Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Vint Cerf on Network Freedom 

Vint Cerf (Google) sent in a letter related to the hearing the Congress is holding today, Wednesday, November 8th, on "network neutrality" and a big new telecommunications bill affecting the Internet, stating clearly:

... My fear is that, as written, this bill would do great damage to the Internet as we know it. Enshrining a rule that broadly permits network operators to discriminate in favor of certain kinds of services and to potentially interfere with others would place broadband operators in control of online activity. Allowing broadband providers to segment their IP offerings and reserve huge amounts of bandwidth for their own services will not give consumers the broadband Internet our country and economy need.

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I am confident that we can build a broadband system that allows users to decide what websites they want to see and what applications they want to use – and that also guarantees high quality service and network security. That network model has and can continue to provide economic benefits to innovators and consumers -- and to the broadband operators who will reap the rewards for providing access to such a valued network.

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It is very ironically, as James Enck points out, Vint himself won't be at the hearing because he will be receiving a Presidential award for creating TCP-IP.

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