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Net Neutrality is Essentially Unassailable, Argues Billionaire Barry Diller (broadcastingcable.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Yahoo Finance:
The billionaire media mogul behind such popular sites as Expedia, Match.com and HomeAdvisor has a one-word forecast for traditional media conglomerates concerned about being replaced by tech giants: serfdom. "They, like everyone else, are kind of going to be serfs on the land of the large tech companies," IAC chairman Barry Diller said... That's because Google and Facebook not only have such massive user bases but also dominate online advertising. "Google and Facebook are consolidating," Diller said. "They are the only mass advertising mediums we have..." He expects Facebook, Google and maybe Amazon to face government regulation, simply because of their immense size. "At a certain point in size, you must," he said. "It's inevitable."
He did, however, outline one positive for Big Tech getting so gargantuan. Big Telecom no longer has the economic leverage to roll back today's net-neutrality norms, in which internet providers don't try to charge sites extra for access to their subscribers. "I think it's hard to overturn practically," he said. "It is the accepted system."
Even if the U.S. government takes moves to fight net neutrality, Diller told CNBC that "I think it is over... It is [the] practice of the world... You're still going to be able to push a button and publish to the world, without anybody in between asking you for tribute. I think that is now just the way things are done. I don't think it can be violated no matter what laws are back."
He did, however, outline one positive for Big Tech getting so gargantuan. Big Telecom no longer has the economic leverage to roll back today's net-neutrality norms, in which internet providers don't try to charge sites extra for access to their subscribers. "I think it's hard to overturn practically," he said. "It is the accepted system."
Even if the U.S. government takes moves to fight net neutrality, Diller told CNBC that "I think it is over... It is [the] practice of the world... You're still going to be able to push a button and publish to the world, without anybody in between asking you for tribute. I think that is now just the way things are done. I don't think it can be violated no matter what laws are back."
It seems very naive to believe that tech companies will always back net neutrality. Once Google reaches critical market share providing home Internet service, either by deploying their own solution or buying up existing companies, their position on net neutrality will reverse.
Looking at it from another perspective, net neutrality favors startups. If Google and Facebook can work out deals with cable companies that will impede any startup that challenges their market dominance their concern for net neutrality will evaporate.
For decades now China has poured money into hardware and software to control what people see and how they see it with their so-called "Great Firewall of China". This has created an entire cottage industry in specialized network appliances and software offering all sorts of content filtering, logging, monitoring and re-rerouting of traffic etc. It took time and billions of dollars, but China and other oppressive governments have managed to tame the Internet. Now that same software and hardware is available to private companies chasing more banal objectives, like charging you more for the right to watch Netflix vs their in-house streaming offerings. I don't agree with Mr Diller that Net Neutrality is unassailable. It's being assailed right now. The opening shots in this war were arguably fired by Comcast in 2007 with the spoofed TCP reset packet controversy. The tools now are both more targeted and more effective. The threat is real and people ignore it at their peril. The Internet as we knew it is slipping into history and has been for some time now. If nothing is done, the end result will be something similar to cable television with access to Facebook, ISP branded video streaming and not much else.