[Dax]

Well, what's good for the Miscellaneous forum can be good for here...

Save the internet

Congress is pushing a law that would abandon the Internet's First Amendment -- a principle called Network Neutrality that prevents companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast from deciding which Web sites work best for you -- based on what site pays them the most. If the public doesn't speak up now, our elected officials will cave to a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign.

How does this threat to Internet freedom affect you?

Google users—Another search engine could pay dominant Internet providers like AT&T to guarantee the competing search engine opens faster than Google on your computer.

Innovators with the "next big idea"—Startups and entrepreneurs will be muscled out of the marketplace by big corporations that pay Internet providers for dominant placing on the Web. The little guy will be left in the "slow lane" with inferior Internet service, unable to compete.
Ipod listeners—A company like Comcast could slow access to iTunes, steering you to a higher-priced music service that it owned.

Political groups—Political organizing could be slowed by a handful of dominant Internet providers who ask advocacy groups to pay "protection money" for their websites and online features to work correctly.

Nonprofits—A charity's website could open at snail-speed, and online contributions could grind to a halt, if nonprofits can't pay dominant Internet providers for access to "the fast lane" of Internet service.
Online purchasers—Companies could pay Internet providers to guarantee their online sales process faster than competitors with lower prices—distorting your choice as a consumer.

Small businesses and tele-commuters—When Internet companies like AT&T favor their own services, you won't be able to choose more affordable providers for online video, teleconferencing, Internet phone calls, and software that connects your home computer to your office.

Parents and retirees—Your choices as a consumer could be controlled by your Internet provider, steering you to their preferred services for online banking, health care information, sending photos, planning vacations, etc.

Bloggers—Costs will skyrocket to post and share video and audio clips—silencing citizen journalists and putting more power in the hands of a few corporate-owned media outlets.

Blocking Innovation
The threat to an open internet isn't just speculation -- we've seen what happens when the Internet's gatekeepers get too much control. Corporate control of the Web would reduce your choices and stifle the spread of innovative and independent ideas that we've come to expect online. It would throw the digital revolution into reverse. Internet gatekeepers are already discriminating against Web sites and services they don't like:

In 2004, North Carolina ISP Madison River blocked their DSL customers from using any rival Web-based phone service.

In 2005, Canada's telephone giant Telus blocked customers from visiting a Web site sympathetic to the Telecommunications Workers Union during a contentious labor dispute.

Shaw, a major Canadian cable, internet, and telephone service intentionally downgrades the "quality and reliability" of competing Internet-phone services that their customers might choose -- driving customers to their own phone services not through better services, but by rigging the marketplace.

In April, Time Warner's AOL blocked all e-mails that mentioned www.dearaol.com -- an advocacy campaign opposing the company's pay-to-send e-mail scheme.

This is just the beginning. Cable and telco giants want to eliminate the Internet's open road in favor of a tollway that protects their status quo while stifling new ideas and innovation. If they get their way, they'll shut down the free flow of information and dictate how you use the Internet.

Petition and other information on what actions one might be able to take.

The Senate to the rescue?

[littlgriz]

[Creol]

The problem with all this being that it is just those companies that are footing the bill to actually pay for the internet to exist in the first place. Companies such as AT&T and Verizon are the ones who are supplying all of the interconnectivity that builds the internet as well as a huge number of the servers that make it function. To replace them, where are you susposing the financing comes from?

It's nice to wish for a neutral internet, but that is all it is. Gov't will not, and should not, be paying for it and that is the only other realistic option for funding.

The magor Telcom and Cable companies poured a fortune into developing the infrastructure that allows the net to fuction in both North America and Europe. They were the ones who took the monetary risk (which as it seems was a risk that payed off well) which created the 'Net in its current form (as opposed to the original from between educational institutes which was useless to nearly any current users).

Their work and capital made nearly every aspect of the web you list possible.

Sure, no problem, shift to a neutral internet. Remove the corporations from the infrastructure. The net will be a lot cheaper and quicker when the only thing you can connect to is the other computers on your LAN since where you run wires (or wireless) will be the limit. Of course you could just add to the nation debt (not like it isnt bad enough already, what is one more extravagant outlet) and have the taxpayers pay for running Fiber and trunks all across the 2 continents (Asia pretty much covers itself - not sure on the aussies).

[Dax]

Are you in favor of allowing monopolies to form?

For other companies to stifle competition in any way?

I don't think you are, but big picture needs to be looked at.

The internet has become another form of media that so far the "Big Six" (Time Warner, Disney, Bertelsmann, Viacom, and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation) has yet to be able to incorporate. But not for lack of trying.

Call me an FDR liberal but breaking up business trusts is the government's job. (Said government has failed miserably in recent decades.)

Small-time competitors need to be able to...compete, not stifled.

If a business no longer wants to foot the bill, it can leave the business to others who will. (And there will never be a lack of others who will see such voids as the opportunities they are.)
Not that such companies would ever leave off such. Even regulated it is far too profitable.

*winks* Christina kitty

[Creol]

[Dax]