Internet Freedom -- NOT Network Neutrality

Following up on my previous post, "Network Neutrality is the Wrong Frame", I have written a column for VoIP Magazine Online entitled "Internet Freedom -- Not Network Neutrality"(registration required).

The core of the article is this -- the technology industry has mis-cast the entire debate about what is happening with telecommunications regulation. Mis-cast both because the focus on networks and neutrality is too esoteric for the average congressperson (much less the average American) and also because it is too easy for telecommunications companies to focus people on the wrong issue -- on packet prioritization as opposed to fair and equal access.

I propose that we shift the debate and shift it NOW -- this argument is really about INTERNET FREEDOM. Its about, in the words of David Isenberg:

"...an Internet where it would be legal for a monopolistic gatekeeper to stand between us and our medical information, us and our financial transactions, us and our travel plans, us and the information we try to find, us and the news we choose to read and watch, us and our leisure time activities, us and our intimate correspondence with our friends, us and our creativity, us and our political expression."

Jeff Pulver are you listening?? It is time to stop talking about neutrality and start talking about freedom. The debate should be about whether we want to continue the spirit of common carrier regulation of the monopoly telecom companies or whether we want to create a new OPEC, controlling something every bit as important to the competitiveness of American business and the quality of American lives.

More ranting over at VoIP Magazine...