Craig of Craigslist Speaks Out on Net Neutrality

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In an opinion piece in the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday, June 11 Craigslist founder Craig Newmark spoke out against the Net Neutrality bill, which aims to impose so called ‘net neutrality’ on telecommunication companies by obliging them to treat all internet content equally, regardless of complexity or technical requirements.

Big companies including Google and eBay support this handing over of power to telecoms - the very people who control availability, price and support of broadband internet connections.

As a content solution provider Craig opposes the bill, going so far as to use the following analogy, "Imagine if the leaders of 16th century Germany, feeling threatened by the democratizing forces of the printing press, had taken Gutenberg's invention and limited its use to those they politically agreed with -- or if Luther had to pay licensing fees for nailing up his 95 Theses on every church door in Germany."

The fear is that telecoms will use their power to limit access to websites that they do not like in favor of others they have relationships/partnerships with.

There is no doubt this issue is heating up. Craig feels so strongly against it he is even going against eBay which owns 25% of Craigslist and supporter of the bill.

As always Craig is the guy to go into the world and tell people what he feels is right for the American people. The bill in my opinion clearly does not ensure access to every person no matter their income level or station in life; rather it seeks to give control to the greedy in exchange for less cost for the big internet providers.

In the end, we all lose.

Read the full article he wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle