We’re About to Lose Net Neutrality — And the Internet as We Know It

[onehandle]

Net neutrality is a dead man walking. The execution date isn’t set, but it could be days, or months (at best). And since net neutrality is the principle forbidding huge telecommunications companies from treating users, websites, or apps differently — say, by letting some work better than others over their pipes — the dead man walking isn’t some abstract or far-removed principle just for wonks: It affects the internet as we all know it.

Once upon a time, companies like AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and others declared a war on the internet’s foundational principle: that its networks should be “neutral” and users don’t need anyone’s permission to invent, create, communicate, broadcast, or share online. The neutral and level playing field provided by permissionless innovation has empowered all of us with the freedom to express ourselves and innovate online without having to seek the permission of a remote telecom executive.

But today, that freedom won’t survive much longer if a federal court — the second most powerful court in the nation behind the Supreme Court, the DC Circuit — is set to strike down the nation’s net neutrality law, a rule adopted by the Federal Communications Commission in 2010. Some will claim the new solution “splits the baby” in a way that somehow doesn’t kill net neutrality and so we should be grateful. But make no mistake: Despite eight years of public and political activism by multitudes fighting for freedom on the internet, a court decision may soon take it away.

The CEO of AT&T told an interviewer back in 2005 that he wanted to introduce a new business model to the internet: charging companies like Google and Yahoo! to reliably reach internet users on the AT&T network. Keep in mind that users already pay to access the internet and that Google and Yahoo! already pay other telecom companies — often called backbone providers — to connect to these internet users.

http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/11/so-the-internets-about-to-lose-its-net-neutrality

[RC]

1. There are a lot of businesses that will be on the short end of the stick here.

How many small, local, read Mom & Pop businesses that have web sites that draw in business, or even have web sites that are the business, will be able to afford to "up grade" to what we now consider normal Internet speed, if Net Neutrality is done away with? That is a lot of businesses across the country. That is going to kill businesses and eliminate even more jobs.

[Catherine Vincent]

2. A few years from now...or sooner

We'll be saying that the internet isn't the way it used to be.

[Uncle Joe]

3. The bastards can't handle democracy, it scares the piss out of them.

Thanks for the thread, onehandle.

[snot]

4. K&R'd!