[ Thanks to Bernard Swiss
for this link. ]
“As Ars readers know, of late there’s been a huge
amount of debate about the impact that priority access deals would
have on the ‘Net. ISPs say they’ve got to have this option to
finance their networks. They’ve gone so far as to insist that they
have the First Amendment right to charge content providers more for
better (or not inferior) access to their subscribers.“Meanwhile, the content companies (especially the game
developers) push back that the trend would create walled garden
environments and slow down content growth. And the reform groups
warn that the plan would allow the ISPs to pick winners and losers
on the ‘Net.“But now a significant figure in the discussion is asking
whether priority arrangements would hurt the ISPs themselves. In
his latest blog post titled “The Slow Suicide of Net
Discrimination,” Benoît Felten, CEO of Diffraction Analysis,
argues that the notion that the ISPs must have this option “is a
delusion, and a dangerous one at that.””