Save the Internet...

[Eric McTavish]

Well it's one step closer to passing....
what next?

From Isen.com/blog
"Last night the U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of an Internet where it would be legal for a monopolistic gatekeeper to stand between us and our medical information, us and our financial transactions, us and our travel plans, us and the information we try to find, us and the news we choose to read and watch, us and our leisure time activities, us and our intimate correspondence with our friends, us and our creativity, us and our political expression.

The vote was 321 to 101. Majorities from both parties voted for a bill that essentially gives the Bells everything they want.

Now eyes turn towards the Senate, where another telecom bill, with even weaker protections against monopolistic behavior, grinds towards a vote, perhaps in July. If that passes, the real telecom law will be shaped by a secret conference committee in lame duck session. (Think things are ugly now?)"


It seems that the Telecoms and their lobbbyists have been pouring millions into a fake grass-roots groups and are staging a media campaign that paints net-neutrality as some pro-internet-goverment-regulation concept. They keep insisting that the interent could be fixed to make bandwidth more accessible and faster but that evil coporations like Google and Microsoft want YOU to pay for that, instead of paying for it themsleves.

There's a lot of mis-information out there so stay informed and stay active.

Visit SAVETHEINTERNET.COM (http://www.SAVETHEINTERNET.com) and get involved.

[Buxom Wench]

It was only a matter of time....... :irked:

[Rosina Cernak]

do they have any clue what this is going to do???? why do they think they need to butt into our lives in everyway that they can... whats next big bother cams in out houses to make sure that we are doing what we are suppose to be doing.... oh wait they will say that is for our safety and that if someone breaks into our homes then we will be able to know who did it and it will help solve lots of cases... yes i can just hear it now.

[MaidenFaeSnow]

What gets me is that while the big company's would be regulating us, they would be free (as well as their families I'm sure) to surf the net however they choose.

[Leyla]

I think I heard something like this going on in China, where the people aren't able to get any results from searching words like "democracy" and such in Google and Yahoo search engines.

I disagree with them censoring the internet, on the other hand, a company should be able to choose what it allows access to or in our capitalistic society be able to sell a better service to the person who can pay more (i.e. google loading faster than yahoo because google will pay for it). For instance there was an issue where a lady wanted to sue a photo-copy company for refusing to make copies of some pro-gay quasi-pornographic material stating that he was discriminating against her based on sexual orientation. The company didn't have to pay her. I'd be just as irritated with the government telling me what service I had to offer. It's the flip side of the same coin. (sorry, but the website I got the above bit from is being wonky now for some reason and I can't post the link for that story)

On the other hand this will most likely just result in another ISP coming along selling their service as "Low-cost Unrestricted Internet Browsing."
If customers start to notice that with one ISP they get better service they will switch ISP servers. The government isn't trying to say "We declare GOOGLE to be the national search engine, any ISP continuing to offer Yahoo, will have to cause Yahoo to load at a highly reduced rate."

Yes, right now I'm at the mercy of Comcast if I want to go with cable. I HATE comcast, their customer service has sucked big time for us in the past. Capitalism? I choose a better DSL server. Eventually another company will recognize the need and cable internet will be offered through another provider.

I don't think this is going to turn into quite the extreme restriction China has right now. When it does, then we'll start talking more about big brother.