Proposed rule changes would tangle the Web – baltimoresun.com
Congress wants to change the Internet.This is news to most people because the major news media have not actively pursued the story. Yet both the House and Senate commerce committees are promoting new rules governing the manner by which most Americans receive the Web. Congressional passage of new rules is widely anticipated, as is President Bush’s signature. Once this happens, the Internet will change before your eyes.
The proposed House legislation, the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act (COPE), offers no protections for “network neutrality.”
Currently, your Internet provider does not voluntarily censor the Web as it enters your home. This levels the playing field between the tiniest blog and the most popular Web site.
Yet the big telecom companies want to alter this dynamic. AT&T and Verizon have publicly discussed their plans to divide the information superhighway into separate fast and slow lanes. Web sites and services willing to pay a toll will be channeled through the fast lane, while all others will be bottled up in the slower lanes. COPE, and similar telecom legislation offered in the Senate, does nothing to protect the consumer from this transformation of the Internet.
If this passes, most if not all blogs and small Christian websites will be shunted off onto the service road of the “information superhighway.” The big sites will be fast and convenient, and will get bigger. The small sites will be slow, and will lose traffic. The passage of this bill is likely causing the MSM to salivate – it eliminates the biggest threat to their control of the public knowledge base.
Both the left and right sides of the blogosphere are up in arms about this. I never thought I’d agree with Huffington Post commenters on anything, but the responses over there in reply to a pro-two-tiered internet post by Mike McCurry were devastating. And rightfully so. I pay a premium to have the fastest connection Cox Communications can provide – I don’t want the industry deciding which sites will load quickly. If a website uses a lot of bandwidth, the website pays for it, even if it’s not their fault. The host doesn’t lose anything. If a company wants a dedicated network to ensure a certain level of connection, let them build it. But don’t force a two-tiered system on everyone.
Read more about this at Save The Internet and contact your Congresscritters using their convenient form to email and compose letters to print and mail.
What a load of BS that is!
Is it BS because you agree with me that they’re wrong for doing it, or BS because you disagree with me that this is a problem?
If I’m misreading this or making too much of it, let me know; I’m teachable. But as I read it now, it’s just another way to control net content by limiting access speed. The idea of implementing the Fairness Doctrine fell flat, as it should, so this is next.
It’s BS because I agree with you!
It is a lame attempt at control of the net by the companies that have the money to control it. I am somewhat curious as to what the speed differences would actually be.
Makes me somewhat hopefull for Big Brother Google and their purchasing of dark fibre. A free Google internet sounds better than a free controlled internet. Maybe I am just dreaming though.
Oh, okay – just checking. Hard to tell “tone” from text ya know! As far as I’ve been able to tell, nobody has discussed the speed difference, but anything over 5 seconds difference and you start losing viewers unless they are REALLY committed to getting to your particular site. I’m not aware of the Google thing at all, I’ll have to look into it, sounds interesting. What is also interesting is that in other countries, they are WAY ahead of us bandwidth-wise. In Japan you can watch DVD quality streaming video with no problem, for example. There are TV series which are only on the internet. I’d love to see that here – TV which did not get vetted by LA and Hollywood liberals. It would be interesting to see what came of it.
Definitely! There is so much fiber optic cable laid around this country there doesn’t seem (to me) to be any good reason fot not haveing huge bandwidth.
As far as google goes, from what I have seen there isn’t too much information to be had… The just is that google is buying huge amounts of dark fiber (fiber optic cable that has been laid but not connected to anything) but not saying why. There has been some speculation that they might be creating a new backbone. I guess only time will tell.