Who owns the Internet?

We love reading articles like this one, not so much because we buy into every word the author writes, but because it makes us think. And really, that’s the entire point of writing and reading, isn’t it? We don’t expect you to buy 100 percent into everything we write here. That would be absurd. What we hope is that you read some of these blog entries and are inspired to think deeper about certain issues. Cell carriers will tell you one thing, and we’re just here to balance the story. Anyway, check out this more than astute analogy provided by Dana Blankenhorn of ZDNet:

Make you a deal. You got a house and I build roads.

So I’ll build your road, and you’ll pay me each month to use it. I’ll even let the government decide how much. Then, once it’s built, it’s mine. I’ll decide what you drive, how much you pay, where you can go and how fast.

Deal?

This is precisely the deal we’ve made in our time with the phone and cable duopolists. Those lines were built under regulation, under rates set by the government, in exchange for public goods like right-of-way and exclusivity.

The rest of the article is a great read. It might not be totally accurate — a free and fast web seems like a pipe dream to us, but Dana thinks it’s completely feasible. We’d love to hear further opinions on this.

[ZDNet]

Related Posts

Leave a Reply