In a scandal worthy of a Banana republic, the sleazy head of the U.S. Justice Department stepped down recently amid a variety of accusations—such as that Alberto Gonzales leaned on U.S. attorneys to prosecute Democrats and go easy on Republicans or lose their jobs.
Gonazles is just the kind of guy who would love bugged e-books, and I say good riddance.
But other White House appointees remain in control at Justice, and given the department’s past record, I’d love to know what corporate strings might be behind Justice’s backing of efforts to let huge Net providers charge more for “priority traffic” which large companies such as AT&T deemed most profitable. This scenario would wreak havoc on the concept of Net neutrality.
Damage to e-books
Such a ruling by the Federal Communications Commission would hurt individuals, small businesses including e-book publishers and little e-stores, and certainly grassroots sites such as the TeleRead. Ironically even companies such as Google and Microsoft would suffer, and so would large publishing conglomerates such as Bertelsmann and Simon & Schuster, part of CBS. Remember, they’re already paying hefty Net-related fees. Along the way, we’d see less technical innovation as costs went up for little startups.
But the politically wired companies are hoping to make big bucks off premium charges for, say, HDTV-style video and the interest. And we know who generally comes first in D.C.—the corporate interests whose corporate donations exceed their foes’.
Weak argument from fatcats
I’ll not buy the argument that the two-tiered approach, favoring AT&T and the like, would promote greater investment in the Internet. Just the opposite! The metered approach would reduce the Net’s growth—long term, the real justifier of investment.
Caveats: Yes, honest, well-meaning people, including some of the libertarian philosophy hostile to government intervention in general, can oppose Net neutrality. So permeated is Washington by corporate cash, however, that it’s hard to tell what’s going on, directly or indirectly. Big-business think tanks dominate the town and discussion of public policy issues among many Democrats, too, not just Republicans.
Related: Earlier posts on Net neutrality issues.
(Found via LISNews.)
