This tangled web may strangle internet as we know it

Perhaps not much for longer. Home to almost 4.3bn different web addresses, an increasing amount of pressure is being put on bandwidth and there are fears that the days of a free internet open to all may be running out.

“We’re all guilty of taking the internet for granted,” says Sarah Crowther, a curator at Bradford Media Museum’s new Life Online exhibition. “We have become so used to being able to search for anything we want, any time we want it, that it’s hard to get our heads around the fact the internet may not be limitless.

“Aside from just a simple growth in the number of websites, the real problem is sites like YouTube and iPlayer which stream video content. That takes up an awful lot of space and with more people wanting to watch film and TV online and on demand the problem is only going to get worse.”

In 2003 comedian Dave Gorman wrote a book and based an entire tour on the art of the googlewhack, a two-word search which produced just one result. The entire project began when someone pointed out Gorman’s own website contained a googlewhack, but search now for francophile namesakes and it will bring up 8,120 possible results. In fact, these days it’s almost impossible find anything approaching a googlewhack.

“The internet hasn’t been around for all that long, but the rate at which it has grown has been phenomenal,” says Sarah. “When Tim Berners-Lee devised the world wide web, which is effectively the program on which the internet sits, he was very clear that it should be a level playing field where everyone could access the same information.

“However, there are growing calls for a tiered internet, which would see providers charging website operators. The idea is the more you pay, the fastest and more smoothly your website will operate. If you go one step further, we could eventually see website users being charged to upload footage of their pets. In some ways it’s a little bit like digital TV, the more you pay, the more channels you can access, but the consequence of having a tiered internet are enormous and there is a fairly vociferous campaign to protect what’s called net neutrality.”

Moves to introduce legislation to preserve the essentially democratic nature of the internet in America have been dogged by delays and challenges by some of the country’s biggest broadband providers.

However, those behind the net neutrality movement believe that if politicians on both sides of the Atlantic don’t act soon, they will miss the opportunity to preserve online freedom.

“Net neutrality ensures that innovators can start small and dream big about being the next eBay or Google without facing insurmountable hurdles,” says a spokesman for the campaigning organisation Free Press. “Unless we preserve it, start-ups and entrepreneurs will be muscled out of the marketplace by big corporations that pay for a top spot on the web.

“On a tiered internet, controlled by the phone and cable companies, only their content and services – or those offered by corporate partners that pay up enough ‘protection money’ will enjoy life in the fast lane.

“Those who don’t make a deal will experience discrimination. Their sites won’t load as quickly and their applications and devices won’t work as well. Without legal protection, consumers could find that a network operator has blocked a website of a competitor or slowed it down so much that it’s unusable.

“Make no mistake, the free-flowing internet as we know it could well become history. It means we could be headed towards a pay-per-view system. It means we may have to pay a network tax to run voice over the internet phones, use an advanced search engine or chat via instant messenger. The real danger is the next generation of inventions will be shut out of the top-tier service level. Meanwhile the network owners will rake in even greater profits.”

The new Life Online galleries at the Media Museum in Bradford open to the public tomorrow and for a sneak preview of the exhibition see tomorrow’s Culture supplement.