costela.net

This may seem obvious and old, specially for those with FOSS backgrounds, but considering the not-so-current developments*, this seemed like an appropriate time to speak my mind on the subject.

Imagine a world where all markets work the same way: you go in, browse the wares at your leisure, picking the ripest fruit, the freshest salad, and then the market simply pays a driver to take it all to your house, while you come back home in your own means of transportation, whatever that is.

You pay your way to the market, the market pays for the transport of the wares back to your house, and reverts that cost back to you in form of slightly higher prices.

In the end you’re both paying for transport, which isn’t the main product of the transaction, but is a necessary infrastructural part of it in this strange little fictional world of ours.

Now imagine you take the cab to the market, but upon arrival the driver charges not only you for the ride, but also the market for making sure you’re not mysteriously stuck in traffic for 2 hours while underway.

Sounds a bit like a sort of protection racket, right? That’s in general terms what some ISPs around the world are trying to do to alleviate for the fact that their aggressive marketing gimmicks have sold more bandwidth than they can currently profitably maintain.
And that’s why I am in favor of some form of legislation to guarantee network neutrality, particularly because I don’t believe the free-market rules will be enough to keep the ISPs from introducing small fees, which won’t be that big a problem for the big players, but could severely hamper the small guy’s ability to reach his audience. Not to mention the impact of suppressing less profitable traffic on new technologies, since new applications over new protocols become second-class citizens.
On the other hand, over-regulation can also have a stifling effect and it’s not exactly easy creating laws that protect the principle instead of the technical details, but I’m clearly for attempting it.

Just my two cents, as always.

* yes, I still read Slashdot, get over it. Does anyone in NL know if it’s really that serious? Or did the press spin a bit of FUD? My German is certainly not good enough for me to read Dutch.