Earlier today, I agreed to sit on the Net Neutrality panel at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose in mid August. Net Neutrality is a difficult topic to fully understand. It covers a number of issues, traditions and fundamental assumptions about the culture of the Internet and about the nature of business.
Proponents of Net Neutrality maintain that all data, regardless of source or file type, should be treated as equal by Internet Service Providers as well as by telecommunications providers such as AOL, AT&T, Comcast and Verizon. That means that no service provider can block, filter, over-charge for, or bandwidth-throttle content carried on other networks from its subscribers.
Most commentators in the search marketing industry tend to support the concept of Net Neutrality, as do the major search engines and an enormous number of web-based workers. Understanding the nature of business, most people working on the web wish to protect the free-data culture of the Internet.
Opponents of Net Neutrality look at the issue from a completly different angle. They want to stick with the status quo. Data carriers and Internet Service Providers, along with a number of professional content creation organizations want to see no new laws passed that they say will effectively strangle innovation and the growth of the Internet.
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