Net Neutrality Bill may be Removed!

[iNod]

Hello,

http://www.savetheinternet.com/ claims that the Net Neutrality bill might be removed. Which would allow ISP's to block you from accessing sites like MySpace, Google, etc.

For example.. lets say Yahoo says we will pay you $10 thousand to block Google. That means you can no longer visit Google on that ISP!

I believe this is a very serious problem and that we should not stand for it. As myself love Google, and the freedom to do what ever I want. I don't want some ISP telling me what or what not I cannot visit.

- Steve

 

[GeneCosta]

Ouch. That would definately be a problem. Are there other links out there that forcast this problem?

 

[B33R]

There's been a lot of vocal opposition to this, maybe the politicians didn't realise there would be so many people against it.

You know politicians... totally out of touch with life today.

Hopefully they will change their minds and the internet will stay free, or as free as it can be, from unnecessary interference.

 

[billinchina]

I commented on this issue in a Radio NamePros podcast a while back. If you think about it, you can't just broadcast your own TV channel over everyone's TV Set. People get a limited number of channels with their cable subscription.

With Radio, available channels to listen to work the same way.

With the Internet, anyone can transmit just about anything to people over telecom pipes. It's no wonder that cable companies would like to cash in on the content like they do with other forms of media. I heard a recent radio commercial about cable companies blasting "Net Neutrality" as "Passing the buck onto the consumer". My issue with this, is that if they did start charging the content providers as well as the consumer, they wouldn't have proper motivation to lower the prices on consumer's cable bills to compensate. I think they would probably maximize revenue by charging customers the price that maximized profits and then charge content providers the price that maximized profits.

I also expect that no content provider would get blocked. We've had freedom on the net for so long now, that it would be hard to take it away. Infact, if they did block content, they would lose customers in a heart beat to another ISP which didn't block content.

So, I think they would basically just offer premium services to large companies like Google, Yahoo, MySpace, and YouTube. They would probably pay for the premium (faster download) services to increase customer satisfaction. It could perhaps benefit consumers more by providing motivation for the cable companies to offer premium services which don't currently exist (or hurt them if the current system is neglected and attention is only spent on the premium services).

I think it would cut into larger corporations profits but consumers probably wouldn't be hurt that bad (unless they owned stock in the larger corps).

I've heard rumors that Google is buying dark fiber... I wonder if this is a bargaining chip for them. They could use their own infrastructure to ship data packets around the world, thus hedging them from the impacts of costlier high speed data.

I tend to hope that things stay the same because that is what I've known. However, that may not be the best thing for us all. Sometimes change is a good thing. I'm not sure if I want service providers to keep more money, or for infrastructure companies to get some more because I haven't heard enough analysis on the matter.

 

[NeeJam]

wow this could coume into a big problem but a great one for the isp becuase they can bid each other off i.e yahho - $100k and the google $150k etc and it will go on and on...

 

[spacetrain]

It wont go on and on, google has more cash than yahoo :D

 

[labrocca]

I also expect that no content provider would get blocked. We've had freedom on the net for so long now, that it would be hard to take it away. Infact, if they did block content, they would lose customers in a heart beat to another ISP which didn't block content.

A truer statement has never been made. I think the Bill is basically worthless and that's why it might get dropped or basically no one will bother to renew it.

 

[Ringr]

I don't think it will be removed, too hard to do - too many people to affect. For the heck of it though I did contact my two senators and local district rep about it.

 

[Shorty]

I think if any of the major corporations oppose this thing, one of them will almost definitely be Google. Preventing access to certain information directly goes against their goal to make the world's information globally accessible and useful.

I dont see any point in doing this anyway, what do they hope to gain by giving ISPs this power back?

 

[dan_Vt]

I think if any of the major corporations oppose this thing, one of them will almost definitely be Google. Preventing access to certain information directly goes against their goal to make the world's information globally accessible and useful.

I want to agree with that, in principle it seems against Google's mission. But will it happen in reality? Dunno. They may want to use it as an opportunity to tighten their grip.

 

[netzilla]

That is pretty crappy...what happen to free speech?