Blogs and their cooperative identity known as the “blogosphere” have become an extraordinary method for global information sharing. Moreover, no matter what topics they discuss or what political inclination they advocate they are threatened.
The threat involves the issue of “net neutrality”. Net neutrality is an idea that information networks ought to be as neutral as possible between competing content, applications and services and not discriminate as to who uses them.
Major cable and telecommunications companies lobbying Congress want to abolish net neutrality and set up the virtual equivalent of toll fees on the Internet. The idea would be to set up separate tiers of Internet access. If you want to access the superhighway, you would have to pay extra fees – a virtual toll for that access. Great if you can afford the high-speed but if you cannot then you are stuck with low band thus limiting poorer users access to multimedia content.
AT&T’s Ed Whitacre wants consumers and content providers to pay for use of his network. “”Now they might pass it on to their customers who are looking at a movie, for example. But that ought to be a cost of doing business for them. They shouldn’t get on [the network] and expect a free ride.” I think the content providers should be paying for the use of the network- obviously not the piece from the customer to the network,which has already been paid for by the customer in Internet access fees- but for accessng the so-called Internet cloud” Financial Times
BellSouth’s William Smith told reporters that he would like to turn the Internet into a “pay-for-performance marketplace” where his company could charge for the “right” to have certain services load faster than others. Washington Post
Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg says that Web applications need to “share the cost” of the broadband services already paid for by consumers. “We need to pay for the pipe.” Tech Web
Here is the problem for bloggers and other alternative and independent media producers who distribute media via the Internet: Those who cannot afford that privileged access will far outnumber those who can. This may discourage online postings of up and coming musicians, poets, writers, and it will strike a blow to the blogoshere’s diversity and variety. Limited upload speeds make it difficult for a young person in an impoverished area to post a picture to demonstrate a point.
Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, is introducing new legislation today that would stop Internet network operators from charging companies for faster delivery of their content or to consumers.
What do you think?
I hate them..(but i love youuuuuuu!)