The Digital Era
Every now and then I wonder about the meticulous advances made as Internet usage becomes a standard occurrence around the world--how things have been revolutionized, and how archaic structures have been changing to try retaining elder powers.
Apparently one of the largest ISPs in the UK is unabashedly planning to force upon its users a system in which content is delivered according to something along the line of premiums: websites that could run through the service but refuse to accommodate would be delivered slower than those that sign on. There's an initiative dubbing this a problem of "net neutrality."
The specific issue makes me think of wider contexts of what could be labeled "net neutrality"--particularly about how, as the Internet has become easier to use by less-sophisticated audiences, a number of problems have come about that require careful solutions. For instance, in my mind right now, problems with illegal practices--and therein, what even constitutes a practice as being 'illegal' on the Internet?
Simple solutions, and I realize I'm considering more than a dozen distinct problems at once, would be to fast-track judicial systems to deem what is and is not illegal, and how to prosecute. The problem therein is that only the unsophisticated Internet users will be caught--but then, it occurs to me that this is a problem with most criminality.
Thus, I widen the scope further: what is the right balance of focus in policing minor criminal activity versus more problematic, but also more difficult to curtail, criminal activity? I think it's obvious that there will be, regardless of the scope we're looking at, a set of easy-to-define crimes that the world is better off punishing those who carry them out--but I wonder if it's worth it to spend any resources on rounding up minimum-damage crimes.
In this context, I am thinking of the unsophisticated young Internet user, perhaps on a college campus, who downloads music files illegally.
But the issue that has brought these other issues to mind looks like something more like that largest-scale criminal act that problematically skews the line between profit-seeking and actual criminal practice. Is it criminal for an ISP that delivers service to 3.5million users to deliver its content in a 'non-neutral' manner? It's certainly a problem: the wealthy become wealthier, and the poor are more likely to remain poor . . .
I think it depends on the goal of the Internet: if it is to be a world-wide tool that makes the transfer of information more efficient than other methods, rather than to be a mish-mash of region-specific commerce communities seeking maximum possible profits, then this 'net neutrality' thing looks like a promising cause. The pessimist in me wonders if it's already too late to curtail the precedent--more money is to be made, so more money will be made . . . but the basic principle of Internet anonymity, for good and ill, leaves me hoping that this space remains, for as long as possible, a place where region, economic standing, gender, age, and anything else that one can use to discriminate don't matter.
Apparently one of the largest ISPs in the UK is unabashedly planning to force upon its users a system in which content is delivered according to something along the line of premiums: websites that could run through the service but refuse to accommodate would be delivered slower than those that sign on. There's an initiative dubbing this a problem of "net neutrality."
The specific issue makes me think of wider contexts of what could be labeled "net neutrality"--particularly about how, as the Internet has become easier to use by less-sophisticated audiences, a number of problems have come about that require careful solutions. For instance, in my mind right now, problems with illegal practices--and therein, what even constitutes a practice as being 'illegal' on the Internet?
Simple solutions, and I realize I'm considering more than a dozen distinct problems at once, would be to fast-track judicial systems to deem what is and is not illegal, and how to prosecute. The problem therein is that only the unsophisticated Internet users will be caught--but then, it occurs to me that this is a problem with most criminality.
Thus, I widen the scope further: what is the right balance of focus in policing minor criminal activity versus more problematic, but also more difficult to curtail, criminal activity? I think it's obvious that there will be, regardless of the scope we're looking at, a set of easy-to-define crimes that the world is better off punishing those who carry them out--but I wonder if it's worth it to spend any resources on rounding up minimum-damage crimes.
In this context, I am thinking of the unsophisticated young Internet user, perhaps on a college campus, who downloads music files illegally.
But the issue that has brought these other issues to mind looks like something more like that largest-scale criminal act that problematically skews the line between profit-seeking and actual criminal practice. Is it criminal for an ISP that delivers service to 3.5million users to deliver its content in a 'non-neutral' manner? It's certainly a problem: the wealthy become wealthier, and the poor are more likely to remain poor . . .
I think it depends on the goal of the Internet: if it is to be a world-wide tool that makes the transfer of information more efficient than other methods, rather than to be a mish-mash of region-specific commerce communities seeking maximum possible profits, then this 'net neutrality' thing looks like a promising cause. The pessimist in me wonders if it's already too late to curtail the precedent--more money is to be made, so more money will be made . . . but the basic principle of Internet anonymity, for good and ill, leaves me hoping that this space remains, for as long as possible, a place where region, economic standing, gender, age, and anything else that one can use to discriminate don't matter.
posted by SJ at 4/27/2008 12:38:00 AM
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