by Dan Lyons
Tuesday’s FCC ruling on net neutrality shifts billions in profits and boils down to one fact: There will soon be a fast Internet for the rich and a slow Internet for the poor.
The Federal Communications Commission approved a set of net neutrality rules Tuesday, and nobody is happy. While liberals claim the FCC has caved to pressure from carriers, right-wingers are calling the new rules a government takeover of the Internet. In their tea-addled brains, the new rules represent yet another example of creeping socialism taking over every aspect of our lives. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is "Julius Seizure." Cue the black helicopters.
No matter what you think about the new rules, however, they signal an important turning point in the development of the Internet. We are going from Phase One, where everything is free and open and untamed, into Phase Two, which is all about centralization, consolidation, control—and money.
Because don’t kid yourself. Money is driving all of this. As in: Hey, we’ve created this marvelous new platform for communicating with each other. We’ve demonstrated that very large sums of money can be generated by sending stuff over these wires. Now let’s figure out who gets what.
Tuesday’s new FCC rules grant two big concessions to carriers. First, the rules will apply to wired broadband connections, but they will pretty much leave wireless alone. Second, carriers remain free to create “fast lanes” on the Internet. They can charge Internet companies to ride on the faster pipes, and perhaps also charge consumers more money to get access to those speedy services.
That is a huge deal. It means we are entering an age in which we will have two Internets—the fast one, with great content, that costs more (maybe a lot more) to use, and then the MuggleNet, which is free but slow and crappy. Cable TV vs. rabbit ears.
On wireless—which eventually will be the more important platform—that disparity will be even more evident. The rich will get great stuff. The poor will get, well, what the poor usually get, which is not much.
Oddly enough this bifurcation resonates beyond just the speed of our Internet connection. It also is happening to information itself. We could be heading into a world where the rich get better information, from a wider choice of sources, while the poor get less.
That’s already happening, to some extent. If you’re a trader on Wall Street and can afford a Bloomberg terminal, you get better information sooner than the poor schlumps who are home trying to play at being day traders.
It will happen even more as news organizations, like Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and The New York Times, start putting content behind pay walls.
And so the digital divide widens into an information divide, which of course has huge implications for politics, economics, and even democracy itself.
Read more:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-12-21/net-neutrality-ruling-the-fcc-splits-the-internet-in-two/
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