The Wall Street Journal runs a lead editorial today blasting the idea of network neutrality. It's not really a business story, or a tech story, but a scare story for political conservatives, complete with a reference to Moveon.org in the subhed, a gratuitous invocation of online pornography, and the explanation that "the cause of Net neutrality in its current incarnation become a new and ardent crusade of the political left."

The Journal lauds the openess of the Internet and the profusion of applications and services that have appeared over the last decade. Funny, that's what original Web-master Tim Berners-Lee says net neutrality would protect: "We may pay for a higher or a lower quality of service. We may pay for a service which has the characteristics of being good for video, or quality audio. But we each pay to connect to the Net, but no one can pay for exclusive access to me."

Second day in a row that the WSJ has weighed in on the side of the telcos. Yesterday, Holman Jenkins Jr. laid it out clearly: "Verizon and AT&T have made clear they, too, will reserve a big share of their new pipes for their own value-added services, namely TV, and for other content distributors who are willing to pay for access to it."

Comments

[Lex]

Information wants to be freely available. Giving the telcos what they want would stifle creativity just as overly strict copyright laws do.