I thought I would focus this weeks blog on the global battle to rule the Internet. Governments, industry and stakeholders around the world are all engaged in a battle to shape the Internet.
In the United States these groups have been debating for months on the positive and negative effects of Net Neutrality. The government would like to implement regulation and ensure that every home has the fastest internet service and that the web was open equally to all who wanted to use it.
An advantage of net neutrality is that no one company or website would dominate the market, thereby increasing competition that would ultimately benefit the Internet user.
A disadvantage is that the Telcoms and free market groups see this as an unnecessary government intervention that will discourage investments and complicate the legitamate need to manage traffic.
Net neutrality has only recently become an issue in the European Union policy and is now being debated.
The difference with how this issue is being viewed in Europe as compared to the United States is that the Commissioner for the European Union believes that governments should "not" have a stronger role in the day-to day operation of the Internet service. The commissioner stated "This private-sector leadership continues to deliver important public policy objectives and needs to be maintained and supported." The Commissioner has communicated to the Telcoms in Europe that if any significant problems develop and persist she would not be afraid to change the current law.
What is interesting is that in the United States the debate continues with no resolution to date. The public sphere is continuing with debate however since the election the discussion appears to have cooled down temporarily. This is in stark contrast to the EU.
In the EU they are concerned that reguation would deter investment and an efficient use of the avaiable resourses. As a result, they perfer to take a wait and see attiturde. They will let the internet continue to operate as it has been and if a problem develops they will step in immediately.
I'm wondering what has caused this issue which affects people around the world to be solved so quickly in the EU. Is this based on the arguments that were successfully presented to the Commissioner of the EU? I think further research in the differences between the Internet in the EU and United States could prove to be very interesting reading.
I think that this difference between the US/EU might be analogous to the GMO food debate that we were talking about in class last week. From my reading, it appears that the US and EU have different values, and that these different value approaches manifest themselves in a variety of policies, including the net neutrality debate. The value for the US appears to be the need to take action and be proactive versus the EU which wants the "wait and see" approach, another version of the precautionary principle. If you're interested in evaluating the differences between the US and EU in this ongoing controversy, I think that there is a different set of values going on.
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