Here’s a troubling technological development, pointed out by Jeff Chester

of the Center for Digital Democracy.

A company called Ellacoya provides

"network traffic control" software and hardware that

allows Internet Service Providers (ISP) to track their own customers closely

and to "enforce a very large number of policies" regarding Internet

use. The technology can, for example, limit traffic from particular sites

or categories of sites to a certain speed, or block connections altogether

to particular sites, or block connections at certain times of the day

for certain customers. The great danger is that ISPs can now speed up

connections to Websites that have paid them for special treatment, while

subtly slowing down other sites. ISPs will certainly have the incentive

to discriminate in this way if they are owned by a major content provider,

such as Microsoft or AOL Time Warner.

This means that if your favorite low-budget nonprofit seems to have a

slow Website, your ISP may actually be responsible. Also, ISPs may slow

down users who want to create and post material, rather than merely consume

it. (Ellacoya says: "Operators can easily discover their top talkers

and then set up restricted bandwidth pools for specific applications and/or

user groups during peak hours.") This kind of discrimination will

be hard to detect, so customers will not switch their ISPs to avoid it.

Yet it strikes at one of the fundamental principles of the Internet. You

should be able to share any kind of (legal) material with anyone without

an intermediary throwing obstacles in your path. Whereas overt obstacles

are easily detected and can often by bypassed, subtle discrimination poses

a serious danger.