Net Neutrality--A Good Thing

Big business with its handmaiden in power, is grabbing for yet more of the pie. Users like myself have pretty much taken the content neutral Internet for granted once we got up to speed on blocking porn sites and spam. I bet a lot of you on line made your fingers stiff downloading and uploading sexy pics with the early file transfer programs. It was a learning experience.
Now the telecoms want to change all that. They want to start charging content providers with what amount to toll fees for using their "pipes"--optical fiber, digital cable and telephone lines. A decision in 2005 by the FCC abolished the long standing rule against discrimination based on content. If legislation passes, content providers who cannot afford or will not pay new fees will see their sites slow down or perhaps not load at all. Their applications and devices may not work as well. In essence a two tier Internet will be created. The haves, like BigRiver.com, will willingly pay telecoms more so their online business gets preferential treatment. While the have nots, like the local bookstore, will be stuck in the slow lane and driven into oblivion. These new priority access fees would be on top of the current Internet access fees and bandwidth charges users alreadyy pay.
Thanks to consumer friendly senators like Ron Wyden (D) of Oregon who blocked the telecom's legislation, the demise of net neutrality has not yet happened. But knowing the big bucks to be made on priority access, the telecoms are slopping the trough in Washington. For every dollar spent by the grassroots to defend net neutrality they have spent $200 to kill it. AT&T's CEO has made their intent to establish "pay to play" clear in the Wall Street Journal. A Verizon executive called content neutrality a "free lunch". But what the executives ignore is that unrestricted net access has spawned an unprecedented amount of economic innovation, social interaction, and democratic participation. The Internet owes its existence to a public sector effort--ARPAnet--to increase the free flow of ideas between researchers. Its not right to allow profit companies to make even more money by becoming gate keepers to a virtual world created by the public for the public.