Meet Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee - the founder of the Web, he is an advocate for #netneutrality!
According to the BBC, a digital storming is brewing and will soon hit land! It is not about crypto-currencies this time, it is about the Internet, the very medium on which crypto-currencies live and operate.
The US Federal Communications Commission is the body which regulated IPS and telecoms. This year President Trump appointed a new boss to it, and this boss wants to capitalize the internet industry.
Net neutrality requires that Internet Service Providers(ISPs) do not give any preferred treatment to any particular websites.
The net neutrality law is simple:
All websites should be equal before an ISP
This means all websites should be treated equally and given the same priority, speed and security regardless of their source. Opponents of net neutrality of the scheme are mostly cut throat capitalist who want to capitalize the telecom industry.
A free market for the telecom industry might be a disaster as it would would allow websites owned by richer companies to be faster while even letting ISPs block user's access to rival websites simply because they were paid to.
Imagine a law which allowed either Facebook, Reddit, Yahoo, Youtube and Twitter to pay ISPs to block Steemit.com!
Facebook's Free Basic(Internet.org) initiative also faced similar challenges from the net neutrality activists in India due to the fact that it allowed users to access only a few predefined websites, eventually it was blocked in the country. The irony is that Mark Zukerbug still believes in the program, despite claiming to be supporter of net neutrality himself.
While these developments are in the US, they sure do concern the rest of the world as the world's industry do learn from the US. Whatever new developments occur in the US would surely find their ways into industries around the world.
To begin with, telecom regulators would never make any fair decisions for the internet as they are motivated by the interest of sponsors, partners and businesses. The interest of end users will never get a fair representation; for this reason we should probably not even let them decide or make these rules.
This is the real dilemma:
Centralized telecom operators are outdated just as much as centralized financial regulators are outdated. Instead of allowing these people to represent the interest of people they barely know, we could leave that decision to Blockchain technology!
Blockchain technology is more suited to run systems which demand transparency, autonomy and decentralization. Don't get excited yet, as this is where this get even more weird.
Access to the internet is deemed as a basic human right, yet we still have to pay for it. This proves that the current internet access model is flawed. How could you ask people to pay to access what is their basic human right?
However, if no one paid for the internet, how then would ISPs be able to fund their operations? This challenge might have been a problem for the past generations, but not this generation.
Catch: government sponsored free internet is out of bounds
In the age of Bitcoin's awesome Blockchain technology which has brought us technological marvels such as Ethereum and EOS, anything is possible.
The same Blockchain technology which brought us "free", transparent and autonomous digital money could also bring us "free" transparent, internet!
Steemit has proven to be the ultimate model for rewarding user generated content. As we all know, the internet is a user generated content place, and it could learn from the Steemit financing model!
Yes, we mean transforming the entire internet into a Steeemit powered platform which paid for itself. The consequences would be that the internet would be free from data charges as it would pay ISPs whenever users used it!
This would even serve as an incentive to ISP to expand internet access all over the world and improve their speeds and services! ISPs could derive their charges from the interactions of users on the internet such as a charging a small flat rate fee for all revenues generated by content creators and curators.
The result would be that everyone would be happy and well served. ISPs would automatically earn more from content which is in high demand on the network. At the same time, the internet would become free for every to use! No one would ever again pay even a cent for internet data!
Remember that users would not have to actually pay any of these fees/levies - just as people do not have to pay to post or comment on Steemit. The network generates the money and shares it to everyone, while withholding a small amount to pay the ISPs.
There is no need for an internet storm or demonstrations; as we have already explained in this post how Blockchain could be used to resolve the net neutrality challenge while providing the world with absolutely free internet access.
The US Federal Communications Commission together with the ISPs should consult @Dan and @Ned on how to implement Steemit into the internet and web. Google, Mozilla, World Wide Web Foundation and all those who claim to support net neutrality should consider this possibility more seriously.
The honorable Linux Foundation should get over its hyper-ledger Blockchain and instead give Steem some more attention. If they still do not know how to get things done, they could consult @BlockRush, we would be more than willing to guide them with the implementation of such a revolutionary scheme!?
Let us know of your opinions by commenting below! Follow @BlockRush for more reports on #Blockchain!
Image credits: Wikipedia.com
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