Yesterday, Adam Glenn posted this Tidbit story about citizen-media pioneer Dan Gillmor's recent talk at Columbia University. Today, Gillmor posted that speech to his own weblog.
As Adam mentioned, the endangered state of network neutrality was a key theme in Gillmor's talk. Here's more of what Gillmor had to say on that front:
"...I mentioned a clear and present danger to the open Internet that has nurtured a more diverse media ecosystem. The threat, in America, is the dominance of the cable and phone companies in what we laughingly call broadband data connections. I say 'laughingly' because the U.S. is falling way, way behind the rest of the developed world in providing broadband access, and one reason is the dominance of companies that grew up in an environment where they dominated their worlds, and really preferred it that way.
"The cable and phone companies want to control not just the pipes through which our data moves. They also want to decide what will get delivered, in what order, and at what speed. They haven't pulled this off yet, but they're getting closer every day. ...If they succeed in capturing the kind of control they want -- and they're closer than I would have believed possible -- we'll all be harmed."
Indeed -- and content producers (especially major, mainstream organizations) probably have the most to lose if network neutrality is undermined. I think it's high time for media companies to wake up to this threat. Yes, "network neutrality" sounds geeky, but it cuts to the heart of our industry: how content will get distributed online in coming years.
