Net Neutrality in the United States

If you haven't been following Congress' latest attempt to royally screw up the Internets, you might want to take a peek at this short video which explains what is likely to happen if things continue as they are.

For those who can stomach visiting a liberal blog, this post provides some more background, and some reasons why this one actually has a chance of passing unless something is done.

I don't see how anyone can see this as anything other than a sellout to corporate interests, who have not only engaged in anti-competitive behavior in the past, but have promised they will do so in the future. Whether it's outright blocking of sites, degrading traffic via quality of service measures, or charging higher prices for doing business with a competitor, it all ends up being another mechanism to screw the consumer, often when that consumer has no other legitimate way to get onto the Internet.

Anyone who believes there's a reason the First Amendment is..... the first amendment... should be very disturbed by this.

Is this going to affect all of the internets?

Quote:
Is this going to affect all of the internets?

Quite possibly, I am affraid, if one of the guys who look as if they have fallen out from "Space Merchants" happens to run an important node on the backbone. Were you refering to "Internet2"? Well, it might be safe for a short while...

ISPs argue that guys like Google are freeloaders. Well, last time I checked, I was paying for my bandwith used to access them (and Google doesn't get theirs from a charity). People are forgetting what "public infrastructure" means, prefering to parrot slogans about "free market". This is as if a toll-road operator had toll booths segregated by car brands: more the manufacturer pays, more booths for their cars; drivers still pay, regardless.

Letting the market decide which add-on services will survive without destroying the Internet is easy: take, for example, "triple play"* service (introduced in, say, France two years ago, this year comming to Croatia): you get a hefty DSL or cable bandwith, say 8Mb/s. Part of is, say 2Mb/s, is reserved for "normal", content-neutral Internet; the rest is used for whatever market wants (in this case, cable-like TV, pay-per-view TV and VoIP). Consumers can chose any combination of these, but, naturally, the bundle is cheapest.

Neutral Internet means freedom of information, and this is as dangerous as laser printers and photocopiers were in Soviet Union.

*) I had a Freudian slip here: I wrote "triple pay"