Weekend Reading: Whose Net Is It Anyway?

SBC CEO Ed Whitacre opened Pandora’s box during a recent interview with Business Week when he talked about charging companies for the use of the pipes their data and services move through. From the interview: “Why should they be allowed to use my pipes? The Internet can’t be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment and for a Google or Yahoo or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts!”

The company retreated from his incendiary comments but they’re still hanging out as an example of what can — and probably will — be happen unless net neutrality is guaranteed. Doc Searls lays out a variety of scenarios for the future in an essay called “Saving the Net.” A very brief excerpt: “Are you ready to see the Net privatized from the bottom to the top? Are you ready to see the Net’s free and open marketplace sucked into a pit of pipes built and fitted by the phone and cable companies and run according to rules lobbied by the carrier and content industries? Do you believe a free and open market should be ‘Your choice of walled garden’ or ‘Your choice of silo’? That’s what the big carrier and content companies believe. That’s why they’re getting ready to fence off the frontiers.”

It’s incredibly long — roughly 8,700 words — but it’s something you should read, especially if you believe the access status quo is here to stay and you’re building business models based on that notion.

Companion reading: “Google-Mart” by Robert X. Cringely (the one on PBS). “There will be the Internet, and then there will be the Google Internet, superimposed on top.”

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