OSDev.org

The internet is at risk of being singly put into the hands of the big cable and telephone (telecom) corporations, such as AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, etc. They wish to create an internet in which they can charge for "premium" information and have the final word in what is "valuable", via "gateway fees" and "internet tolls". Any site that can't / won't pay their fees and/or is designated as "not valuable", will be at serious risk of being shut down and/or having resources taken away and given to those that do pay and/or those that the corporations do find "valuable". They could effectively privatize and control the internet.

Please check out the following FAQ from SaveTheInternet.com:

You can find another FAQ here: http://www.itsournet.org/How_This_Affects.php

The following will allow you to find where your Senators stand on this issue:
http://www.savetheinternet.com/=senatemap
http://www.savetheinternet.com/=senatetally

Find your Senators' contact information here:
http://www.savetheinternet.com/callcongress.php

Network Neutrality Info:
CBS News: Understanding Network Neutrality
Wikipedia: Network Neutrality

Activist Sites / Coalitions:
http://www.itsournet.org/
http://www.neutralitynow.com/
http://www.savetheinternet.com/

I think this is extremely unlikely to happen, the Internet is not just used by the USA, it is an international thing. People worldwide would complain about US corporations controlling it.

As above, the US isn't the only country in the world. The most they could achieve would be to be cut themselves off from the rest of the world, so we still have everything free and they have to pay for it. Admitedly the rest of us would lose a substantial portion of the useful web (ie, google), but I'm sure many companies like google would relocate servers outside the US. Add in the fact that there was no provision in the infrastructure to actually allow this sort of scheme, and they might realise that it'd cost them far more than their expected revenue to enable this.

I, like any half-intelligent net user, am of course against this. I'm even more against america assuming the entire internet is based there, but I guess that's another matter entirely.


Executive summary of this post:
Their plans suck. You can't stop the signal

I don't understand how this would work. If a telecom decided to block a certain site, or purposely make connections to it slower people would just start using proxies to connections that don't have these restrictions on them.

To put it simply, the way the internet is set up it would be very difficult to do any harm unless everyone was involved in limiting access.

reason wrote: I don't understand how this would work. If a telecom decided to block a certain site, or purposely make connections to it slower people would just start using proxies to connections that don't have these restrictions on them.

The problem is that the telecoms wouldn't make access to a single site slow, they'd make all sites slow. The sites that pay get bandwidth first. Think of it as QoS with an artificial limiting of the free bandwidth to encourage big companies to pay. It's really aimed at things like VOIP and other low latency apps. There have already been instances of companies trying to charge an extra $15 to provide QoS if you use VOIP with someone other then them. Games like World of Warcraft would also be affected. For now most websites would still work. I say for now because the current AJAX trend requires low latency too.

A couple of years ago I'd also have said "the US alone can't do this".

After my experience with the software patent issue in the EU I am now convinced that for every really stupid thing the US does in the business sector, there'll be a strong lobby in the EU to do the same thing, only a bit more stupid.

The good thing being that with software patents the EU ended up saying "screw you, that makes no sense". Or did they change at the last minute?

Anyone catch that moronic senator's comments about why network neutrality is bad? The one about the internet being a bunch of tubes?

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a big truck.
It's a series of tubes.
And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material...
Ten movies streaming across that, internet, and what happens to your own personal internet? I just the other day got, an internet [sic] was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Senator Ted Stevens (Alaska)

Somebody should explain to this idiot that it only takes approximately 100ms for a packet to move around inside the same country and that email is slower because of overloaded/crappy SMTP servers [It'd be particularly ironic if the email was being withheld and deliberately delayed by a server along the way because of the lack of network neutrality].

The John Stewart commentary with the actual senator's video is even better; both hilarious and scary at the same time http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DClkE64nFDY

Kemp wrote: The good thing being that with software patents the EU ended up saying "screw you, that makes no sense". Or did they change at the last minute?

No, they canceled the patent initiative allright. However, that's most likely not the last word spoken on the issue, so some vigilance is in order.

Off-Topic: Link to a blog explaining why it took so long

On-Topic:Unfortunately, I see this is becoming a trend. Just think of DRM or EU software patenting. This is just ridiculous. I don't think they will succeed...

Hes speach is already a classic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA6EXypKJ7A

;D

Link the Milgram experiment with government-level people.

That's a big problem globally.