The most popular technology article in today's New York Times is Charging by the Byte to Curb Internet Traffic. The article reports on the news that several ISPs, including Time Warner Cable, Comcast, and AT&T, are considering a move to a "metered Internet" pricing model for consumers. That is, the more bits you download (or upload), the more you pay.

I suspect it's no coincidence that the move to metered pricing comes at the same time as more strident calls for network neutrality regulations. The current net neutrality legislation is so broadly worded that it would prevent ISPs from managing traffic on their networks. This will ultimately stand in the way of media convergence and force companies like Comcast to maintain separate networks for their Internet service and, e.g. television. This inefficient duplication of infrastructure is bad for everyone: consumers, ISPs, and content providers.

I'm certainly opposed to some forms of network discrimination, like charging content providers extra for Internet access, as Ed Whitacre of BellSouth famously proposed back in 2006. But the current, broadly-worded legislation creates a real danger of market fragmentation and inefficiency.

For a counter-example, look to Germany ... Keep Reading >>

Cory Doctorow has a new column over at the Guardian about the information economy. Much like the video below, Cory argues in this latest column that our leaders have fundamentally misunderstood (perhaps at the behest of the media lobby) the idea of the information economy:

The thinking is simple: an information economy must be based on buying and selling information. Therefore, we need policies to make it harder to get access to information unless you've paid for it.

That means that we have to make it harder for you to share information, even after you've paid for it. Without the ability to fence off your information property, you can't have an information market to fuel the information economy.

But this is a tragic case of misunderstanding a metaphor. Just as the industrial economy wasn't based on making it harder to get access to machines, the information economy won't be based on making it harder to get access to information. Indeed, the opposite seems to be true: the more IT we have, the easier it is to access any given piece of information — for better or for worse.

Ultimately I believe that Doctorow is correct - the ability to copy and move information is the essence of the information economy. Unfortunately traditional property rights seem to collide head-on with this new paradigm, and it remains to be seen whether the legal/poltical system can adapt.