THE NET NEUTRALITY AS A POSSIBILITY OF SYMMETRY IN CITIZEN CONTROL OF SCIENTIFIC INNOVATION

Abstract

If Internet Service Providers begin to discriminate against different kinds of websites and services through a new sistema of payment depending on the services that the consumer contracts, net neutrality will disappear. To imagine all of the implications of this act would be imposible, but it is possible to anticipate some immediate consecuences in the field of innovation and investigation. The principle themes of this article are: the relationship between Capitalism and Internet content restrictions, the end of citizen participation in our societies, the impiding of intellectual exchange such as blocking the development of the process of innovation, the inability of humans to influence the way of knowledge and the conversion of this knowledge into merchandise, and finally the attack on the right to choose one’s own scientifical and intelectual path. Finally it is stressed that the battle for the management of the net brings to light again the contradictions between the values of democracy and the legitimization of unlimited economic growth.