SEO Blog

Why does Net Neutrality matter to you?

If you or your company are not operating a web site, you might think it doesn’t. You would be wrong. One of the most beautiful things about the Internet is freedom of information, and mobility of knowledge. It’s an open circuit that anyone, anywhere can plug into. The U.S. Senate is starting to make it less accessible.

The Internet is the great equalizer: Anyone, anywhere, as long as they have access to an Internet connection, can educate themselves about anything they are interested in. They can use this knowledge to improve their lives, and the lives of the people around them. We in the West are often caught up in our own arrogance; Did almost all the Great Thinkers come from Europe? Did none pre-1950 come from Africa, or South America? I’m sure many of them did. I’m quite certain we learned nothing about any of them in school.

Great Thinkers, inventors and philosophers live everywhere around the world. A free, and open access Internet will ensure that all their ideas are shared, for all of us to benefit.

So Yahoo China is being sued, or is about to be sued, by the music industry.

The argument is that Yahoo China has been infringing music industry DRM holder rights by linking to web sites which offer unlicensed music downloads. The basis of the case is that last year, after significant pressure from the music industry, a Beijing judge apparently ordered Yahoo China and Baidu to stop directing users to music download web sites, and they have disregarded that order.

The music industry has always been a trailblazer in enforcing DRM rights, and shutting down P2P filesharing networks, and web sites / servers which housed / share pirated recordings. Good for them.

But I hope that people will think about the international politics at issue in the Yahoo! China case as well. That the search engines, which comply with Chinese censorship requests to keep inside the law choose to flaunt it at will elsewhere is an insult. That the music industry is able to affect the enforcement of laws on pirated recordings more than the enforcement of technology or biotech patents, is simply amazing. That so much emphasis is put on the enforcement of laws in the entertainment industry indicates a serious misplacement of priorities.