[NetBehaviour] What is Net Neutrality?
marc garrett
marc.garrett at furtherfield.org
Wed Feb 17 11:21:41 CET 2010
What is Net Neutrality?
At its core, the Net Neutrality movement in the US refers to efforts to
keep the Internet open, accessible and "neutral" to all users,
application providers and network carriers. In theory, this means, for
example, that one carrier would not be allowed to discriminate against
an application written by a third party (such as Google Voice) by
requiring its users to rely on the carrier's own proprietary voice
applications. A carrier's walled-garden browser, which allows access to
only certain websites, is also not seen as neutral by many neutrality
proponents.
The term Net neutrality is clearly politically laden. It isn't used that
much by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in its
deliberations on the matter. (The FCC is weighing a national broadband
policy it hopes to present to Congress next month.) Traditional carriers
don't use the term that much either, since they often argue there is
nothing wrong with the openness of the Internet, something Google and a
variety of public interest groups dispute.
more...
http://tinyurl.com/yhzytr8
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