Wendy Seltzer was convincing when she said that ISPs should only be the carriages and not otherwise, because the line between the carriages and content providers could get very blurry; not only the freedom of enjoying entertainment would be curbed, but other fields that are related to the Internet will also be curbed in a way that could be very negative for everyone. Even if she is wrong on that very idea, I can still see why it’s not a good idea of having carriages and content providers sleep on the same bed. Just imagine the power of their marriages, and people only have fewer choices to make when that happens. Competition will be impossible, because only major content providers will be able to pull ISPs’ legs.
Wendy Seltzer has a good analogy on how ISPs should be the carriages. She said that it’s like a telephone — people don’t want some bodies of authority to tell people who to talk to or what to say over the telephones, and so the carriages should be something similar to the telephones only. She emphasized on why net neutrality is important! Perhaps, she had made her analogy too simplistic when she said the carriages should be similar to telephones, but we know how customers feel when their freedom of using the Internet suddenly looks a lot more like a curfew from a dictatorship regime — only the big boys have the power to do whatever and the rest just have to do within the limitations that set up by the ones who are in power. You can say it does sound like life, but don’t you think it’s bad business to make it so obvious?
So, the whole idea of how the Internet Providers will be copyright cops sounds unpleasant to many people, I think! Sure, copyright must be protected at all cost, but I think carriages should be just that and not of trying to becoming some copyright cops. Why not letting the lawyers do their jobs? After all, these lawyers seem to be just fine and happy with going about to taking on copyright infringers, right? We can’t really allow the carriages to tell the ISPs to dictate who should be cut off from the Internet, because abusive situations can easily be happening at anytime.
What about the other groups of authority? They should have something to say about how ISPs should dictate the Internet too, right? Don’t tell me that other bodies of authority are surrendering their right to have their saying about how the carriages should behave, because I doubt that will be a good thing in the future for such bodies of authority, unless they want the entertainment industry to be the only body of authority to dictate how ISPs should behave, right?
Sure, you can say we’re only exaggerating, because it’s only about copyright and nothing more. But, aren’t we already have copyright law? Content providers should use the copyright law to their advantages in courts and not trying to influence how ISPs should behave. As how things go, such as ISPs are becoming copyright cops for the sake of making their new friends happy (i.e., major content providers), things can get really blurry and the idea of applying just law will not be that effective. Why even try to apply law when a whispering here and there can get things done easily (i.e., shutting or slowing down customers’ Internet connection or stopping small competitors from serving contents effectively), right?
Watch what Wendy Seltzer got to say in the video below, enjoy!
Source: http://isp-services.com/videos/seltzer-says-internet-providers-will-now-be-copyright-cops/
Vinh Nguyen
