Congress To Tame The Internet?

Congressional hearings start on Wednesday, November 9th by the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. Aims of the hearing are to draft legislation that will create a statutory framework for Internet Protocol and Broadband Services. The committee is looking into legislation that would allow the providers to dictate what type of applications (such as VoIP) and the amount of bandwidth to allocate to that type of service.



Google's Vint Cerf, one of the key gurus that really did help with the early design of the internet as we know it today, was to appear before the committee. Receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom on the same day of the hearing, he did send a letter to the committed, which can be read in full on Google's Blog page.



With interest, one of the key statements Cerf makes regarding the internet is, "The Internet is based on a layered, end-to-end model that allows people at each level of the network to innovate free of any central control. By placing intelligence at the edges rather than control in the middle of the network, the Internet has created a platform for innovation. This has led to an explosion of offerings – from VOIP to 802.11x Wi-Fi to blogging – that might never have evolved had central control of the network been required by design."

America was based on the idea of freedoms. One of those is the freedom to innovate. That innovation brings along new ideas, new ways to save time and money, new products and the list could go on. Controlling legislation could in fact, stifle innovation if taken too far.



The internet is not owned by any particular company, country or organization. Although its original design was implemented for educational facilities when it first began, the internet explosion that occurred in the mid-1990's has facilitated a new world-wide method of communication and information sharing by all, even in several countries which were once part of the Iron Curtain. Let's help make the internet even better for all concerned.

About The Author:

Dan Robins is the webmaster of CRNH.COM, Computer Reviews News and Hardware, an online RSS news aggregator that offers thousand of computer related news stories.