Wednesday, August 03, 2005

How Parity killed the Internet

An editorial in the San Jose Mercury News explained the significance of the Supreme Court's Brand-X ruling and the subsequent push for 'parity': "But the ruling also opens the door for cable companies -- and eventually their telephone rivals -- to pick and choose what Internet content and services their customers get to use. Such control of Internet content by access providers would profoundly alter the nature of the Internet as an open, competitive and virtually limitless network. It's up to Congress to ensure that it never happens." ......."The rub is that information services are not bound by rules that require them to provide unrestricted access to all content and services on the Internet. A cable company could theoretically cut a deal with an e-commerce site, say Walmart.com, and bar its customers from accessing a rival site such as Amazon.com. Or it could decide to block an online video service, such as MovieLink, because it competes with its own cable TV service."

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