http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2007/11/the-comcast-net-neutrality-controversy-a-discussion
- found using Google
- The Heritage Foundation is a public policy research institution
- privately funded
The controversy regarding net neutrality is that consumers believe that it is in their best interest for the internet to remain neutral while the ISPs want to maximize their profits. The ISP's claim that they should be free to manage their networks however they want since they are the ones paying to maintain them. Consumers on the other hand believe that ISP's need to be restricted in what they can and cannot do on their networks so that they are not unfairly discriminating against certain traffic.
This came to a head when Comcast was caught throttling bit torrent traffic and was told to stop by the FCC. This eventually lead to a legal battle in which the FCC was told that they do not have the authority to regulate what Comcast can do.
2 comments:
This is a good article because it about the issue that really sparked the Net Neutrality debate. When the FCC lost the legal battle I think everybody realized that the ISPs hold the power and what that could mean if they decide to use that power for financial gain.
The debate on net neutrality seems to be primarily focused on economics--ISPs want to utilize their infrastructure to maintain maximum income while consumers and other businesses do not want to pay more for services that are currently "free" in the sense there is no extra charge. It will be interesting to see how all this pans out in the next five years or so.
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