The Internet war for money and control
It was 1992 and Bill Gates was visiting Sydney. I did a long television interview with him for a program called ‘Hot Chips’ and was present at a press conference that was held later that day.
I was allowed to ask the first question which was about security concerns regarding the Internet. I was swatted like a fly. Bill Gates said that was not a problem and it could easily be fixed. He was wrong.
The second question was: ‘Who will pay for the Internet?’ At which he lit up like a Christmas tree and spent some time explaining why no one quite knew the answer to that question.
They still don’t.
Now the battle is raging in Washington DC. If you thought the Internet and the World Wide Web were some sort of international set-up and that Tim Berners-Lee working with CERN in Switzerland was responsible for the look and feel of the Internet you do not understand the American perspective.
They own the Internet and the World Wide Web and you are allowed to access, to play with it, but the control stays with the USA. As God originally planned.
Now in Washington there is a right royal battle going on over who is going to pay for what. Who will pay for the ever increasing floods of information from the Internet and the networks which need to be continually upgraded to deal with it.
In the blue corner we have Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and all of the rest which specialize in Web-related content and technology. They are pushing for rules will keep the Internet free from discriminatory pricing. (Yes, that is the Microsoft as founded by Bill Gates that is saying that.)
In the blue corner are the phone and cable companies that run the networks shuttling that information from place to place. They do not want regulation of the Internet.
What, in fact, they want (but are not saying clearly) is some of the money stream that is flowing into Google and all of the rest. It is all going through their networks, runs the argument. Why should they not have some of the money? Preferably a large slice.
What holds it all in check is Congress which was Republican and is now Democrat. Or, for those who do not understand American politics, the Party of the Very Right and the Party of the Right. Both sides, red and blue, worked through 2006 trying to get Congress to get off the pot and vote for their view.
A bill that favored telecom companies in the red corner – AT&T and cable operators like Comcast — was passed by the House of Representatives but killed in the Senate. Similarly, an amendment to that bill viewed as favorable to the opposite camp was also rejected, largely by Republicans.
This year, the Democrats are in control, and they are seen as more sympathetic to laws favoring so-called network neutrality. All that means is that the phone and cable companies cannot charge prices that favors some Web traffic or sites over others.
So now we have before the House the Internet Freedom Preservation Act (such splendid, resounding words) which would keep Internet service providers from prioritizing the traffic to some Web sites over others.
It probably will not happen.
David Farber, professor of computer science and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, ‘There are much more important things for the Congress to pay attention to than net neutrality. There are things going on in the rest of the world that are much more vital for this country.’
Blair Levin, former chief of staff at the Federal Communications Commission and a regulatory analyst at Stifel Nicolaus put it neatly: ‘There’s a group in Congress that is ideologically in favor of network neutrality, and I think there’s a group that is ideologically opposed to government intervention. Until there’s clarity in the marketplace as to the business model and what that might be, the bulk in the middle isn’t going to commit to one side or another.’
Sorry, Bill, that does not answer the question. And it seems as if it will be some time before anyone will give you a full answer.
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