Meritocracy: a system of a government or other organization where in appointments are made and responsibilities assigned to individuals based upon demonstrated talent and ability (merit).
What exactly does this mean?
Take it like this: If people like Popeyes better than KFC, that is there they will go to eat. If people like Converse shoes better than Reebok ones, then that is what they will buy. If people like Jurassic Park better than Godzilla, then that is the movie they will most likely watch.
The same could be same about the Internet: If people like Myspace better than Facebook, that is the online community they are most likely to join; if people like Wikipedia better than Dictionary.com, that is the site they would use to look up information, and if people rather use the Google search engine rather than the Yahoo one, they will use that search engine.
It would be a problem if Rogers or Bell limited their consumers to certain sites, right?
Its like saying to your baby, “Hey little guy you can have this sucker…. Only if you love daddy more than mommy”. It just isn’t right. The internet should be available to everyone, not handed to greedy providers who believe they will get more green if they discrimate.
WELCOME TO NET NEUTRALITY.
ROUND 1 – FIGHT!
“The cable firms and the Bells have (to their credit, but under pressure) sworn off blocking Web sites. Instead, they propose to carve off bandwidth for their own services—namely, television—and, more controversially, to charge selected companies a toll for "priority" service. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin thinks there is nothing wrong with that. But critics say technological prioritization and degradation are the same thing—that given limited room on the network, whoever isn't prioritized is by implication degraded.”(Tim Wu)
Congratulations, Kevin Martin. You are officially going to make everyone’s lives harder. By allowing this ‘priority service’ to take place, he will successfully leech out money from his consumers. If this happens to the internet, our ISPs would be showering in our money. Come on, seriously, who wants to pay a fee to say hi to your Mom who lives in another province? Bell does, and its not because they want you to keep in touch with your family.
ROUND 2 – FIGHT!
“It's true that the Bells might make extra cash by discriminating. But AT&T can extract cash in other ways, too, like charging its customers higher prices. I believe that it's better to have consumers pay more for service than to have AT&T picking and choosing winners on the network. Both are a cost to the economy, but the latter is a double cost. It creates costs that are passed on to consumers anyhow, and it also distorts competition between eBay, Yahoo!, and the like. Building networks at the expense of network applications has a logic O. Henry would enjoy, for it's akin to selling a painting in order to buy a better frame.”
Would it really be more equal if we paid more money to keep our current service, rather than letting our ISPs pick and choose what sites we could visit or not? In my opinion, it would be. Of course we would have to pay more, but it gives us access to all the websites we currently use. I would rather have that over paying a fee to access certain sites any day.
ROUND 3 – FINAL ROUND?
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