies), so you have no problem driving there.

Now, I happen to own a Chevy and their parent company also owns Burger King.  The parent company wants me to eat at Burger King, so they make it so that I can’t drive on 95 to McDonalds.  They make me drive the backroads with express cut offs every mile to Burger Kings.  If they are nice, I will get to McDonalds at some point, but it will take me a whole lot longer than you, with much more work.

The internet is a commercial net and an individual net.  It is a wonderful tool, allowing for people to communicate without regard to borders, race, age, or anything that would divide us elsewhere.  Limiting access is an act of tyranny, pure and simple.  We call it that readily when it is a government that would do such a thing, such as the Great Firewall of China.  Why is it any different for corporations?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 5th, 2006 at 5:02 pm and is filed under Writings, future, media, netneutrality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.