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Opinion

Too high a price to access the Internet

Jim McCormick
Opinion Columnist 

Recently, the House of Representatives passed a bill called the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act. 

This bill will allow Internet service providers to provide for what can easily be described as a "two-tier" Internet, wherein those content providers who pay more to the ISPs will receive priority connections when users connect to them. 

This would threaten the operation of the Internet as we know it, and this law should not pass.

This bill was conceived when the Supreme Court struck down the idea that network neutrality was inherently the law of the land. 

When that happened, the ISPs, notably the high-speed Internet providers ? read phone and cable companies ? got the idea that they could make more money by charging web hosts fees for the ability to communicate at high speeds. 

If the web hosts refused to pay the fee, they would be relegated to a lower-speed connection.

Given this new two-tier standard, it would become highly unlikely that one could use WebCT quizzes efficiently off-campus, as it's quite improbable that the University would be willing to pay such a fee to the various ISPs. 

Even if they did manage to cough up the ransom for high-speed connection service, it's even less likely that the University would even think to deal with out-of-town ISPs.

More interestingly, this two-tier Internet proposal has created some strange bedfellows on the opposing side: Google, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, eBay, Amazon, and Microsoft. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, even Bill Gates himself thinks this idea is too evil. 

This is because those companies depend on network neutrality for their ideas and services to reach large groups cheaply and effectively. 

Also dependent upon a goal of network neutrality are the bloggers, which are possible only because of the efficiency of the Internet at communicating ideas with people all over the world in an expedient manner.

Proponents of the bill say that requiring them to provide the same speed connection to everyone amounts to what they call "forced speech." 

If this analogy were to hold to other means of communication, then it would be acceptable for the phone company to drop your call simply because they did not like what you were saying. 

That could also mean that the company that produces the paper upon which The Daily Cougar is printed would gain the ability to come into the newsroom and override the editor's decisions on content. 

The fact is that providing an Internet connection is not a means of speech but instead providing a medium for communication. 

The free exchange of ideas is the fundamental idea upon which the Internet was created. 

Unfortunately, this concept has been threatened by a few companies that want to interfere with our ability to communicate with each other ? because they want to make a few quick bucks.

McCormick, an opinion columnist for The Daily Cougar, 
can be reached at dccampus@mail.uh.edu