According to John Edwards, net neutrality is simply free speech. But actually, folks, as much as he may want to believe that, it’s not so. Right Side of Tech explains:
I mean come on we are talking about if communication companies can prioritize network traffic and if they can have a tiered pricing models. We are not talking about the blocking of blogs, and other free speech. Certainly there is some blocking going on of streaming media but this should be worked out by market forces. The issue here is we don’t have true market forces at play. Instead we have Telcos that are protected by layers of regulation. Yet the everyone feels that addional regulation will fix the issue. Regulation is not the solution to this issue. Instead regulation will only to serve to stifle innovation, lower availability and increase costs.
People have a right to speak their minds without interference by the government. If we’re to extend that right to machines, we need to protect them from needless government regulation, and you don’t accomplish that with needless government regulation. Show us a problem that can’t be resolved with existing law, and I’ll be the first to write a model bill to fix it.
Until then, no politician advocating Internet regulation gets my vote.
And I will never vote for a politician who bills his campaign fund for two $400 haircuts.