Net Neutrality?

[WVUFAN]

Has anyone seen this?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/07/AR2006060702108.html

This sounds seriously messed up. Has anyone else heard about this?

[SackAttack]

Yup, but what it's boiled down to from everything I've heard has been "let the market decide" on one side and "The government wants to steal our air" from the other.

I've yet to see anything emerge that hasn't been rhetoric to one degree or another, so I'm not sure I really understand it.

[WVUFAN]

What it looks to me is corporations' attempt to control what we see, based solely on who can pay them the most money to allow their customers' access.

So, if Barnes and Nobel pays more to Verizon than Amazon.com, Verizon customers will suddenly have limited or no access to Amazon to buy things. Ditto to Google, MS, Yahoo, and any number of websites.

When Moveon.org and the Christian Coalition both agree on a subject, you gotta know it has merit.

[Groundhog]

From my quick glance at the article, this only affects US people, so thank christ... :)

Of course, if it ever took off I'm sure other countries would follow suit. It's a horrible, horrible idea...

[Deattribution]

It's a scary thing just for the fact that once you've adjusted to having internet, broadband especially - restricting what you can do isn't going to stop you from using the net just because it becomes so commonplace.

[Axxon]

What I think is cool is that the ISP I work for is owned by the Washington Post so it looks like we're backing the little guys in this. At least, I hope we are. :)

[Glengoyne]

What it looks to me is corporations' attempt to control what we see, based solely on who can pay them the most money to allow their customers' access.

So, if Barnes and Nobel pays more to Verizon than Amazon.com, Verizon customers will suddenly have limited or no access to Amazon to buy things. Ditto to Google, MS, Yahoo, and any number of websites.

When Moveon.org and the Christian Coalition both agree on a subject, you gotta know it has merit.

I think it would only apply to the ability to view very high bandwidth video from Amazon or B&N. Basic or what we typically consider high bandwidth would still be available to us from both sites. The real difference is they want the vendor to pay to have their packets get priority over all of our typical non-time critical packets.

I'm not for this, I'm just correcting what I understand to be a misinterpretation. I think the real problem this will have is that small time players starting out in web video ventures will not be able to compete with the ABCs of the world.