The fundamental issue now that internet and web have become important to our daily lives and the economy, how do we ensure its availability and preserve access to it? If we draw parallels to telephony, the internet is nearing its version of the 1934 Telecommunications Act. The resource has become too valuable for things like spam or peer-to-peer networks dominate the resource. Controls will need to be enacted. Those controls will need to be enforced. Government fees/taxes/what-not will be imposed. It's coming, it's inevitable.
The big challenge with the internet/web, with respect enforcing rules, is time and place are largely irrelevant. How can a rule enacted by one government be enforced on a violator in another country? As a simple example, suppose I put some pictures from my summer vacation on my personal website. A perfectly normal, legal thing to do in the US. Well, what if posting pictures of such scantily clad people is illegal in some other country? What is to be done? Arrest me? Fine me? Blocking my website can be done, but how do you *find* my website so you can block it? And what happens when I take the pictures down, as I probably would at some point? How do you go back and unblock my site?
I think Move On is totally off the mark on this one. I haven't seen what AT&T and Verizon are asking, specifically, but I'm not overly worried about them "controlling" the internet. I think market forces will make it abundantly clear to them that "control" is not what the market wants. Certainly AOL's efforts are about *protecting* equal access, not inhibiting it. When more than 50% of email traffic can be labeling "spam", the ability of you, me or Move On to be heard above the noise is less likely. Besides, reducing spam helps keep the cost of internet access down.
phoneyfarmer
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Fifty percent of all email is spam you say? Hellfire, eighty to ninety percent is more like it. It has not been 'as little as' fifty percent for several years. I have very mixed feelings on this; the idea of having the telcos running the net -- for a fee, of course -- is rather repulsive, but you know, I am sure, that AT&T or MCI won't permit spam/scam to run as rampant as those things do now. If they cannot technically get rid of it, then they can price it out of business as AOL has suggested. Will there be some 'collateral damage' (as President Dubya's associates would phrase it in the ill-gotten Iraq situation)? Yes, there may well be ... but if MoveOn (or TELECOM Digest and other decent publications) cannot be heard very well (1) above the noise level of spam/scam or (2) because of the cost of paying 'postage', etc then what's the difference? I trust the spam/scam enablers are pleased with the results which are slowly creeping up on us. PAT]