Beware the New New Thing

Most people assume that the Internet is a democratic free-for-all by nature — that it could be no other way. But the openness of the Internet as we know it is a byproduct of the fact that the network was started on phone lines. The phone system is subject to “common carriage” laws, which require phone companies to treat all calls and customers equally. They can’t offer tiered service in which higher-paying customers get their calls through faster or clearer, or calls originating on a competitor’s network are blocked or slowed.—Beware the New New Thing

One Comment

JFC May 20, 2008

Interesting article given all the heat is taking for traffic shaping. I guess they forgot about carriage laws. :)

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