Net Neutrality Comes Home to Haddam
May 9th, 2006Two little videos have come into my life since I started to think a bit about Net Neutrality. One from Public Knowledge (by way of wiki in education) , the other from This Spartan Life (by way of the institute for the future of the book) bring home a possible future for the internet: two-tiered service, with the ISP brokering deals, and our access contingent on deals made between old-media conglomerates.
This came home to me as I struggle to provide my 12 year old son access to the Red Sox without wanting to bathe our home in unwanted cable stations. I bought him access by way of mlb.com only to discover that we live in a blackout area, and that Comcast happily tells mlb.com my zip code, which then allows mlb.com to block our access to the stream. I didn’t realize that you could so easily deduce one’s physical location from an IP address. And I really didn’t like that the same company that wants to sell me more cable channels is working so closely with the content provider that is then figuring out how to maximize its profits by making such deals. Not exactly the scenarios these videos illustrate, but well on its way to a world of information that is not the world I am looking forward to living in.
Of course there is a whole spy v. spy technology escalation where those blacked out try to spoof their locations, and the technologists at mlb.com block the holes…