Tyler Hamilton of the Toronto Star has an interview with Tim Berners-Lee in which the WWW founder expresses concern about a two-tier Internet.
Berners-Lee on Net Neutrality
March 28, 2006
Share this post
One Comment

Law Bytes
Episode 277: Kate Robertson on the Risks That Lie Behind Canada's Unexpected Signing of the UN Cybercrime Convention
byMichael Geist

June 22, 2026
Michael Geist
Search Results placeholder
Michael Geist on Substack
Recent Posts
From CCH to ChatGPT: How Canadian Copyright Law Played the Key Role in Deciding a Leading AI Training Data Case in India
Starting Over: Court Filing Confirms the CRTC’s Streamer Contribution Decisions Are Dead With a Full Online Streaming Act Reset to Come
The Name on the Window Was Enough: The Attacks on Kiva’s and the Normalization of Antisemitic Violence in Canada
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 277: Kate Robertson on the Risks That Lie Behind Canada’s Unexpected Signing of the UN Cybercrime Convention
A Surveillance Treaty in Disguise: The Trouble With Canada’s Quiet Decision to Sign the UN Cybercrime Convention

Barriers to Entry
I see the efforts by telcos and others to wring more cash out of the ‘Net (by charging for “assured access” or “assured email” – under the guise of anti-spam concerns) as extremely dangerous to the Internet.
The ‘Net has reduced the barriers to entry to the point that one can begin a business or communicate with the world for less than $25 per month with inexpensive hosted services.
There are large organizations that are extremely threatened by the new business models the Internet now permits. Open Source software is one of them. P2P media distribution is another.
“Assured Access” will only be one of the attempts they will make to maintain their position in the market and the status quo.
Good luck to us all. We’ll need it to maintain our newly acquired power as consumers.