Tuesday, March 21, 2006

The March 13 editorial "The Eden Illusion" said that Internet service providers should be able to create tiers on the Internet because Web surfers already gravitate toward sites they know and trust. However, a tiered structure would discriminate against upstarts and innovators and destroy the democratic nature that has made the Internet thrive.

We have a "commercial meritocracy" on the Web, as described by Christopher Stern [Outlook, Jan. 22]. Amazon.com, Google and the like got big because they outperformed their competitors, not because they started big.

Telecommunications firms want to gain monopoly power, and they want the ability to extract the last dollar possible from the Internet. If that means consigning some content providers that cannot afford their extortion to slow lanes or side roads on the information superhighway, they will do so. These strategies mean higher prices for consumers and threaten the use of the Internet as a way to engage citizens in their democracy. They also will discourage innovation as the developers of new Web applications will not be able to pay the high costs to get easy access to the telecommunications giants' tens of millions of customers.

Where will the next Amazon or Google come from if these media giants impose costly barriers to entry?

CHELLIE PINGREE

President and Chief Executive

Common Cause

Washington

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I was puzzled by the reference in the editorial to "the anti-corporate spirit of the Internet's founders." Among which founders of the Internet can this spirit be found?

The Internet evolved out of ARPAnet, a project of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The agency was a jewel in the crown of the defense industrial complex, and neither it nor the computer network it created were anti-corporate. Corporations have been involved in the Internet's management and development from the beginning, when BBN Technologies (then Bolt, Beranek and Newman) built the first packet switch in response to an agency request for proposals.

The network was created to ease communication among scientists and engineers working on government contracts or grants; it was not created to upend the corporate sector.

ERIK LEDBETTER

Rockville

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The regulatory nightmare that The Post fears would not come from adopting "net neutrality" policies but from trying to fix the mess if such policies were not enacted.

Policies advocated by AT&T Inc. would undermine citizens' ability to distribute bandwidth-intensive political messages such as the JibJab.com cartoons that lampooned the 2004 presidential candidates. They also would undermine the evolution of blogs and peer-to-peer technologies as vehicles for political debate.

Given recent news about Comcast's political tactics ["Md. Lawmakers Call for Probe of Comcast Ties," Metro, March 8], it isn't extreme to warn that an Internet service provider might give high-speed access to candidates for one party but not others.

ANDREW JAY SCHWARTZMAN

President and Chief Executive

Media Access Project

Washington