Originally posted by: dchakrab
Originally posted by: TheSnowman
I belive we can have a free and open system without outright neutrality, someting along the lines of priorty mail. An internet where everyone has access to the standard sevice but where we can also pay a premium for lower latency sounds reasonable to me.
The problem:
This already exists.
Google wants more bandwidth? They pay for it. I want more bandwidth for my little blog? I'd pay for it, too. You, on the receiving end, want to see AT come up faster? You pay for that, too.
So even in a perfect world where everyone has broadband access, we're all paying more for higher speeds. Of course, to truly give
everyone this choice, the telcos would have had to make good on their repeated promises to roll out rural broadband networks...which they haven't done. Much of the US simply has no broadband availability, at any price. They can't pay more for faster speeds even if they want to...so they're paying more for modem access than we do for DSL.
This is different from the question of network neutrality. Network neutrality means that if I, the consumer, pay for faster access, I have a right to faster access to the entire internet...without the telco filtering things out in the middle. If SBC has the right to filter content, and I find out that SBC is financing Bobby Rush and influencing his legislation, then SBC can now ensure that no SBC DSL user ever sees that report on my blog. No need to make excuses to the press...now they can just turn off the websites they don't like.
Similarly, Comcast can force users to sign up for Comcast VOIP by blocking all competitors...meaning that if I have a Comcast connection, I'm stuck with their overpriced, lower quality service. Companies like Sunrocket could go out of business, simply because they're not telcos...and every telco will want to offer their own VOIP service, filtering Sunrocket out of their networks.
That's what we're risking if we lose network neutrality for the internet; giving a telco complete and absolute authority over the internet to do as they please. This means filtering your email, filtering what websites you see, filtering what services you use, and making tons of money in the process. And the next time they're caught selling your personal information to the NSA without a warrant, you'll never know...because they'll never let you see a website with that content on it. AOL already had a "glitch" where they blocked all emails (even ones you sent yourself) referring to the dearaol site, which was set up to protest AOL's plan to charge people to send email to AOL users. Someone has an email address and you want to contact them? Well now, if AOL, SBC / Yahoo, MSN (or whoever) doesn't like you, they can prevent it.
The result? Everyone loves the telcos...if you don't, you simply have no ability to communicate, collaborate, or provide services over the internet.
Dave.