Net Neutrality Debated on NPR
I spoke about net neutrality this morning on the NPR program On Point. While I had hoped for a more balanced debate, I was able to make a solid argument for letting competition, not government, continue to shape the Internet and encourage online innovation. I was also able to briefly mention how network neutrality legislation is actually corporate welfare for Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, eBay and others. Right now, there are a lot of people out there trying to scare people into supporting net neutrality. The fear-mongering about censored content, degraded Internet, etc. is unfounded and not supported by the evidence. If you want to read more, I wrote about this issue yesterday: ItsOurNet.org: The boy who cried wolf. Other speakers today included Adam Cohen from the New York Times, Michael Grebb from Wired News, Lawrence Lessig a Stanford law professor, and Alan Davidson with Google. Listen to the debate
NPR appearance
Hi, Scott, I heard you on NPR this morning. Do you enjoy lying for a living, or is the pay just good? Unfortunately for you guys, on this issue you're not dealing with an uninformed public that may be swayed by an ad from a misleadingly-named astroturf group, you're dealing with a huge population of techies who know the ins and outs of how the Internet works, and will fight to keep your industry backers from undermining it for their own benefit.
Re: NPR appearance
I'm a daily On Point listener and this is the first time I’ve heard the net neutrality issue debated. The impression I got was this... providers feel entitled to "Net Competition" because they own the lines, that’s fair enough. However, this idea of exclusive deals between content providers and ISPs could completely fragment the internet and make it a different experience for customers of different ISPs. Am I just believing the lies? How is that not a legitimate threat? Would you support very basic regulations to prevent this from getting completely out of control?
Also, I can understand that you had "hoped for a more balanced debate", you were going up against very knowledgeable people, but you barely participated in the real debate. Tom had to keep cutting you off in order to stay on topic. The dial up versus broadband versus mobile phone analogy was highly irrelevant, you would have been much better off supporting the points Mark Cuban made in his clip, or actually responding to the conversation.