Sunday, October 17, 2010

An Interesting Twist on Net Neutrality

As many know, I am a strong believer of Net Neutrality as defined as:

"Net Neutrality is the principle that any provider of connectivity shall not discriminate on any transport based on the source or content of the transport. Notwithstanding this principle, any provider shall be free to charge rates for varying forms of transport predicated on capacity or necessity independent of the source or content. No carrier shall discriminate in any manner based upon source or content."

Simple but alas I missed a point. Public Knowledge has pointed out that FOX is blocking customers from their web site if they originate from a Cablevision system. Specifically they state:

“Fox has said it is not allowing customers of Cablevision’s Internet access service to connect to Fox Web sites or to Fox content on Hulu.com.

Now I tried the Fox site and had no problem but this raises an interesting issue. Is there a corollary to my principle of Net Neutrality of equal merit.

No provider shall discriminate against any user based in any manner upon the provider that the user employs.

An interesting thought even if Fox is not blocking.