Saving the Net: How to Keep the Carriers from Flushing the Net Down the Tubes | Linux Journal

Saving the Net: How to Keep the Carriers from Flushing the Net Down the Tubes | Linux Journal:

One tiny excerpt from a long exposition (rant?) by Doc Searls, one of the authors of the cluetrain manifesto who argues that Hollywood and the telco-cable oligopoly want to take over the Internet and make it their new transport (pipes) system and charge for the flow of packets. If you are interested in the battle for the soul and arteries of the Internet, read the complete piece.

This battle has been raging since the birth of the Internet and the Web. Despite the free-wheeling frontier notion of the Internet as everyone's playground and the idea that 'information wants to be free,'popularized by John Perry Barlow in 1994, there is a price to be paid for access. That fact cannot be denied. Someone will collect the access toll to pay for the Net's plumbing.

[...]"Advocating and saving the Net is not a partisan issue. Lawmakers and regulators aren't screwing up the Net because they're 'Friends of Bush' or 'Friends of Hollywood' or liberals or conservatives. They're doing it because one way of framing the Net--as a transport system for content--is winning over another way of framing the Net--as a place where markets and business and culture and governance can all thrive. Otherwise helpful documents, including Ernest Partridge's 'After the Internet' fail because they blame 'Bush-friendly conservative corporations' and appeal only to one political constituency, in this case, progressives. Freedom, independence, the sovereignty of the individual, private rights and open frontiers are a few among many values shared by progressives and conservatives. All are better supported, in obvious ways, by the Net as a place rather than as a transport system.
This is especially true of the Net as a place where free and open markets thrive. This is the Net that we built, where we have sites and locations and domains."[...]