Tim Berners-Lee on Net Neutrality
Tim Berners-Lee simplifies the yowling in Washington about Net Neutrality.
Net neutrality is this:If I pay to connect to the Net with a certain quality of service, and you pay to connect with that or greater quality of service, then we can communicate at that level.That's all. Its up to the ISPs to make sure they interoperate so that that happens.
Net Neutrality is NOT asking for the internet for free.
Net Neutrality is NOT saying that one shouldn't pay more money for high quality of service. We always have, and we always will.
There have been suggestions that we don't need legislation because we haven't had it. These are nonsense, because in fact we have had net neutrality in the past -- it is only recently that real explicit threats have occurred.
Tim goes on to state that a near-term powergrab about TV streaming through the Web can lead to some really bad policy decisions, and of course there is huge power and money at stake, so we can expect all the worst behaviors of politicitians and media corporations to be on display. This is all about control of information, and leveraging that power.
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