Net Neutrality: Its for more than just the Internet

I can, if I choose, go spend any amount of money I want on an answering machine, and connect said machine to the telephone network. I can buy any conventional, telephone-based modem I want and do the same.

I can similarly spend any amount I want on a television, and connect said television to the cable network. I can do the same with any VCR I own or purchase.

I cannot, however, buy any cellphone I want and connect to Rogers' cellular network.

I cannot buy a cable or DSL modem and connect to Rogers' or Bell's highspeed networks.

I cannot buy a generic digital cable box and connect to Rogers' digital cable network.

Why? Because, to put it briefly, policy matters. I know this stuff is dull, but this is essentially the difference between an open and closed network. And it didn't happen by accident. Time was you couldn't connect an answering machine to the telephone network, and Bell went to court to make sure that was the case. It took government regulation to change that. And because of the open network policy - which said that customers could connect whatever they want to the network, provided it didn't damage it - we got the beginnings of the Internet.

Because of that policy, people, and then companies, built BBSes (who remembers Ymodem?) and ISPs out of dialup Internet, and Bell didn't realize that was a market until nearly a decade later. It was slow, and patchy, but it was incredibly fun for me as an adolescent, and it wouldn't have happened if the telephone companies had been able to stop it.

We're beyond the beginnings of the Internet now. And, having failed to stop it, they're trying to kill it. Should Rogers be able to tell me not to use Skype, or Vonage, but to use their own network instead? Not in a fair market. But we don't have a fair market - Rogers dominates high-speed Internet service. Should Bell be able to tell me not to watch YouTube, and watch Google Video instead? Not in a fair market. Should any company - provided I pay for their service, and don't damage the network - be able to tell me how I use their service, simply to fatten their profits?

I know that sounds idealistic, and it is. But the Internet is incredibly important to me as a student, a blogger, and a person. There are plenty of people who I simply couldn't communicate with if it weren't for the Internet - I could never afford the bills. To be told that I could lose this freedom is akin to being told you can use the phone, but only to call an approved list of people. Every other call you make will be dropped, or will be nearly inaudible. And all because Bell and Rogers want a bit more money and a lot more power.

The news this week that all of the American major telcos save one (Qwest) have been illegally cooperating with the Bush regime in surveillance and wiretapping should really tell you what the net neutrality fight is about. The telcos say "trust us", while they spy on us. They say "trust us" while they walk out the door with our wallets. And they say "trust us" while they try to strangle one of the best tools for communication ever devised.

The idea that businesses have an expectation of ethical behaviour seems to have been abandoned long ago, in an age before Gordon Gecko. It sounds quaint, pleading for mega-companies to treat people like people. It shouldn't. We once understood that the companies that control networks have immense power, and that power needs to be constrained in the public good.