WEB 3.0 MUST MAKE INFORMATION MORE FREE, THE INDIVIDUAL MORE AUTONOMOUS

HotSpring.fm :: We are on the verge of a major communications and global economic revolution, in which major media, technological advances, cloud computing and dispersed optimization, adapt to and take over new models for living and producing in human society. The New Scientist magazine reports in its March 15-21, 2008 edition that “web 3.0 will be about making information less free”.

We must, as end-users, content creators, innovators and even pioneers in media and technology, consider that for very serious and transcendent reasons, this cannot be permitted to become true. Web 3.0 must be liberating, and it must expand, not shrink the freedom of information that stems from the First Amendment to the US Constitution, free and open society in general, a free press specifically, and the Internet’s empowerment of the individual.

If we are to be a global society, or a “globalized” society, if we are to have a planetary consciousness, or benefit from the “village” dynamic inherent in global trade and telecommunications, then we must ensure that individual freedoms are not limited by global media powers or by governments who think there is something expedient about limiting media freedoms. When freedom of information is restricted, human beings suffer, in real terms, and economic vitality is slowed and economic resilience damaged. [Full Story]

AT&T ANNOUNCES PLANS TO INSPECT & FILTER INTERNET TRAFFIC & CONTENT

PLANNED FILTERING WOULD END OPEN INTERNET AS IT HAS EXISTED UNTIL NOW, REPLACING IT WITH STRATIFIED, PREMIUM-BRAND CONTROLLED CONTENT FORMAT

AT&T is proposing the implementation of new filtering technologies "at the network level" that would essentially interrupt in a definitive way the public's freedom to access online content. The concept known as 'net neutrality' refers to consumers and netizens' ability to freely gain access to any site, paid or unpaid, without major telecommunications companies programming access as they do with cable television.

The movement against net neutrality has been spearheaded by giant internet service providers (ISPs) like AT&T and Verizon, who want to profit from permitting consumers access to specific sites. They already charge for end-user access and for content-providers' access, and they charge more if you want higher speeds (bandwidth). Now they seek to ensure that freedom of access be impeded, in order to allow them to manipulate access and information in order to further line their pockets with a medium they did not develop, did not fund, and have not produced. [Full Story]

NET NEUTRALITY: A NECESSARY PRINCIPLE FOR MAINTAINING GLOBAL DEMOCRATIC STANDARDS

THE OPEN INTERNET IS A FORCE FOR DEMOCRACY & OPEN GOV'T, NOW IT IS UNDER THREAT FROM THOSE WHO WISH TO BOTTLENECK THE FREE PRESS

The concept of 'net neutrality' refers to the current state of affairs in the free democracies of the world, where those who control the physical infrastructure of the Internet are not allowed to police its content or to charge for provider-user access. It is a vital ingredient in the make-up of the Internet, because it guarantees the freedom of information that makes the web so useful to free society and so valuable to those who do well what works in that open environment.

But the US House of Representatives last year voted to end net neutrality with the COPE Act (Communications Opportunity Promotion and Enhancement). The language of COPE would permit major telecommunications companies to control what content their subscribers would be allowed to see. It would allow them to charge content-providers for 'visibility', or for speed of bandwidth, favoring not the most interesting material or the most thorough of reporters, but rather the wealthiest corporations in the media game.

The result would be: independent voices would be nearly stamped out by major players; bloggers would not be able to compete with major sites like Yahoo! or MSN, which would (one imagines) easily be able to pay the extra 'bandwidth access' fees the telecoms would assess; information would suffer from a 'mainstreaming' effect, whereby all prominent sites routinely feed the same language, taken from the sames sources, into the same type of news content, marginalizing more analytical or academic materials; the Internet would belong to the ISPs and not to its users, be they content-creators or end-users.

Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) has pointed out in hearings on the Senate floor that the 'Bell companies' had "literally nothing to do with" creating the internet. AT&T even enjoy the unique distinction of refusing to participate in its creation. They already charge at both ends of the Internet experience: both end-users and content-providers have to pay access fees to have a connection to the world wide web, which, incidentally, has been the most profitable area of the telecom sector over recent years.

The direct effect of any legislation permitting the currently prohibited practice of stratifying bandwidth to direct pre-paid content to more users would be to 'bottleneck' the free press. The First Amendment to the US Constitution specifies that: "Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..." Any law permitting the constraint of the freedom of access of people connecting to the Internet to information available across its fibers would be a very direct abridging of the freedom of speech and of the press.

The Internet has allowed the 'press', i.e., all media whereby information is distributed from those in the know to the People, to expand its freedom to unprecedented levels. This has been good for all involved, has helped involve ordinary citizens in the political process, has helped create unimaginable profits for business, has created a new digital economy where freedom of information is a basic foundational component. To create an Internet bottleneck, where all traffic is partitioned into the (minority) high-priced high-speed service and the (vast majority) marginal, slower-access fibers, is to squeeze the vast new digital media culture into a space that cannot adequately serve its needs.

Net neutrality is the only way we can know that there are not more dirty tricks being played by political figures whose ideas we do not share, the only way we can ensure that research that is helpful to all people, but is poorly funded, be available to those in a position to use it for the good, the only way we can be sure that information which would not fit the predetermined 'official' chronicle of events be able to surface and play its necessary role in public life.

In short, without net neutrality, the Internet is just cable television with a very limited visual landscape and a slower pace. And cable television suffers from one fatal flaw: everything is bought and paid for, leaving nearly zero room for any content of a strictly humanitarian or civic nature. A free society needs that information to exist, and ours has not only created the platform to allow for it inexpensively and on a vast scale, but we have adjusted to the digital realm in such a way that we now require the Internet to maintain that type of information flow. [s]