Tim Berners-Lee on Net Neutrality: "This is serious."

[TetsuoShima]

ArsTechnica Article

 

The creator about net neutrality:

 

 

When I invented the Web, I didn't have to ask anyone's permission.

 

If you think about it in terms of start-ups having to ask the permission of AT&T to innovate, then the whole net neutrality issue becomes less complicated.

 

Makes for a good read and explains the problems ahead! :)

[GorunNova]

But I though regulation was bad for markets?

 

It's on the topic of regulation that Berners-Lee lets loose with another great one-line takedown of all the anti-regulatory rhetoric that the telcos and their surrogates have been using:

 

"For example, the market system depends on the rule that you can't photocopy money."

 

The simple truth that you can't have a free market without government regulation should be so obvious that it hurts, but after a few decades of some industries pushing a "regulation vs. free markets" dichotomy people need to be reminded that the sky is, in fact, blue.

 

XD... couldn't have put it better myself. As money is a government established unit of trade, right from the start you have government involved in the market. The only way to have a -true- free market would be to dispense with money and go back to barter.

 

Other convenient rules include, but are not limited to, "if one claims their product is something that it's not, they can be punished", and "if one threatens bodily harm to someone if they don't buy, that's a punishable offense". Rules are necessary to keep markets in order and prevent exploitation of merchants AND consumers. That's the nature of net neutrality: it's a way to allow people to actually do what they want with the services they pay for without ISPs and bandwidth providers arbitrarily killing the ones they don't like / recieve enough money from.