Save the Internet!

[asterroc]

Here's an email petition you can sign that'll go to your senator and representative. If you're at a loss for what to say, I said:

The internet is based upon the principle of Net Neutrality: the belief that all data should be treated equally and without preference. This is the same principle upon which our own Nation was established: all are created equal. In non-digital law, we have passed acts further bolstering this belief in the realms of race, class, gender, age, and disability status. It is a shame that the United States government is considering such a law that will take us a step backwards in the realm of the Internet and discriminate based upon the paying ability, and therefore class, of the individual.

Comments

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

For me (and most individual users of the internet), the bottleneck in data is the copper wires leading from some internet hub to my house. Although the data may get from rich companies' servers to the hub faster than from small businesses to the hub, they are all slowed down after that on their way to my computer, so that any difference is imperceptible.

This bill would allow the ISP to speed up the rich companies within those wires from the hub to my house, at the expense of the small companies.

<shrug> I don't feel super strongly against the bill, but I am somewhat, and your points are making me think about it more - both sides, as well as neutrality. Thanks. :) You said before you don't have strong feelings about it - which side do your weak feelings fall on?

[q10.livejournal.com]

as you've probably guessed by now, i'm inclined to think that businesses should be able to use this general price-stratification in these kinds of situations. but there are some respects in which the internet is different (because it's different in a lot of ways, and because in particular of the government's involvement in its establishment and operation), and, although i haven't seen the text, the bill is almost certainly manages to take this not-so-bad-seeming idea and do something obnoxious with it, because congress can never figure out how to deregulate anything without introducing a new regulation intended to give huge, evil, unfair, government-supported advantages to somebody.

[q10.livejournal.com]

well, i haven't read the bill (it looks like i'd be looking for some subtle changes in wording in an awful and huge regulatory statute, and i'm not up for that), but i have read som FAQs, and i have a more informed opinion:

i see a lot of appeal in the idea that network providers should be compelled by law to act as common carriers or public acommodations, who provide the same service without preference to anybody willing to pay the stated price. the prospect of providers excluding certain content based on what it says is pretty alarming, or creating artificial content monopolies in exchanged for bribes, is pretty alarming. i don't know whether a regulatory solution is what we'd want here, because i tend to be very nervous about regulatory solutions to anything, but the concern is real and the case for a regulatory solution is real.

however, so long as they don't ask what you're doing, but only what you're willing to pay for what level of service, i really don't see a problem with it, for the reasons i've noted elsewhere.

i strongly suspect that the competing proposals are a proposal to allow both of these activities on the part of network providers (might end up working out okay, but does sound like there could be very real trouble) and a proposal to forbid them both. it's a bundling that i don't find especially endearing, and i'm mad at both sides for their part in getting things packaged this way.