Internet High Priestess Esther Dyson on Net Neutrality

Internet High Priestess Esther Dyson Declares: Net Neutrality Debate is a "Muddle" and Two-Tier Internet is Not Necessarily a Bad Thing -- Read all About it on the new Beet.TV Transcription Blog!

There's been a lot of discussion lately about pending moves in Congress to keep the Internet from being split into faster and slower networks -- keeping the Net "neutral." Esther is leery about Congress jumping into new regulations -- and she's not alone among the big tech thinkers. Here is a compelling case against Net Neutrality in today's Washington Post by David Farber of Carnegie Mellon University and Michael L. Katz of the University of California at Berkeley.

Esther has been a major player in Internet policy for some time. She was a past chairman of ICANN, the body that regulates Internet domains. She just started to blog for Huffington Post.

She thinks the whole debate over Net Neutrality is a "muddle" and that most people don't understand the issues. And, she is not too encouraged by what she sees emerging on Capitol Hill. She believes that if there is a commercial need for faster Internet, it should exist.

Seems like the avalanche of online video through the Internet is one of the prime factors in motivating the teleco industry to establish a two-tier Internet.

See this video on Beet.TV:
http://www.beet.tv/2007/01/net_neutrality_.html

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• online
• video
• Esther
• Dyson
• Net
• Neutrality
• Beet.TV
• Two-Tier
• Internet
• Huffington
• Post

[defaultartist]

I worry about it becoming more difficult for future ground breaking services like NetFlix or Facebook to get off the ground if Comcast can arbitrarily block whomever they like.

many areas only have 1 provider. Who's to stop Comcast from blocking your business because it competes with their partners?

This is no different than a corporation saying they own the sidewalk, and then telling patrons they can access Starbucks via the sidewalk, but not Starbuck's competition. That's total crap.

[LaDricka1]

Esther Dyson is not a visionary. Doc Searls is a visionary

[sagecast]

The biggest problem with this video is that Esther doesn't know what Net Neutrality is.