Wednesday, May 30, 2012
My Suggestion to Keep the Internet Free
I think that the best way to keep the internet free from suppression is to institute a law very similar to separation of church and state. A person or company that is interested in making money off of their infrastructure that allows connection to the internet should not be able to in any way alter, censor or restrict access or quality of a website, either for profit or other gains. Heck, just not at all. Many millionaires and celebrities have been made due to their presence on the internet, but no one should be able to profit from an absence of information on the internet. Also, if laws are put into place allowing these companies to essentially ruin the internet, there should be a form of government run internet provider that will never censor the internet. The job of the government is, after all, to only do what individuals cannot do themselves or for themselves. It is therefore their job to protect OUR privacy and access to knowledge in the same way they try to protect the same attributes for large companies and copyrights.
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"no one should be able to profit from an absence of information on the internet."
ReplyDeleteI think that is an interesting statement. The hard part of course is that this is such a complex issue and the technology is evolving at such a pace that writing a law that would prevent that would be in my guesstimation (I am no lawyer :) tricky. To say the least. I admire Tim Wu's net neutrality site, particularly his clear breakdown of the different types of net neutrality violation. Perhaps start with a prevention of blocking?
A related but somewhat separate issue , how do we pay content creators whose work is on the web? It is a real problem. This is a leap but somehow it reminds me of the health care "mandate" issue. If we all had a huge pool of users and could somehow pay tiny amounts of $ to each of the articles we read, videos we watch.. Innovation in content would and could occur (be it film/video/news) . But how can that happen without causing multiple "toll booths" across the net and denying access?
I think that the current method of advertising on websites, or website sponsorship is a great way to do tho, just like real life! Especially on websites like news sites, where the rice of their newspapers and magazines also cover the cost of their web content. Content creators can also set up alliances with other sites, to increase site traffic and therefore increase profit.
DeleteSorry Kristin, that post was from me! (Sophie)
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