Meet the new boss

Executive Wants to Charge for Web Speed

A senior telecommunications executive said yesterday that Internet service providers should be allowed to strike deals to give certain Web sites or services priority in reaching computer users, a controversial system that would significantly change how the Internet operates.

William L. Smith, chief technology officer for Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp., told reporters and analysts that an Internet service provider such as his firm should be able, for example, to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc.

Or, Smith said, his company should be allowed to charge a rival voice-over-Internet firm so that its service can operate with the same quality as BellSouth's offering.

Network operators can identify the digital "packets" of content moving through their wires from sites and services and can block some or put others at the head of the stream.

I tend toward cynicism and pessimism as a matter of course. But there is gloom and then there is doom, and this scares the wee out of me.

The critical difference between the Internet and all communication technologies that preceded it is (or at least has been) the fact that the pipe is content-agnostic. A small cadre of TV broadcasters decide what gets broadcast; a handful of newspaper editors decide what is fit to print. In other words, traditional media all have gatekeepers to carry out the Golden Rule (that is, them what have, do).

So far, the Net has been different. The result is us -- blogs, independent news sources and analysis, and a growing population aware that the the agenda of the gatekeepers is remarkably consonant with the agenda of the folks they cover. And the powers that be and their gatekeeping lapdogs don't like that one bit.

If corporate whores like Mr. Smith succeed in relegating content they don't like to the dial-up class hinterlands -- and be ye not fooled, that is exactly how his scheme will be honored in the breach -- our noble experiment will quickly end. An Internet delivery system that discriminates based on content would arguably be an even greater threat to free speech in this country than anything the Bush Administration has done so far.

I have been expecting something like this for a while. We in the left half of the blogosphere have become a big problem for the junta -- not so much directly, but by the way we have humiliated the MSM into doing a smidgen of actual reporting lately. The only reason the ruling class didn't put more effort into silencing the new pamphleteers is that they had not figured out how to do it. Now it appears they are ready to take us on.

This is big, and we need to scream to high heaven about it before it picks up steam. If service providers are permitted to make some packets more equal than others, we are in deep, deep doo-doo.