Click to order…
Click!
This creates a chain of activities: order processing, packaging, shipping, and receiving.
This is the frame that AT&T has chosen to use to talk about their business:
- Podcasts: delivered
- Your World: delivered
- Mail: delivered
AT&T would have us believe they deliver the internet.
This is a fallacy. They are simply the roads on which we all deliver our content. They are no more a delivery company than the US Interstate Highway system is a delivery company. This is an important conceptual difference: delivery vs access, and this conceptual difference is of prime importance in protecting a free and open internet.
The Corporate Communications Cartel is going to come out blazing with language framed in terms of delivery. They deliver the internet, and if they don’t get their way, we won’t get our information delivered. They will paint a picture of an assembly line, much like Lucy and Ethel in the chocolate factory.
“We just can’t keep up with all the information all these people want us to deliver, so we want to charge those people for that increase cost and chaos on the assembly line. Everybody needs to get their information delivered, right?”
That sounds reasonable, eh? Just charging those that cost them.
They will talk about those freeloaders, like Google, Yahoo, Amazon, etc. that are making their living off of AT&T’s cutting edge, extremely expensive assembly line delivery system. They might even go after them as big bad corporations who don’t deserve our empathy; but I digress…
While the above metaphor of delivery sounds like a nice fit, it is not quite right.
AT&T is not the assembly line, they are the roads. They are the pipes. Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and the population in general are the assembly line delivery system of the internet; AT&T simply provides means for transport of that data that we all create. They are the roads, and they deal in access.
What they are really trying to do in their latest Corporate Sponsored Legislative Action is to restrict access, to charge people for access. They want to make people pay in order to send and receive information reliably and efficiently. If you can’t pay, you can’t get access to send and receive information. It’s that simple.
Restricted access runs counter to everything that the internet stands for. The internet is open and free. If we can shift the debate terms from delivery to access, it becomes painfully obvious that the arguments from the corporate Communications Cartel just don’t make any sense.
Talk about the corporate sponsored Information Toll Road in the terms of access and not delivery, and we will save the internet.
Quit talking about “net neutrality” and start talking about the big ISPs and backbones being “common carriers,” just like railroads. An ISP that’s a common carrier has to deliver everybody’s packets, no matter what their point of origin or point of destination. A situation remarkably similar to the one we have now.
Yahoo?
SBC Yahoo?
Now owned by AT&T?
I’m confused.
The whole net neutrality affair is simple. Right now, Google and Yahoo are paying their ISPs for the bandwidth they use, and you’re paying your ISP for the bandwidth you use.
AT&T and their cohorts want to be able to force Google and Yahoo to pay them for the bandwidth you use accessing Google’s services.
In effect, they’re already getting paid twice for the same traffic, and now want to be paid three times for it.
Now I know I’m not paying as much attention to the news and blogs as I did say 6 months ago, but something seems missing out here in the blogosphere: where’s the outrage over COPE? the Internet within the US is going to be privatized! We are going to be doled out bandwidth by how much we’re willing to pay! What, we’ll have to bid on Ebay to get our sites some bandwidth?
Educate me, what the hell is going on, and what is Washington doing to kill the Internet in the US? We know the greedy bastards at the giant ISP’s are behind this, that’s not news. I’ve missed the details because it seems no one is blogging about this, but all about the damn Orange Convention.
Thanks
There are several good articles on it over at http://www.commondreams.org.
House Rejects Net Neutrality
No Tolls on the Internet
And this one is telling: Remember how cooperative AT&T and the other telecoms were in sharing private information with the goverment? Their reason may have had nothing to do with “homeland security”….
It’s alright, Ma Bell
This is worth a blast of letters, emails and phone calls to the Senate. But I don’t know if it will do any good… the telecoms are spending millions on lobbyists to convince lawmakers that the internet just won’t SURVIVE unless they get to do what they want.
But this is a good tact to take — that the telecoms are trying to claim credit for the contents of the trucks, rather than the maintenance of the roads. They’d like to create HOV lanes that speed SOME data along, while not doing much to support the choked mass-transit lanes that those who can’t pay the toll for speedier access will be forced to use. Right now, when the road’s backed up, it’s backed up more or less equally for everyone… and thus even the big companies can see there’s a need to widen or improve the road, add more exits, etc. But if the telecoms have their way, they’ll be able to build nice speedy freeways that are toll-only roads… and leave those who don’t pay their tolls to trundle along on poorly maintained dirt tracks. And consumers on the other end will only get to see the bright, shiny prepackaged corporate trucks on the toll road… because the chances of anything reaching them on those old dirt roads will be just about nil.
Maybe THAT analogy will make sense… if they haven’t got their ears all stopped up with AT&T’s money and lobbyists…..
on the ISPs being the highway but then you drift with the word “access.” It could be said this way: AT&T et al are not FedEx; they don’t deliver anything. They are the roadways and the traffic lights (routers). Now they want to set up toll booths and charge different rates to different travelers. Some people are going to be able to afford the toll and some people will be put out of business.
I think that’s a metaphor anyone can understand. When your listener replies, Well, they have to make money, don’t they? The answer is: They are already paid, on the front end, by the delivery guys (content providers) who pay a monthly fee for every delivery route they use (T1’s). And, they are already paid by consumers, every month, for the right to receive the shipped goods. Now they want even more money AND the power to restrict who can and can’t use their roads.
And in some cases – for example, if you use yahoo for e-mail, you are also sending out a lovely little piece of advertising for them with every piece.
I think the corporations just can’t bear to see something grow up and become so important without corporations somehow making lots more money to control it.
Access vs delivery…
In order to access toll roads, you pay money.
In order to access public roads, you don’t.
Of course there are taxes, which could be looked at as fees to the Communications Cartel, but the point is that we don’t pay out of pocket for access to our highways.
Access is key, I believe. Unfettered access. That is what we are talking about.
Ufettered access to the Information Superhighway, just like we want unfettered access to the Interstate Highways.
Thanks for thinking about the language.
ron