Nagpur.
The video session started with Sanjay Arora saying that the while the American Government has okayed Net-Neutrality, the issue is pending with the European parliament.
Advocate Kamal Satuja claimed that nearly 95% of legal fraternity is not aware of the hot and burning issue Net-Neutrality.
On a lighter not the panelists claimed that 3G is not in reality 3G and that these service providers are making a fool of us.
Sanjay Arora started with the basics and said that this is Net= Internet and Neutrality+ Access
He went on to say this Net-Neutrality involves 3 basic points:
- Access: Service Provider gives the access and we are free to browse and move anywhere on whichever site we want to.
- Speed: The speed of the processing the data.
- Cost: While certain facilities are cheap, others are free or very costly.
Sanjay added that no one has any right to filter the access points.
One very prominent aspect that came to fore is that there are 3 giants in this field, i.e. United States of America, China and India. If this legislation is not stopped on the long run, it will be the common man who will have to pay the brunt of the whole thing.
Advocate Kamal claimed that the Constitution has given us the right to access Knowledge. The constitution also gives us the right to live with dignity. This in turn means that we have a right to access the knowledge through internet and with dignity. No corporate house or giant can infringe upon our privacy or filter what we want.
Tejinder Singh Renu while expressing his opinions said that people have to pay for the taxes for the services available or rendered by the government. He opined that today, we are ready to pay even a little extra for better services, but soon the traffic may increase and we will have to pay a lot for even the basic facilities on the net. He claimed that we have to be prepared for the future.
There should be a freedom to go anywhere in the net-world without any hindrance. No one has any right to control our choices.
Another important aspect that came through the panel discussion is that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) which regulates interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable has already decided on Net-Neutrality in US. There is no censorship or is there a speed issue in US.
Vishal Muttemwar while expressing his opinion said that these service providers claim that we have spent such a lot of money of the infrastructures and towers etc, now when we can earn through the cost accrued from Video or voice chats, (Viber/Skype) etc, there is this issue of net-neutrality that is preventing us from earning. Almost all the panelists agreed that these service providers make a lot of money; the money that they may earn through charging for video and voice chats is only a bonus.
