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By David Rothman

Larry LessigIf Verizon or SBC/AT&T wants to do e-books, that’s fine in my opinion. But in bandwidth matters, do we want telecom companies to be able to give low priority to bookstores or other sites that are their rivals? Or those that don’t pay special fees?

All this will matter when e-books and bookstores go multimedia in a big way. We’ve got to look ahead. That’s why I’m so gung ho on a concept called Net neutrality. I’d highly recommed that you check out a recent post by Larry Lessig, as well as pieces in BusinessWeek and the New York Times. Far from harming just e-bookstores and libraries, a telecom-bossed Net would be a disaster for a wide range of businesses, including the likes of Google, which would face phone company gouges.

Meanwhile please note that this isn’t a U.S.-only issue. No matter where you live, you should keep a wary eye on telecom interests trying to rein in the Net.

 
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