Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last month, you’ve at least heard about Net Neutrality. For those flattened folks have indeed spent a major portion of June and July under the weight of a large boulder, Net Neutrality is essentially the first amendment of the internet. It assures that all websites, regardless of who they are, or what content they provide, are accessible to you equally. In essence, it assures that you can access google just as easily as you can access yahoo. The reason Net Neutrality is such big news lately is because the House and Senate are currently mulling eliminating Net Neutrality altogether and letting big communications corporations the freedom to choose how commercial internet access is structured.
The Big Telcos want uncle sam to keep his hands off and let them self-police. Really what the big telcos want is government to stop monitoring how they do business as it pertains to internet bandwidth. Make no mistake, doing away with Net Neutrality IS NOT pro-consumer. Ultimately, the consumer pays the price because they will no longer have the option to choose which sites they visit. Instead, the telcos will offer better access and faster throughput to companies who are willing to pay more for better access and faster throughput. The companies and organizations who can’t or won’t pay for premium "pipes" will essentially be impossible to access. Bloggers are clearly the ones who stand to lose the most if Net Neutrality is defeated in congress.
This attack on the internet is best described this way: Imagine Big Oil setting gas prices based on how fast you wanted to drive, or where you wanted to go, or who you wanted to have in your car at any given time… or your local power company charging you differently for every appliance based on the manufacturer…
It isn’t hard to see what will happen if the telcos get their way… hopefully you make even a small effort to contact your congressman or woman and ask them to protect you from the greed of big corporations like verizon, adelphi, and at&t.
Imagine an internet where you can’t access your favorite website simply because the telco decides that it is in their best interest to prevent you from viewing the content. This means that telcos could prevent people from visiting a porn site… but it also means the telcos could also prevent a christian group from promoting their ideology if it opposes the business interests of the telco. No organization or commercial enterprise would be free from the control of the telcos…
It’s ridiculous that this is even being considered, and it really ticks me off.
ewww yea, this is not good.