Neutrality

Even with heavy hitters Google, amazon and eBay opposing multi-levels, the House Republicans did their thing and supported the Big Bandwidth Boys. Another reason we'll need a Democratic Congress (but a few Democrats did vote with the Republicans on this one).

 

To those of us who remember the net in the good old days before it became a big commercial enterprise, the idea of a "two lane" system is anathema.
Note that the corporations who most vigorously oppose net neutrality (i.e., AT&T) are the same communications companies that cooperated with the NSA in the domestic surveillance operations.

 

In a capitalist society, all economic activity is motivated by profit, i.e. greed. Whatever makes the most money for the wealthiest (and therefore most politically powerful) people will be done. And since politics is merely the art of using power to get your way, what you and I want will be as irrelevant here as in any other aspect of politics. Whether Verizon and its co-monopolists, or Google and its anologs win out will be settled by political and economic power.

Consider radio: It was begun by amateurs: people who did it as a hobby. Both point-to-point radio communication, and broadcasting were done without thought of making money, and it was open to anyone who had the know-how to participate. Eventually the government stepped in to regulate it and assign frequencies, because, frankly, it was chaotic. Eventually broadcasters began to accept paid advertising, and pretty soon a broadcast licence was virtually a licence to print money, and was a valuable commodity. Amateur radio and the citizen's band still exist, but basically you pay to communicate over the air waves, and broadcasters are controlled by the greed motive in their quest for more and more advertising dollars.

The Internet is still relatively new. Like the early days of radio, there are still a lot of freebies: lots of services and information are still free. Domain names and bandwidth are cheap. Email is free after you've gained access to the web. But as the net matures all this will be replaced by mechanisms to squeeze profits out of it, and the providers of bandwidth are going to demand their share. And differential priorities will be part of that. Eventually we'll have to pay (probably not very much) for email and searches, as well as new services that will come along once profit is clearly established as the underlying purpose of the internet. Premium sites already charge for content, and eventually most content will cost.

It's the capitalist way. It's not good, but as long as we are a capitalist society, it's coming. And if any conservatives say they want a "neutral" net, they're just being hypocritical.

 

Well here's an opposing opinion.

USA Today Editorial - Don't let 'net neutrality' become a roadblock to progress

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE("USA Today")</div>

I don't know enough about the issue to have my own opinion yet.