Still Confused About Net Neutrality?

- November 11, 2006

Bill Moyers, Moyers on America, has developed an extremely informative piece on the current risk to open access on the Internet call The Net @ Risk. Moyers and his team dig into big media, telco, cable, and government, and shine a spotlight on how we risk losing open Internet access for everyone.

Let us not forget how in as little as two years from rule changes by the FCC, big media bought all the little radio stations, and now we have little to no local programming. That could just as easily happen to the Internet.

Take a company like Google. Eight years ago, Google was two guys in graduate school -- the Internet has allowed founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin start their own company and compete against incumbents Alta Vista, Yahoo! and Microsoft.

With net neutrality, telco and cable companies could make it more expensive to get Internet telephone companies like Vonage and Skype, then it would be to buy it from them -- they would do this by forcing Vonage and Skype to pay them high access fees.

If this scares you in the least or you would like more reliable and faster Internet access, it is time you learn more about this issue. It is time to make sure your local government officials know your views. After viewing Bill Moyers story, visit Free Press: Net Freedom Now, and Save the Internet to learn what else you can do.

Comments

Anonymous said…

In your links at the end, you mention Hands off the Internet as another place to get info on net neutrality. That's not right. Hands off the internet is that fake grass roots "coalition" paid for by the telcoms and against net neutrality. To put it another way, Hands off the internet is the Joker and Save the Internet is Batman. Hands off the internet is using a purposely confusing name to get people to think the issue is about Google and eBay trying to take over the internet, when the real issue is simply the discrimination of digital information that AT&T and Verizon wish so they can charge content providers more and offer preferred packages of certain sites that pay them extortion fees to their broadband customers. Hands off the internet is a big lobbyist only trying to get the public to buy into the telecommunication companies' lies that they need to charge more to pay for high speed networks. In reality, the telcoms saw the previous Republican Congress and the current state of the FCC (having recently allowed smaller tv stations to get bought out and AT&T to reorganize it's monopoly) as the perfect time for them to try to push their packet prioritizing that can help them make more money for essentially doing nothing. The fact that this becomes an issue is only because they've pounced on a chance, as they saw it, to make more money, even if it anti-democratic and inherently anti-consumer in nature. That's why net neutrality needs to be defended--and sometimes this happens in free economies--protection for the consumers must be taken into account.

Mon Nov 20, 11:17:00 AM PST