Saturday, November 18, 2006

It's your choice! or is it?

Is it possible that the nation's largest cable companies could be making even more money?
Why of course! Based on providing an expanding roster of services for the urban and rural populations, whether it be TV, phone (this means you Rogers!) and most importantly internet, companies could be throwing more bucks in the bank if Network Neutrality became a thing of the past.
Never mind the threat of government or "high intelligence" censoring internet content, companies like Bell and Rogers could turn internet democracy into a metaphorical stock market given the right political support. Is this idea far-fetched? Not really. Attempts have been made in the past to bypass internet conventions by groups like the RIAA, who requested the court the access to names of illegal music downloaders. Though the request was shot down, the premise is the thought was there and that is a cause for concern. Perhaps more of a possibility in the States, where reports of an "ailing" economy are even broadcasted on CNN, there is no reason why political parties which are already being lobbied by media conglomerates could take the monetary bait in exchange for gutting this convention.
Understandably there must be tons of corporations and websites who would love to throw the EBay's, the Google's, the Youtube's off their high-horses. If this convention was scrapped, it could mean, for example, since Rogers has merged with Yahoo, users on the high-speed network would be obliged to use the Yahoo search network and the greatest competitor, Google, could be slow or even blocked. Who controls the internet? Right now, as long as the internet bill is paid, people do. The most obscure website to the most flashy corporate one, appears on your screen, at your command and most importantly at the same rate . If you get rid of network neutrality, that's called "rigging the playing field" and that's bad practice in everyone's books.

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