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March 14, 2006
Larry Lessig And Net Neutrality at VON
Not much time to blog tonight, so here is Wednesday's lead story from our VON Daily Buzz... we will try to find a place to post the full PDFs somewhere soon, but for now this snippet will have to suffice. Read on for prof. Lessig's call to action...
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Though he does a great job of arguing the case for an open, innovative Internet, Stanford Law professor Larry Lessing told a VON audience Tuesday that they, not he, need to speak up now to get a similar message to the halls of political power.
In a talk that focused on the "Network Neutrality" debate -- the issue of whether or not service providers should be allowed to have greater control of pricing and content delivery mechanisms for Internet access -- Lessig warned attendees of the Spring 2006 VON Communications Policy Summit that big telecommunication companies might choke off business opportunity by exerting more control over their networks.
"The only people who can resist [controls] effectively are the people who build the value on this network," said Lessing, referring to the VON audience of innovative IP communications companies. "That's the class that needs to deliver the message to Congress."
If they follow Lessig's lead, the message is that an Internet with fewer controls might actually produce a "bigger economic pie" than one that allows the current network operators to better preserve and monetize their existing infrastructure.
"Bigger, fuller and richer comes from less control over the network," said Lessig, who backed up his point with several examples of amateur video work that is rapidly approaching professional quality.
The urgency of the Net Neutrality debate, Lessig said, is being advanced by the big phone companies, who have made public statements recently that accuse independent application and service providers like Vonage and Google of enjoying a "free lunch" on the service providers' wires.
"Those should be fighting words in [Silicon] Valley," said Lessig, who added that he has spent many words trying to convince tech companies to get their lobbying act together.
"I've spoken hundreds of times, and nothing's happened," Lessig said. "But somebody's got to do it. Selling the soul of the Internet is too high a price to pay."
(copyright 2006, pulvermedia)
Posted by paul at March 14, 2006 11:35 PM