Patrick’s Rants


TigerDirectTiger Direct

4/26/2006

Pay per view internet… unless you help stop it

Filed under: Geek News and Stuff, General, Politics — site admin @ 7:41 pm

I don’t normally push my politics on others (although I’m more than happy to discuss my views if asked), but the potential for this legislation to make the U.S. a technological third world is extremely high. If you thought outsourcing labor was a bad idea think what will happen when there are no internet sites to access in or from the U.S. because the content providers simply cannot afford to do business on a pay-per-view basis.

The internet was designed to be nuetral. Everyone gets best effort network availability. To change this the the way AT&T and others have suggested will effectively kill the internet making a toll road out of a freeway. Should Google have to pay Qwest (or whatever your baby bell happens to be) anytime someone does an online search? Only if you want to push the United States even further behind the rest of the world technologically speaking. Should the local newspaper be required to pay a toll when someone looks for a car to buy? Sure, if you want the paper to close up its web presence. What about the company that decides that telecommuting is in the best interest of its workers? That company is now being hampered by having to pay a toll to the local phone company.
The idea behind network neutrality is that no one group can control the internet or the content. Allowing companies to charge a toll (to do the job they are already paid *by you* to do) is ludicrous, will force locatilities that use the internet to provide service to their constituents to close up their web sites, and leave the U.S. as a rapidly fading spot in the rear view mirror of the rest of the world. Furthermore the sites that do survive the toll will end up looking more and more like the grotesque http://milliondollarhomepage.com

Sign this petition today. http://www.charleswsanders.org/petitions/pnum261.php

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