The Internet is built on what Computer Scientists like to call the “end-to-end” principle. Everything important is at the “edges” of the network and is treated equally. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a server or a client; either way, you’ve got a connection to the network. The stuff in the middle just handles moving things between endpoints.
Moving things between endpoints is cheap. Especially since the expectation is that everything will be moved equally. This is what makes communication over the Internet so fast, convenient, cheap, and valuable. Unfortunately, a number of companies whose business models are built on making communication as difficult, slow, troublesome, and expensive as possible are now looking for ways to kill the goose that laid the golden (but radioactive) egg.
As detailed by the Boston Globe, a number of large telecom monopolies are attempting to use their monopoly over residential ISPs to destroy the end-to-end principle. They want to be able to abuse their monopolies to charge more for others to move large quantities of data quickly over their network. This would give a massive competitive advantage to their own online service offerings.
The purpose of this? Kill the Internet. Its decentralized, end-to-end nature has spelled the end (eventually) for traditional business models. The old TV model of one-to-many broadcasts of static content to passive consumers? Largely erased. The old Telco model of one company providing all communication services for everyone in a geographical region? Pointless. And this change means that a lot of people who’ve made a lot of money by controlling and restricting high-cost information distribution and communication can no longer make any money at all.
The first steps towards this were taken months ago, when the FCC rescinded the rule requiring that telcos offer competing ISPs “at cost” access to their physical communication media. Communication media installed and maintained, I should note, by a government-granted monopoly! More steps towards it have been taken more recently, as more and more states succumb to telco pressure and ban municipal wi-fi projects.
Civil liberties activists should pay very close attention to this. Not only does it matter from a commercial point of view. A single service provider makes it much easier for intelligence agencies to mandate features to make their jobs easier. “Wiretapping” backdoors in VoIP programs, for example.
(As seen on Slashdot. Beware raving Objectivist morons.)
I’ve been expecting some sort of control to be exerted over the internet for quite a while. Not particularly for commercial effects – though that would be considerable, it would produce a huge outcry. But more subtlely, to control and monitor the flow of information. Simply adding in a price structure, however simple and low cost at first, would seriously limit blogging and networking of bloggers, for example. If it costs bloggers money by word , character, line, etc. to host commenters and diarists, then those folks would eventually be priced out of the market for all except the most affluent. The strategy used to price phone calls is just one example of how this might go. I can remember getting local calls nearly free for one flat rate; now all calls are monitored for length (and of course, recording who to, etc.)
I have only one dsl provider where I live, who wants me to go to their Yahoo partnership so my every e-mail will also contain an ad – I just love paying for a service that will carry an ad being marketed to myself. And we have just one cable provider who will not provide internet access without getting a whole package of TV stuff and will not tell you the total cost of what you minimally must have in order to get broadband.
At work, I just looked at my lab bill yesterday and saw that I was now paying for time on line – a very high speed line, essentially now a way for the school to strip more money from my grant funds
The most ISPs have managed is crippling the upstream of residential users. They can’t afford to do too much, or they start losing money hand-over-fist. The more data they move, the more money they make.
There have been attempts to do just this in the past. All have failed miserably. The Internet simply adapts too quickly.