'Father of the Internet' against net neutrality

Here's Bob Kahn, one of the early inventors of the Internet, on the folly of net neutrality:

[...] Kahn warned against legislation that inhibited experimentation and innovation where it was needed.

Kahn rejected the term "Net Neutrality", calling it "a slogan". He cautioned against dogmatic views of network architecture, saying the need for experimentation at the edges shouldn't come at the expense of improvements elsewhere in the network.

"If the goal is to encourage people to build new capabilities...you want to incentivize people to innovate, and they're going to innovate on their own nets or a few other nets,"

"I am totally opposed to mandating that nothing interesting can happen inside the net," he said.

I've been against net neutrality for many reasons, but the most compelling of those is that it makes many kinds of experimentation illegal. Of course that's not the ostensible goal ("fairness", doncha know), but net neutrality legislation would make certain technologies, and the pricing models that go with them, against the law. And, more importantly, it would give the government a toehold for further legislation.

Anyone who is forward-looking in the world of technology should support freedom on all parts of the network. To support regulations that limit this is simply technophobic.

(h/t Glenn)

Comments

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Vint Cerf, considered one of the founders of the Internet, strongly supports net neutrality. Unlike many other "experts," he isn't receiving money from the telecoms.

Also, these people in support of it don't even seem to be able to give any cogent examples of how abolishing it would be good, like this guy, they just use rhetoric like "we shouldn't inhibit innovation" w/o any explanation of how net neutrality would exactly do that.

Net neutrality wouldn't make moving certain kinds of content faster illegal, just doing it based on who pays the most and/or who the telecoms like. If they want to make VoIP traffic travel faster, fine, just as long as they do it for all VoIP traffic. Net neutrality supports freedom, it allow anyone to innovate, not just established companies with lots of extra cash.