Net Neutrality
May 12, 2006 12:12 PM EDT
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There is an issue currently making its way through both houses of congress right now that could affect us all greatly. Since the FCC dropped many of its regulations late last year it has been legal for common carriers to grant or deny customers services based on any criteria they choose. Prior to that point they were required to treat all legal customers the same. In other words they could charge what they wanted but they could not deny service to anyone that could pay the price they charged. There are no longer any such restrictions and the carriers are lobbying hard to stop any bill that would reinstate those controls with the force of law (the Net Neutrality approach) and instead get a bill through that would enshrine their (the carriers) control over who gets to use their infrastructure. Their arguments for this position are nonsense.
What they want is the economic control it would give them. Imagine the power and economic advantage of not only being able to charge what you want for a service (which they already can do) but also being able control who gets to use it at all at any price! A blogger says something bad about AT&T and suddenly his site just doesn't have any bandwidth available because his competitor needed it. A company doesn't sell Verizon equipment it needs at the price they wanted and suddenl;y that company's web services are so slow as to be useless.
It is extremely important that the carriers do not win this one. Please make your Senators and Representatives aware of your stand on this issue or the same people who blithely handed your phone data over to the government without any legal authority will be deciding who gets to see and say things on the internet.0
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