I, Cringely: Stupid Net Tricks - Congress Thinks It Can Force Technical Changes on the Internet, but Congress Is Wrong

I, Cringely: Stupid Net Tricks - Congress Thinks It Can Force Technical Changes on the Internet, but Congress Is Wrong

When this column began in the spring of 1997, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was a new law that had changed how communication services were provided in the United States, reflecting the new possibilities of what was then popularly called the Information Super Highway. Nine years later, Congress is now in the throes of rewriting that same law to reflect new realities and lessons learned, with the result that there is a lot of jostling for political position. Telephone and cable TV companies find themselves, this time, on the same side of the discussion, pushing Quality of Service arguments they say are necessary for their own survival. Companies like Google and Yahoo, Amazon and eBay -- companies that exist solely in cyberspace as corporate citizens of these same networks -- say that what the telcos and cable companies propose will hurt their businesses and business in general. Some techies worry that a counter-reformation of sorts is taking place that will literally destroy the Internet, taking with it some or all of the gains that people have made through broader and easier communication.

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