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Report: Google Seeking To Cut Net Censorship Deals
Is net neutrality under direct threat from company that
formerly championed the concept?
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| Steve
Watson & Paul Watson
Infowars.net
Monday, Dec 15,
2008 |
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Google Inc is lobbying internet providers and phone companies
to establish a separate internet traffic lane in order to prioritize
the search engine giant's content, according to a leading report
today.
Google has for years been one of the loudest advocates
of internet neutrality, the practice of giving all internet data
traffic the same level of priority.
However, the Wall
Street Journal today reveals that the company, which
now incorporates Youtube, wants to set up its own fast track on
the web.
The precedent this would set would be to allow companies
to pay internet providers for preferential treatment.
Smaller companies, businesses and websites could
be left operating in the internet slow lane, unable to compete
with the elite of the corporate world.
Defenders of net neutrality say this would constitute
a form of censorship and maintain it would kill off the level
playing field that has forged the greatest technological advance
in human history.
Such a move may inevitably lead to a situation further
down the line where a few large companies have a monopoly over
online content and distribution.
Ironically, Google has positioned itself as a strong
advocate of net neutrality and has often found itself
on the receiving end of charges
of freeloading from providers.
The company has responded by saying the report in
The Wall Street Journal is "confused" and has reaffirmed
its support for network neutrality.
Instead, Google explained that the OpenEdge effort
(the subject of the WSJ story) was a plan to peer its edge-caching
devices directly with the network operators so that the users
of those broadband carriers get faster access to Google and YouTube’s
content, reports GigaOM.
However, the company did not deny that it was seeking
to get its packets ahead of others in this instance by paying
internet carriers.
(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)
The founding principle of the world wide web was
that it is a decentralized communication medium born as a “neutral
network”, there are no overriding controllers, as there
are with television networks, to whose protocols users and content
distributors must adhere to. This is what defines the internet
as truly free.
Though Federal Communications Commission guidelines
favor net neutrality, there is no concrete law that could stop
carriers adopting the fast lanes, which appeal to them as a way
of raising more revenue to upgrade their networks.
Indeed, the FCC rules have been weakening on neutrality
for the past few years, allowing communications companies such
as AT&T
and Verizon to publicly acknowledge their intentions
to create so called internet fast lanes. Other companies such
as Comcast have been caught
delaying internet traffic, in itself a form of prioritization.
Such moves by carriers, though much more subtle,
are essentially no different to governments
filtering and blocking content they deem to be sensitive
or controversial, a practice now commonplace not only in Communist
China but also throughout the so called free world.
The precedent to clamp down on internet neutrality
also dovetails with the move towards the designation of a new
form of the internet, of which we have consistently warned our
readers, known as Internet
2.
This would be a faster, more streamlined elite equivalent of
the internet available to users who were willing to pay more for
a much improved service. providers may only allow streaming audio
and video on your websites if you were eligible for Internet 2.
Of course, Internet 2 would be greatly regulated and only "appropriate
content" would be accepted by an FCC or government bureau.
Everything else would be relegated to the "slow lane"
internet, the junkyard as it were.
The proponents of the various "Internet 2" style projects
all maintain that the internet in it's current form is "dead"
or "dying", citing the problem of providing
more and more bandwidth as it grows. The fact of the matter is
that bandwidth is unlimited, as long as carriers are prepared
to provide it, but the continuation of a neutral internet means
less control and less profits for the corporate elite.
We are witnessing the first steps on a road of control and corporate
centralization of the internet, a move to guarantee the internet
serves the commercial and political purposes of large corporations.
An internet without neutrality would be a direct attack on the
right to information free of censorship or control.
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