say bye to net neutrality, prepare to pay At&T,Comcast for tiered services

[future dj]

http://www.tpmcafe.com/node/29086

congress is going to hand the operation of the Internet over to AT&T, Verizon and Comcast. Democrats are helping. It's a shame.

Don’t look now, but the House Commerce Committee next Wednesday is likely to vote to turn control of the Internet over to AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner and what’s left of the telecommunications industry. It will be one of those stories the MSM writes about as “little noticed” because they haven’t covered it.

On the surface, it may seem a stretch to think that those companies could control the great, wide, infinite Internet. After all, the incredible diversity of the Net allowed everything -- Web sites and services of all kinds to exist in perfect harmony. What’s more, they were all delivered to your screen without any interference by the companies that carried the bits to and fro. Until recently, they had to. It was the law. The telephone companies, which carried all of the Web traffic until relatively recently, had to treat all of their calls alike without giving any Web site or service favored treatment over another.

The result was today’s Internet, which developed as a result of billions of dollars of investments, from the largest Internet company that spent millions on software and networking, to the one person with a blog who spent a few hundred dollars on a laptop. The Internet grew into a universal public resource because the telephone and cable companies simply transported the bits.

Last fall, however, the Federal Communications Commission, backed by the U.S. Supreme Court, decided that the high-speed Internet services offered by the cable and telephone companies didn’t fall under that law, the Communications Act. Out the window went the law that treated everyone equally. Now, with broadband, we are in a new game without rules.

Telephone and cable companies own 98% of the high-speed broadband networks the public uses to go online for reading news, shopping, listening to music, posting videos or any of the thousands of other uses developed for the Internet. But that isn’t enough. They want to control what you read, see or hear online. The companies say that they will create premium lanes on the Internet for higher fees, and give preferential access to their own services and those who can afford extra charges. The rest of us will be left to use an inferior version of the Internet.

Admittedly, it hasn’t become a problem yet. But to think it won’t become one is to ignore 100 years of history of anti-competitive behavior by the phone companies. And it was a mere six weeks or so from the time the FCC issued its ill-fated decision to the time when Ed Whitacre, the CEO of (then-SBC) now AT&T issued his famous manifesto attacking Google and other Web sites for “using my pipes (for) free.” They don’t, by the way.

Here’s the inside baseball: A couple of weeks ago, a courageous band of legislators tried to stop the madness in Subcommittee. Ed Markey, Rick Boucher, Anna Eshoo and Jay Inslee proposed some good language to protect the Internet. For their troubles, they just got four more votes, other than theirs. Just three Democrats, other than the sponsors, voted for it. Only one Republican voted for it. When we talk about special interest giveaways, this one will be at the top of the list. And we won’t have only Republicans to blame.

 

[Rovalier]

Oh **** no

Whose brilliant idea was this? I want that guy's head on a pike. This is one of the most regressive and back-ass-wards ideas I have ever heard, it is not even funny. The other big companies on the net had better DO SOMETHING ABOUT it, especially Google.

 

[Shiftkey]

I don't understand why big companies like Google aren't lobbying also...

 

[Bible_Belt]

This law was probably written by lobbyists for the telecom companies. The bill sponsors probably have not even read it. Money runs the world, not government.

 

[future dj]

been reading more about it and it's actually not as bad as it sounds...the telecom companies are going to try to screw us over but we will see how it turns out

http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/News/03272006_BartonRushVideoBill.pdf

 

[bbestar]

Don't you know it costs companies millions of dollars in operation and servicing for these broadband lines, and to say that a single consumer family unit can take up as much bandwidth as a national corporation.

If I understand it correctly.
Visiting corporate sites such as T-Mobile.com or IBM.com will be much faster and download bandwidth will be seamless.

But unknown websites like porn-free.org and other porn related sites will have lower bandwidth and will be slower

 

[Docs]

How the hell can the US control the global internet, when the inner workings is computers all over the globe connected to each other though servers. Yes, I know they could gain control of those servers, but AT&T isn't wide-spread in Europe, and it falls as a small part of a international company. Those companies may gain pieces of the puzzle within the world, but it would take some ingenious thought to actually withhold access to the un-controlled servers, let alone intranet lans as a gateway out, even a secondary internet run by the underground . There is obvisously enough hackers and coders out there (not crackers) that there is the brain power to counter-attack against a Internet takeover.

Please, tell me the weak points of my view, I want information.

I've always wondered though, where is the center internet pc?

 

[Desdinova]

There is obvisously enough hackers and coders out there (not crackers) that there is the brain power to counter-attack against a Internet takeover.

I fully agree. Just like the RIAA trying to control music downloading. Napster had their hands slapped and complied with the RIAA. However, many more P2P file sharing programs popped up as a result. Computer worms & viruses are another good example.

It's like trying to hammer a ball of mercury. The more you hammer it, the more it's going to spread.

 

[Docs]

Computer worms & viruses

We haven't had a good one in a while, they should get to work on that.

 

[Rovalier]

Found this: http://www.savetheinternet.com

 

[Visceral]

This is why the utilities (power, water, gas, etc.) used to be publicly owned; people used to have enough control (and intelligence) to know that if you gave control of essential services to capitalists, they'd use your need and your dependence on them to suck you dry.

The farcical myth that capitalism and the "free" market can do no wrong has got to stop. We can only hope that, at some point, the people will wake up and realize that the business world (and it's lackey Government) need to be kept on a short leash, preferably also a choke-chain, to keep them in their place doing our bidding.

Anyone who thinks that government is the enemy of business needs to have their head examined. Every time I read the paper - any paper - all I see is some mammoth corporation getting whatever it wants from the government (and my wallet) with just a snap of its fat fingers.