IAC Chief Barry Diller: We Should Be 'Screaming' For Net Neutrality

Barry Diller says we should be "screaming" for net neutrality.

The IAC chief stated his stance at SXSW, according to Business Insider.

"The Internet came together as a miracle, really," he said. "Anyone with a wire can publish, we need to keep it that way." He compared charging Netflix for more bandwidth use to "asking a toaster manufacturer to pay for electricity."

Net neutrality is the principle meant to prevent Internet carriers from stopping or discriminating against web traffic.

The FCC passed a net neutrality proposal in December that many denounced as insufficient protection. Senator Al Franken wrote that an early version of the proposed rules were "worse than nothing," while later commenting on the final proposal to say that "while it's no longer worse than nothing, the rule approved today is not nearly strong enough to protect consumers or preserve the free and open Internet." He has called net neutrality the "most important free speech issue of our time."

Since then, House Republicans have voted to add an amendment to the spending bill that would disallow the FCC from spending any governmental money to enforce net neutrality. Another House panel voted to overturn the regulations just last week.

For the rest of Barry Diller's comments at SXSW, read more on Business Insider.

Comments

[European1919]

09:42 AM on 03/16/2011

WE are.

[builderman55]

01:37 AM on 03/16/2011

Net neutrality is so critical because it democratizes access to the Internet. No one controls it, everyone has access to it. Messy sometimes sure, but overall, profoundly important. In other words, we can count on the GOP to try to kill it. Turn it over to big corporations like everything else...

[Imzadi]

06:46 PM on 03/15/2011

Mr. Diller could not be more correct. If this is not passed, your internet life as you know it is GONE.

[nappyman]

09:27 AM on 03/15/2011

Agghhhhh!!!!!! I'm doing my part.

If the bloody kids can't vocalize how important this is to them then why should us adults care. They are bloody useless. If another person ever tells me 'the children are out future', my reply will be 'I hope not, else we're doomed'.

[kcwookie]

08:43 AM on 03/15/2011

We should be screaming for a lot of things, but we don't understand the cost until it's upon us. We don't understand free speech. We don't understand the long term problems caused by our poor education system. We only understand what we were told 30 seconds ago.

[Pectin]

09:56 AM on 03/16/2011

Speak for yourself, Bub.

[Mr Crabs]

05:06 AM on 03/15/2011

Ahh the International Aerobatics Club. Long distinguished for promoting flight safety of aerobatic pilots. Usually when using an acronym for the first time in a publication it's customary to spell it out. Not everyone will know it's InterActivCorp.

[lodger16x]

04:33 AM on 03/15/2011

I'm all for net neutrality, but the toaster/electricity vs. Netflix/ broadband analogy is just wrong.
It costs more electricity  to run a freezer than a toaster. We pay for electricity based on kilowatts used.
Broadband isn't free. Is it really important for every person to be able to watch a movie at will, 24 and 7 and 365, on a mobile device by wireless? Or to have 597 friends who tell you exactly what they're doing every 27 seconds?
Broadband is an electrical phenomenon, period. I don't like broadband providers controlling content, but broadband isn't infinite.
Like IPv4 just ran out of addresses. 

[JasonMcl]

07:27 AM on 03/15/2011

If there was a significant physical cost attached to every packet, ISP's would have charged by the packet the day DSL came out.

If there is too much congestion on the ISP's internal network and they do not want to upgrade it, all that they need to do is throttle the heaviest users.

All of this can be done without artificial per packet charges that do nothing to ease congestion. Especially not if everyone decided to use theirs up on the same day.

[kcwookie]

08:48 AM on 03/15/2011

It's apparent that you don't understand the problem so you justify the need for something you don't understand. This isn't about the size of the highway, it's about the speed of the highway. Net Neutrality is about all data traveling at the same speed, not the quantity of data allowed. Companies want to slow down traffic of their competitor across their network and vice versa. All traffic on the net should run at the same speed. How much bandwidth you buy is a different question. Net Neutrality and unlimited bandwidth aren't the same.

[tradewithdavedotcom]

09:25 PM on 03/14/2011

There's no need to scream. You can simply quietly read over the posts from people who believe that MySpace.com just might be converted into the first-ever user owned and managed social network in history. Sure, the idea is that it could be done for $10 per user and they would own their profile data and take their user name with them just like a mobile phone # when you change services, may feel scream-worthy. It's more like a quiet revolution building one person at a time. www.myspacecondos.com

[edejan]

06:42 PM on 03/14/2011

Some of us have been screaming for Net Neutrality for some time now. Unfortunately, the FCC and the giant telecomms have been unable to "hear" us. How do we have any effect on a ruling system that marginalizes its own constituents? The President said Net Neutrality would be one of his big goals...where is his voice in support of this? Where is the leadership?

[nuni]

07:15 PM on 03/14/2011

After more than two years, we now know there is none. I doubt there ever will be. After all, leadership isn't something you just pull out of your pocket. If he were a leader, we would know it by now.

[Knowitall]

11:49 PM on 03/14/2011

So you haven't noticed all the things he's done so far? He made upwards of 880 promises (or something like that) that's quite a lot--but there were a lot of things that needed fixing. He's moved a lot of things off the list (do a little research--try Whitehouse.gov for starters, there are a lot of others that have the list of bills, executive orders, and initiatives he's signed or instituted. That's why the Republicans are so upset--he's moving faster than they thought he would.)

If you'd stop listening to and repeating right wing talking points, you'd find out that he's actually led on a lot of issues and continues to do so, with surprising success considering the virulent opposition he's encountered, and of course the people who REFUSE to acknowledge the things he's already done.

[RyanCSmith]

10:29 PM on 03/14/2011

They hear us, that's why the spend so much money to drown us out.

Corporate power has never conceded to polite requests, it always has to be forced into submission to society's needs.

[Counterglow]

06:00 PM on 03/14/2011

Unfortunately, the sheeple don't understand what's at stake in the Net Neutrality debate, and most couldn't care less. They'll bleat loudly enough once the effects of killing NN really start to bite, but by then it will be far too late.

[bkerensa]

05:35 PM on 03/14/2011

The GOP does want to kill net neutrality.... so they can charge people more... :)

[edejan]

06:57 PM on 03/14/2011

And control the content.

[ls1z28chris]

05:09 PM on 03/14/2011

If you click through to the Business Insider article you'll see this: "(All these quotes are pulled from Twitter search, so take their precise accuracy with a grain of salt, of course.)"

So basically Huffington Post has taken to not only republishing the stuff from other people, but not even bothering to see if the stuff they are republishing is even valid.

[bkerensa]

05:36 PM on 03/14/2011

Huffpo also has a "Corrections" option so users can send corrections if info is invalid.

[ls1z28chris]

05:52 PM on 03/14/2011

I would have to spend most of my life making submissions to their corrections box. None of their headlines ever agree with the articles, and half the time they cannot get pictures that reflect the subject of the article.

[Knowitall]

12:12 AM on 03/15/2011

From what I could see, only ONE of the twitter quotes in the Business Insider article had anything to do with Net Neurtality and it was pretty innocuous. He just said Net Neutrality was worth fighting for. That's hardly a quote (or twitter) that needs extensive fact checking.

Besides, I'm not sure what your point is in saying that HP "republishes" "stuff from other people." Isn't that what all news outlets do? Don't newspapers, magazines, television and radio news stations and now information websites get their "stuff" by having staff (columnists, correspondents, reporters) go out and gather "stuff" from "other people", including the AP, Reuters, etc.?????

[ls1z28chris]

01:45 PM on 03/15/2011

I would say that third party quotes from twitter need some serious fact checking. One reason is that the character limit tends to cause people to abbreviate. We don't know whether the actual twitter quote is reflective of the words that were actually spoken.

In the case of newspapers paying AP and Reuters for stories, you have people obtaining content from paid journalists who work for wire services who have reputations for trustworthiness that aren't restricted to 150 character submissions. These things are hardly analogous.

[Max Shaw]

04:54 PM on 03/14/2011

Besides from needing a better analogy, Diller is right. We should be screaming for it. But sadly, those of us screaming are generally screaming at how bad our connection speeds seem, and at our phone service providers for charging us out the a** for every little thing we do.

But those screaming for net neutrality might as well be yelling at a hot chick in a night club--with the hot chick being any web service provider. Sure she can tell your saying something but cant hear you and really doesnt care what youre saying, because she's still gonna go home with the rich dudes who don't care how much she costs to take home.

[ARealConservative]

04:19 PM on 03/14/2011

The comparison to "asking a toaster manufacturer to pay for electricity." shows a real lack of convincing argument. We DO pay more for inefficient refrigerators, AC units, water heaters, etc. in the form of REBATES from Electric companies and/or Dept of Energy for more efficient ones. DUH!!!!
So, if that is the argument, then Net Neutrality it is a DUMB idea!

[rigmoten]

05:45 PM on 03/14/2011

Not being good with words makes a sound idea dumb?

[Bioxoxide]

04:19 PM on 03/14/2011

*Waits for Google's 1gb internet connection*