Thinkubator – A Thoughtprocess Interactive Blog

I often read the Wall Street Journal online, as many do, to stay up on current events and business news. I believe that the WSJ is one of the best news sources out there for people in business. The stories are relevant and organized in a way that is understandable and succinct.

The major problem that I have (and many others have) is believing everything I read. I could see something on TV and believe 50% of it, hear the same thing from a friend and believe 75% of it, or see the words in print and believe it wholeheartedly. Perhaps it stems from learning from text books in school, or writing research papers with strictly text sources. I guess the point I’m trying to make is that reputation means a lot but even the most reputable authors and journalists aren’t exempt from bias.

The article that sparked these thoughts is about net neutrality. The article addresses the changing stances of major players in the net neutrality debate. The article is entitled “Google Wants Its Own Fast Track on the Web“.

The article singles out Google and Stanford law professor, Lawrence Lessig:

• “Google Inc. has approached major cable and phone companies that carry Internet traffic with a proposal to create a fast lane for its own content”
• “If companies like Google succeed in negotiating preferential treatment, the Internet could become a place where wealthy companies get faster and easier access to the Web than less affluent ones, according to advocates of network neutrality. That could choke off competition, they say.”
• “Google’s proposed arrangement with network providers, internally called OpenEdge, would place Google servers directly within the network of the service providers”

• “Lawrence Lessig, an Internet law professor at Stanford University and an influential proponent of network neutrality, recently shifted gears by saying at a conference that content providers should be able to pay for faster service.”
• “Stanford’s Mr. Lessig, for one, has softened his opposition to variable service tiers. At a conference, he argued that carriers won’t become kingmakers so long as the faster service at a higher price is available to anyone willing to pay it.”

Google’s response:

• “Google has offered to “colocate” caching servers within broadband providers’ own facilities; this reduces the provider’s bandwidth costs since the same video wouldn’t have to be transmitted multiple times. We’ve always said that broadband providers can engage in activities like colocation and caching, so long as they do so on a non-discriminatory basis.”
• “All of Google’s colocation agreements with ISPs — which we’ve done through projects called OpenEdge and Google Global Cache — are non-exclusive, meaning any other entity could employ similar arrangements. Also, none of them require (or encourage) that Google traffic be treated with higher priority than other traffic. In contrast, if broadband providers were to leverage their unilateral control over consumers’ connections and offer colocation or caching services in an anti-competitive fashion, that would threaten the open Internet and the innovation it enables.”
  

Mr. Lessig’s response:

• “Missing from the article, however, is the evidence that my view is a “shift” or “soften[ing]” of earlier views. That’s because there isn’t any such evidence. My view is the view I have always had — whether or not it is the view of others in this debate.”
• “As I testified in 2006, in my view that minimal strategy right now marries the basic principles of “Internet Freedom” first outlined by Chairman Michael Powell, and modified more recently by the FCC, to one additional requirement — a ban on discriminatory access tiering. While broadband providers should be free, in my view, to price consumer access to the Internet differently — setting a higher price, for example, for faster or greater access — they should not be free to apply discriminatory surcharges to those who make content or applications available on the Internet. As I testified, in my view, such “access tiering” risks creating a strong incentive among Internet providers to favor some companies over others; that incentive in turn tends to support business models that exploit scarcity rather than abundance.”
• “Now no doubt my position might be wrong. Some friends in the network neutrality movement as well as some scholars believe it is wrong — that it doesn’t go far enough. But the suggestion that the position is “recent” is baseless. If I’m wrong, I’ve always been wrong.”