This morning, I’m a signatory on behalf of Mozilla on an open letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski regarding his proposed principles for Net Neutrality. There’s quite a lot of support for this letter — you can see a bit of a writeup here at the WSJ. I think we’ll have a bit more to say on this in the coming days, but for now, I just wanted to highlight a few points.
1. In general, the Net has been neutral for the really explosive innovation phase over the last 15 years or so. Much of what’s being proposed is about protecting that.
2. There’s good experience & real data from around the world that supports neutrality as we move from the first phase of broadband rollout to the next. If you have the time, I highly encourage you to read the FCC-commissioned Broadband Study from the Berkman Center (with Yochai Benkler as Primary Investigator) [PDF link]. There’s actual data in it (a lot of it) and worldwide experience that we can use to develop our own policy.
3. Making sure that the mobile Internet is as open as the wired Internet has been is crucial. We need 1 global Internet, not a collection of non-open ones.
Beyond all that, it’s worth taking the time to read the Chairman’s speech of a couple of weeks back. It’s a fantastic and inspirational speech.
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It’s fairly obvious you haven’t kept up with the Wall Street Journal lately. The article you cited is simply a statement of fact about the Open Letter. A great majority of the Journal’s articles, such as this one on the subject are in opposition. As you stated, the net has been neutral over the last 15 years are so. Do you really think putting the government in charge is going to fix this lack of a problem?
Hi Jason — I merely said that there was a writeup of the letter in the WSJ, nothing more. I agree with your assessment that most of the pieces in the WSJ to date have been against. (Although, for the record, I don’t actually think the collected Op-Eds of the Wall Street Journal are really definitive in terms of how we should set policy.)
The net has been neutral for the last 15 years, except since about 2001-2002, which is quite clear in the report from Berkman that I cited. What we’re debating at this point, is in a transition to a mobile + wired Internet, whether we need to insure things like non-discrimination of types of IP traffic (like VOIP).
And yes, I do think that a small number of rules will make sure that the Internet stays explosively innovative & pro-business.
What a strange font. I’m trying to concentrate on what you’re writing, but I keep thinking about how artsy-craftsy your font looks instead of what the text means. With many people’s blogs this would be an advantage, but you actually have interesting things to say.
Hey, I’ve got it: Since your blog has a Share Alike license, I’ll copy the text, paste it into a text editor, and read it there. I can even add my own in-text comments, apply different colors to passages I find especially significant, and maybe even forget the whole thing and try to sleep again, which you’re probably wishing I’d thought of first.
Thanks, BTW, for being instrumental in this fabulous browser, without which all of this would still be possible, but probably without as many add-ons.