Life is not neutral ...

Do you like that pizza hut serves only Pepsi beverages ? Or McDonald's serving only Coke? Isn't it like you get stuck up with something because you like something else? Wouldn't it be nice if there were no tie ups between Pizza Hut and Pepsi or McD' and Coke? And now extend this imposed restrictions to internet. What if your internet provider provides very slow access to GMail and much faster access to Y! just because he has a tie-up with Yahoo? "Why You Should Care About Network Neutrality?" covers an excellent view of the problem.

After pondering over the idea, I felt this idea of neutrality may not be really applicable to other aspects of life, like the ones I have mentioned above. Even though I prefer Coke, I do take Pepsi when I am having a pizza at Pizza hut. I don't say, "If there's no Coke, I won't have anything else". Same thing must be happening with other who prefer Pepsi and are visiting McD. So who is the looser? None of them, but the customer. If I extend the idea to media, I would just change my subscription if the newspaper changes it's idealogy or rather I would choose the newspaper that I like. And, yeah, if my favorite column writers belong to different newspapers, I would subscribe both or at least make sure I have access to both.

This is not the case with Internet. Just because my ISP doesn't have tie-up with Google, I won't change my business from Google to Yahoo or MSN or someone else. Instead I would change the ISP who gives me good access to the sites that I need. So who would be the looser? ISPs ? I guess so!

But, yes, having neutrality everywhere would be the best thing to have. A step towards Utopia?

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