So why is this a problem?

For starters, there is discrimination. The Internet is as an open medium, where every feature and service is treated equally. For example, search engines provide you with sites that are the closest match to your request, not the highest paying content providers.

Next, there is double payment on a service. Currently, net users are charged for access. Opponents to Net Neutrality also want to have users pay for content, by charging the service providers who will then pass on these costs to users. Currently we pay for the pipes, not the type of content that comes through the pipes.

Most importantly is the oppression of innovation. The net as it stands allows start-ups and entrepreneurs to enter the marketplace competitively. A tiered Internet will be dictated by who can afford to dominate the content supply market through massive financing.

On December 21, 2010, the FCC will vote on a net neutrality proposal plan. Outlined by Chairman Julius Genachowski, the plan includes five key points: transparency; a ban blocking lawful apps and services; a ban on unreasonable network management; allowance some ISP network management; and rules governing wireless that calls for the above. Another notable feature is that the plan does not reclassify broadband as a telecom service, and holds it to the same rules and regulations.

Net Neutrality is absolutely necessary for the future of the Internet as we know it, and although many in the U.S. have an inherent mistrust for government regulation, it is the only way we will achieve equity for all users:

“In the end, network neutrality rules are not the only way government can try to lower the costs of market entry in the national economy. However, it is one of the simplest, and it has proven very effective over the last decade.”

Tim Wu, Professor of Law, Columbia University.

Besides the wild beauty of antique Habana, the marvellous white-sand beaches of Cayo Largo, the static colonial touch of Trinidad and the “revolucion” spirit surrounding Cienfuegos, « el pueblo recolucionario », what strikes you when you travel in the largest island of the Caribbean is the almost total absence of the internet.

No matter where you are in Cuba -in a provincial pueblo or in Downtown Habana- looking for a decent Internet connexion is as difficult as looking for a 54 Ford in New York City.

However, if you wake up early and pull yourself together, you may find a place where they “offer” Internet access. When you’re a tourist, you can go to hotels. Not all of them have those services but some do.

Now, what happens when you find the right place and want to get started ?   Like any other usual western tourist, you want to quickly check your e-mails, send a sweet message for a friend’s birthday, update your facebook status to “Having so much fun in Cuba!” and, just in case, have a look to the details of your return flight.

Could you reasonably do that? Well, unless you have ten hours to spend there and a lot of money to lavish, you won’t be able to do that.  Connections are so slow, and the Internet costs you $8 an hour.

With no exaggeration, I’d say that you’d use a quarter of that hour to open gmail, another quarter to write and send ¾ e-mails. With the remaining half-hour, if it’s your day of luck and the connection does not crash all of a sudden, you may open the New York Times and probably read two articles before the final countdown appearing on the bottom-right corner of your screen kindly lets you know you have 59 seconds left to skim through your third article.

An hour had passed, $8 gone, and you only did what you normally do in 10 minutes. Stay calm and keep walking. You’re in Cuba.

That being said, my trip to Cuba was an amazing opportunity to compare the two systems – the Free West and The Tropical Communism- through the prism of Digital Age, Web 2.0 and Social Networks.

It is so different and so similar at the same time.

Social networks perfectly function in Cuba, only they do not happen on the Internet. The best example I can come up with relates to finding places where to stay when my friend and I would arrive in new cities. In New York City, Paris or London, you do things on the net, you book and tell your cab the address before showing the hotel receptionist your e-booking reservation. And if you want to go further, you go to some travel forums beforehand to ask for advice or ask your friends whether they know of someone able to put you up.

In Cuba, it’s different, but as efficient.

You talk to the first guy you meet on the street about the best way to find a place to stay (think of a forum on the net), and that guy send you to another person who knows somebody who has a “casa particular” (think of links that redirect you to the right person).

If the casa is free, you just stay there, if not, the owner of the casa (who you added as friend…ring a bell?) would call all his friends (think of creating an event on facebook) until someone has a free room for you (it works like craigslist).

Well, some would say you have to give those guys propinas (tips), but is the Internet connection your use from your Manhattan home free for you?

Some others would contend that the guy you ask for the room may take advantage of the situation and try to sell you postcards of the Che or fake cigars, but aren’t you all the time exposed to adds and scams on the Internet?

I know my point here is debatable, but I sincerely never had the impression that Cubans were missing a lot of things because they could not really access the Internet.

The capacity human beings have to adapt to any context is formidable. The famous example when it comes to Cuba relates to their cars: how can these guys still manage to have 70-year-old cars still function? Well, when you know that you can’t have a new one, you find a way to make the old one works…

The same applies to social networks. They make do with what they have, their tactility, smartness and resourcefulness.

Cubans are much more than poor victims of a repressive and dictatorial regime, they are some sort of pre-modernity geniuses who always find their find through resourcefulness, smartness and tactility.

Needless to say that it was not part of the plan for those young scandal instigators to be-first- seen on a national TV channel before-second- hitting the headlines of major newspapers all over the world.

As expected, reactions and comments around the world coming from political leaders, civil society, NGOs, bloggers and even Tsahal officials condemned the behaviors of those immature kids.

“This video finally debunks one of the most persistent Israeli myths – that ours is the only occupying army in history that does not sexually abuse the women of the occupied nation », says Israeli Editorialist Dimi Reider on his blog, Dimi’s notes. »

Besides its political taint, the reaction of the official Palestinian bodies was undoubtedly the most resourceful one.

“With the advent of easy-to-use media like YouTube, the truth is coming to light about a culture of humiliation of the Palestinians,” said a Palestinian official from Prime Minister Fayyad’s office on Tuesday, October 5^th.

Beyond the non-surprising political interpretation of the video by the Palestinian Government, what is crucial in the statement is the awareness of the impact new digital media has on today’s political realities.

The case of Israel is quite telling, as the Israeli IDF has had a long tradition of discretion and control on everything that relates to its communication. Therefore, witnessing a non-amateur army in such an uncomfortable position (to say the least) is blatant evidence of the immense power and tremendous volatility new media have today.

In fact, things seem to have changed for Tsahal, making it harder and harder for the Israeli army to control everything, as this video is not an isolated case for the IDF. In fact, this new broadcast is the third thorn the Israeli army had to deal with after two similar cases had occurred earlier this year, all three happening within a six-month period.

First, exposure of the video came just seven weeks after an Israeli soldier sparked widespread outrage by posting pictures of herself smiling and larking around next to blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinian prisoners. The army denounced the pictures as “shameful,” while the Palestinian Authority described them as humiliating, but the former soldier, Eden Abergil, could not understand why the images had caused such offence.

Second, earlier last summer, the video of six soldiers breaking out into a coordinated dance routine in the middle of the street while on duty in Hebron prompted a global outcry that had destabilized Tsahal’s communication. The video was all the more shocking, as Hebron has had a sad and bloody tradition of paroxysmal violence between illegal settlers and local Palestinians.

« Israel has not yet find the weapon against this kind of threats », says Omar Barghouti, a founding committee member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. No matter how many radars, anti-missile shields,F-15 and M-16 you may have, New Media is stronger than you.

Not an Isolated Case

Yet, Israel and the Palestinian territories are not the only places where new media are changing the rules of the communication/censorship  game.

YouTube was blocked in Thailand because of videos showing people stomping on photographs of the Thai King.

Turkey, on the other hand, is offended by videos that indicate that Ataturk, the founder and first president of Turkey, was homosexual. Turkey wants YouTube to block these videos not only in its own country, but also everywhere else. As YouTube refuses to do so, the site remains blocked there.

YouTube: spearhead of the revolution.

Originally aimed at socializing people through Entertainment videos (music, dance), Youtube has now become a major global actor playing a political role in each and every country.

Ironically on the same day the belly-dancing video hit the web and went viral, Steve Grove, Head of News and Politics at Youtube, came to Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs to have lunch with students, alumni, staff and faculty in the second brownbag lunch of the year sponsored by the IMAC specialization.

“Today with YouTube, you can’t get away from the camera no matter where you go,” he said.

“This can be both a good thing and a bad thing. YouTube was not created to become a public square. But as with a lot of such platforms, it’s most important role can be upsetting the power structure… The old world was a conversation between politicians and news organizations. In today’s world, there’s a whole other layer out there where you have regular people holding their leaders accountable.”

No other expression best applies to what happened to me while I was  reading one of this week’s class readings: Social Media Can Open Door to Philantropy’s Future, by Larry Blumenthal.

In his Op-Ed, Larry Blumenthal describes a workshop he led for staff from a variety of foundations to convince them that there were no such thing as Social Media. To him, engaging with Social media is tantamount to fostering collaboration, openness, transparency, timeliness, sharing work in progress, embracing and learning from failure. In this respect, the author believes, any person claiming that Social Media does not seem relevant to his or her work is–to say the least– totally wrong!

Little by little, Blumenthal’s arguments started to convince me…I was seduced. Actually, I believe i wanted to be convinced.

Such an easy thing:all I had to do was to  keep reading his piece to the end and say to myself “He is so right! I should not be concerned anymore with spending hours a day on facebook/twitter/flickr and youtube while studying at the same time, that is actually good for me! This is a better way to stay informed! This is a tool that can help me do what I am already doing, only more effectively”

But that couldn’t unfold this way and that is exactly what happened: It didn’t unfold this way…Just like rain brought itself to a week-end that had started with the sun, my friend Yoel’s message had to distract my attention from Blumenthal’s mess.And not in a insignificant way.

I open Yoel message. It was entitled “Reda, you’ll love that!”. Let’s have a look at the message’s body. Nothing but a link.

Ok, I click on the link. “The Top Ten Ways Workers Waste Time Online”. Funny coincidence, isn’t it?

I scroll down and discover a list of ten things allegedly making people waste time online and lose productivity, especially when they are working. All that Blulmenthal’s Social Media Improvement Thing was supposed to avoid.

The website looks really serious.After quickly scrolling down to have a general sense of what that page was all about, I started to read it from the beginning. The verdict just killed my enthusiasm:

Number 1: Social Networks – 1.24 hr/week

“Social networking has come to dominate Internet use.  Nucleus Research, an IT research firm, found that 77% of employees who have access to Facebook from work check it at least once a day.  Of course, other large and fast-growing social media sites such as Twitter also contribute to the loss in productivity.”

As Charles Sumner said at the time:

“This glorious invention was vouchsafed to mankind that we might salute and converse with one another respectively stationed at remote and isolated points for a nominal sum.”

But instead, he continued, “A wicked monopoly has seized hold of this beneficent capacity and design, and made it tributary, by exorbitant tariffs, to a most miserly and despicable greed.”

So quotes Matthew Lasar in a brief, eye-opening account of US battles over control of the telegraph or — with a steampunk wink and nod — the “Victorian Internet.”

When juxtaposed against current Network Neutrality debates it should give pause to the argument that we hand over the keys to future Internet growth and development to the Verizons, Time Warners, and Comcasts operating today.

Take a trip down Lasar’s memory lane and you see how Western Union’s monopoly controlled the telegraph by throttling competition, and curried political favor by disrupting opposition party information and communication.

In turn, the Associated Press struck a deal with Western Union and agreed, as Lasar writes, that they would never “encourage or support any opposition or competing Telegraph Company.” With that that relationship in their pocket, the AP went on it own merry way and crushed competing news and information organizations that were beginning to crop up around the country.

You could argue that the telegraph and the Internet are apples and robots, but the similarities between media consolidation and desired control over information access between now and then are clear.

Lasar’s evocative article is available via Ars Technica.

Supporting, of course, is different than making policy but it does give us clues as to which direction the FCC may go once its scheduled hearings on the issue begin in late October.

[For a backgrounder on the issue, here's a debate between and amongst Tim Wu, law professor at Columbia University, Tim Karr, Campaign Director for SaveTheInternet.com and Kieth Clemens, General Counsel for Verizon.]

Wrote Genachowski to the New Yorker:

Network Neutrality protects the ability of users to access the lawful content, applications, and services of their choice. In other words, it lets users determine who wins and loses in the marketplace, and that’s the way it should be.

What’s most important in this email exchange is that Genachowski explicitly states that the FCC is looking to maintain the status quo. It wants to maintain the historical roots of the Internet as a free and open network against the economic and commercial interests pushing for otherwise today.

We could flip this around a bit to also say that Network Neutrality also makes sure that entrepreneurs and innovators do not have to pay to play in the Web space in order for their content or applications to get a fair shake in front of the users who then — in Genachowski’s words — determine the winners and losers in the marketplace.

If you want to understand what that practically means, think of today’s Internet darlings, or $1 billion darling: Twitter.

Put simply, would a Twitter be as successful today if, during its infancy, it had to pay to play to access certain markets. Where would it, or Zappos or any other successful native online brand be today if the Internet was reconfigured so that not only did they need to get the technology, brand, and marketing right, not only did they have to solve customer need and concern, but they then had to approach Internet carriers to get permission for their products and services to be carried across their lines?

What would the story of Skype be if telecoms had been able to cut deals with Internet carriers that relegated and slowed Skype data transmissions?

If you break it down, Network Neutrality’s opponents are asking for a tiered network where their products and services — ie, online applications and media — have greater priority than others on the market and in the network.

By doing so they’re trying to maintain — or create — scarcity (ie, broadband access and distribution) and determine the criteria for allowing access to that scarcity (eg, payment, application type, content type, etc.). With this control in place, the market is perpetually and always tilted in favor of legacy companies and big media, and against feisty startups and bootstrapped innovators.

I grit my teeth outlining how and why some believe this is a good and necessary idea. There are arguments given by smart people though but since I dislike grinding my teeth, I leave it to Sarah Sorenson to do the bidding.

She argues that government intervention in how the network evolves will — by definition — slow progress down.

Yesterday, the FCC proposed rules that would create more government control over the Internet and force Internet providers (including wireless) to treat all Web traffic equally. This would mean they couldn’t block or slow traffic, presumably to prevent providers from treating competitors content differently and to make sure consumers have the freedom to use their computing devices to access any and every service they want. Again, in principle, that’s a good thing. However, it may have unintended consequences.

The reality is it could end up affecting the experience that we all have on the Internet. As you have probably heard, traffic on the Internet is doubling every two years… and it takes investment to make sure that enough broadband is available to support all of that traffic. In many cases, it necessitates adding capacity and upgrading the underlying network, in other scenarios, it is about extending the reach of the existing network to a greater percentage of the population. To date that investment has been primarily taken on by the private sector, namely the Internet providers themselves…

…The problem is that, unless the service providers can identify additional revenue to justify the build out, there will be no incentive for them to do so.

Sorenson has a reasonable, rational argument here but overlooks one very important fact in her centrist support for unencumbered market control of the network: these companies were already given considerable tax incentives and write-offs to build the network. And they were given these incentives and write-offs specifically to support open access on the Network.

Earlier this week I interviewed Bob Bowman, CEO of Major League Baseball’s mlb.com. As the curator of a multi-billion dollar brand — the American Pastime no less — Network Neutrality is of immense interest to him. And he’s against it. Major League Baseball is against it. And they’re against it not because they are tyrants and demons of the worst order, but because they are capitalist conservators of the first order. They want to maintain and advance MLB’s place in Americana and the world.

To do so they invest heavily in Internet and mobile technologies. They innovate across all platforms in an attempt to provide a global baseball fan base the best possible experience no matter the chosen medium. This is what they say. This is what they believe. And this is what they’ll fight for.

And Network Neutrality — in their view — gets in the way precisely because after all their investment, and all the investment of their Internet carrier partners, they cannot guarantee privileged transmission. And privileged transmission is what they want. For the fans. And wanting what you think is right for the fans is as American as apple pie.

At root is a fundamental belief of whether government can be an agent of good, or if it always gets in the way. Both Sorenson and Bowman suggest government intervention hinders growth and innovation. But if we look again at what the FCC’s Genachowski actually says, the government is not intervening, it’s not changing the rules, it’s maintaining the status quo of an open and neutral Internet.

To suggest otherwise is similar to saying that efforts to keep our national parks open and public amounts to invasive governmental land management.

From his actual speech announcing the FCC’s position (emphasis mine):

I am convinced that there are few goals more essential in the communications landscape than preserving and maintaining an open and robust Internet. I also know that achieving this goal will take an approach that is smart about technology, smart about markets, smart about law and policy, and smart about the lessons of history.

And from his email exchange with the New Yorker:

We seek to preserve the current ability of entrepreneurs to innovate on the Internet without having to ask permission first. This notion has been a hallmark of the Internet since its inception…

…This is largely about preserving the status quo.

As the Internet continues to disrupt and transform how information, economies and activities are conducted and performed, it will need excellent global stewardship. The hope here is that the public good wins out over the profit motive of an elite few.

These need not be mutually exclusive but the opportunities afforded by an open Internet has moved the technology from one that is merely beneficial, to one where access to it — and the ability to create and develop on it without restriction — is increasingly becoming a human right.

One which no company, industry or government should be empowered to control or restrict access to.

This article originally appeared at ScribeMedia.org.