Posted on 10/27/2009 9:25:43 AM PDT by steve-b
Edited on 10/27/2009 9:33:15 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
Net neutrality rules simple say that an ISP must provide you, the customer, with a "highway" to the Internet and they cannot, by law, determine what sites you access, how much you download, or what you read.
If net neutrality is defeated, your ISP could decide that they will let you visit certain sites, block certain sites, start charging by the gigabyte (Time Warner started testing a $7.50 "fee" for every gigabyte over a certain usage level of the Internet back in 2008. That means if you download more than you're "allowed" or visit more sites that they tell you your plan covers, you could have a $300 bill, just like with a cell phone. You can read about it here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/29/AR2008012903205.html)
Seriously, I want you to listen to me - as a free citizen, a Christian, a Republican, and a conservative, I am begging you to listen to me: If you believe the government and corporations should have ZERO right to tell you how to use the Internet, have ZERO right to determine which sites you can load, and ZERO right to charge you for access to certain sites, you MUST (I repeat *MUST*) do everything in your power to SUPPORT net neutrality. I'll bet a lot of money that anyone who tells you otherwise either works for a major network or media company or owns a lot of its stock and will profit from your ignorance.
Please - seriously, PLEASE - read the law for yourself. If net neutrality doesn't pass, our Republic is screwed because we could find ourselves in a situation where a liberal CEO decides he doesn't want Free Republic or a Christian network site to load fast or even be accessible and there is nothing we could do to stop it.
You lost the argument with your second sentence. I’m a big boy and have been around the world of telecom and politics for a VERY long time
The basic problem is this - I don’t trust ANY legislation coming out of this administration, regardless of how altruistic it may seem. IMO, ANY legislation they produce that impacts the Internet is a foot-in-the-door to taxing Internet service and/or effecting control over what we are eventually allowed to do on the Internet.
If you want to put your eggs in Obama’s basket, be my guest - but don’t insist that we all join you in arranging the deck chairs aboard thr Titanic. I would also ask you this - if the ISPs can limit my access or block websites, why haven’t they done it before?? The answer is that we won’t pay them if they do. So, why is this suddenly an issue that requires Congressional action?
Seriously, I am begging you to *read the law for YOURSELF*. Do not trust anyone or anything but your own judgment. We've been trying to get this passed to protect people from government intervention and private companies determining what individual citizens could access for a long time. It's the Internet equivalent of preventing the power company from determining which electronics you can buy. When you buy power - YOU - the citizen have the right to determine how to use it. The Internet should be the same way.
If you do even 5 minutes of research, you will see that this legislation is NOT from this administration. Research it for your sake and the sake of the country. We've been pushing for it for years and it needs to pass for the sake of protecting free speech and equal access to information. Those of us who believe power should be in the hands of individual citizens have been working toward this for a long time and to punish our work without researching the history and law would be like (to use an extreme example) banning the Bible because Hitler supported Christianity.
I cannot stress this enough: You don't even have to believe me - I want *you* to research the history of the law for yourself, see that it has been in the works **long** before any of us even knew who Obama was, and that he has nothing to do with it.
In response to your question: I posted one story earlier showing that ISPs have already been doing tests on the East Coast (I lived in Princeton, New Jersey at the time of one of the tests and was unfortunate enough to have seen it first hand when the ISP provider out of Philadelphia, which serviced my residential area, tried a controlled rollout). They are using a technique called "bandwidth throttling" or "tiered pricing" that determines how much information, or what type of information, you can download. They were sued because they were secretly limiting the speed of some Internet movie providers to make their own on-demand cable more attractive.
Comcast actually DID roll out this system to its customers and the FCC, under George W. Bush, punished them. Net neutrality would make companies unable to even contemplate making moves like this: Cox Network Management Discussion.
Another example is determining how much it costs to access information. Here are some real examples of ISPs already applying this or testing it over the past years.
AT&T charges equivalent of $480 per gigabyte over monthly cap for mobile Internet access.
To Curb Internet traffic, ISP Providers Consider Charging by the Gigabyte
ISP Bandwidth Policies Under Attack
P.S.: Again, I am begging you to research the history of the net neutrality movement yourself and trust no one else's statements, even mine. You will see that many of us have been trying to get it passed for a long time and this is not something new but now that some of the ISPs have completed tests and begun using tiered pricing, we are growing more urgent in supporting it. The Internet must remain accessible in unrestricted form to anyone who pays to get on it. No company or government should have the right to determine how 'good' or 'useful' traffic is.
My collection of businesses began with Internet companies. The current Internet system (which is what net neutrality would protect) allowed me to launch a startup, risk my own money, and build a company that employs people and sells to customers throughout the United States and world. If net neutrality fails and the ISPs are able to continue with the direction they are going in terms of tiered pricing or network throttling, I could have faced huge competitive disadvantages because companies such as Amazon.com could have paid the ISPs a kickback to get faster loading times. What would stop GE's MSNBC from paying Cable Vision a few hundred million dollars to load all of the network's sites faster or slow down the sites of competitors?
The Internet is just as much a utility as electric power or water service. No company has a right to determine how much power or water you use as long as you pay your bill, nor do they have the right to tell you how to use the product. You should have the same right as a free citizen to Internet access. If you pay the ISP, they should have ZERO control in telling you what you load or read.
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