Vint Cerf, who can fairly be described as one of the godfathers of Internet has endorsed Barack Obama in the US presidential race, saying that his decision is swayed by Obama’s stance on net neutrality – the question of whether content providers should be charged more for different content by the “pipe” providers.

Extracts:

We believe that the Internet should remain an open environment. It’s vital to innovation. Companies like Google, and Yahoo, and eBay, and Amazon, and Skype and so on, got their start without having to get permission from any ISP or any broadband provider to offer services. They simply acquired access to the internet, put their services up and then made them available to the general public.

We think that’s the best way for the Internet to evolve and I’m pleased to say that in the upcoming presidential elections, the two candidates have rather different views of this particular matter. Senator Obama in particular sees things the way I do which is that the Net should remain open, fully accessible and providing access on a non-discriminatory basis to the people who want to offer new services on the network.