My Name is Vint Cerf, I'm a Scientist and I am Voting for Barack Obama — LIRNEasiaLIRNEasia — a regional ICT policy and regulation think tank active across the Asia Pacific

My Name is Vint Cerf, I’m a Scientist and I am Voting for Barack Obama

Posted on October 16, 2008 / 2 Comments

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.

2 Comments

poojitha
October 16, 2008, 4:17 pm
yeah, i agree with you guys, totally
Sanjana Hattotuwa
October 17, 2008, 8:55 am
As a scientist I would have expected a more rigorous critique of Obama’s avowed partiality to Cerf’s notion of net neutrality. What empirical evidence is there to believe that Obama’s rhetoric is anything more than that?

Had I a vote, I would have voted Obama.

But unless we critically scrutinise policies, ideas and statements of the politicians we like the most, I don’t think we can hold accountable those we don’t.