Bill Gates on net neutrality

Here is an interesting video interview with Bill Gates, by Robert Scoble over at PodTech. He mentions net neutrality in response to a question from Ryan @ Engadget.

A quick transcription, emphasis mine:

Microsoft wants people to build Internet infrastructure that has the ability to feed high-definition video to every screen in your house, so we want the incentive to be there for people to build out new networks [...]

We had people who are just the content people saying things that would have eliminated incentives to build better networks.

[Microsoft] is kind of a fair broker, because we need both [...]

There are regulatory models in Europe where the high-capacity networks just won't be built because they [enforce a pricing model] that just means you’re just not gonna do high-definition interactive network. [...]

In its purest form, you eliminate the incentive to build better networks, so you have to be careful about that.

Most people are either a network company who doesn't want any restriction, or a content company that doesn't understand the disincentive to building out the networks. There were tons of things proposed that would have made the U.S. just like Europe.

Of course, I selectively chose the bits that best support my position, feel free to watch for yourself below.

Gates treats both sides fairly, and emphasizes that it’s more complex than most people understand. He makes clear that building the network must be first and foremost, that serious investment must be made, and that regulation poses a big threat to the next generation of Internet.

What’s important is that Microsoft is on both sides of this debate, since they are in content and also in infrastructure.

Here’s the point: the current Internet ain’t all that and a bag of chips. It doesn’t do high-definition, which is what the consumer will quickly come to expect. Net neutrality proposes to freeze the status quo in place, in the interest of “fairness”. In fact it would give us a uniform level of poverty, which is unfair to everyone. Think next, folks, not just now.

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The video is here, the neutrality stuff starts at 38:20. After hitting play, you may have to wait for the video to fully load, and then you can forward to that point.

P.S. I would have cued up to the interesting stuff automatically, but PodTech does not yet have this feature. Bloggingheads.tv does! They call it dingalink and it allows linking directly to a quote within the video. Hey Scoble, that would be a nice differentiator...

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