Democrat Charles Gonzales(Texas), once again proving he is in the back pocket of his second largest contributors, SBC/ AT&T, has proposed what is in essence a "poison pill" defense to the current crop of Net Neutrality proposals. His proposal is to extend the rules of net neutrality to the content publishers themselves with the idea that the publishers pushing so hard for the bill won't like to be regulated themselves.
Charlie do you understand what the internet is and how it works or are you just parroting the wishes of your large contributors? Is it odd that San Antonio, your electorate, is also SBC's headquarters?
San Antonio you are being ill-served by this shill for the communications industry. He is acting in SBC's best interest, not yours. As SBC's hand puppet, there is only room for 1 hand up there.
Internet sites, like the ones we operate, operate in a world of complete consumer choice, and the marketplace decides which web sites are successful and which are not. If someone doesn't like the website they are using they have a plethora of options to choose from. Not so with your broadband provider. In many instances a consumer is limited to 2-3 options, if not only 1 or in some cases none.
I myself only have broadband access because there is now wireless available in my area. Verizon my only local phone provider, my only copper option, does not offer DSL in my area and has no plans to do so. The same can be said about Cox, the local cable provider. I have almost no choice for my communications.
This is largely the result of legacy taxpayer mandated monopolies where cable and telephone companies were granted exclusive rights to specific service areas. Now these same monopolies, companies that were once split up and are now reforming like the T2 terminator, want to charge a surcharge on packets based on what those packets carry. They already charge based on how many you use. I am sure that, just like Walmart with all its huge buying power, companies such as Yahoo and Google will get substantially lower rates than the smaller companies such as us, raising the bar to entry for ANYONE that wants to have even a web page, much less provide a product or service over the internet. There would be many less new web businesses, and many existing web businesses would close, much like when a Supercenter opens in a small town. Imagine getting a bill for your internet use every month based on packet content usage in addition to the number of packets used, instead of based on the just the number you used.
Here is another example. Google and YouTube run sucessful streaming video services. SBC has just announce that they too are entering the streaming video marketplace. SBC owns the wires, Google and YouTube don't. Under the currently approved telecommunicatrions plan, SBC could charge Google and YouTube an extra charge to deliver their video content over SBC's wires, a charge that SBC itself of course wouldn't be subject to. What if SBC decided to launch its own search engine and wanted to charge any other search engine when one of SBC's broadband users made a search request on their system? Under the currently approved plan, that's allowed. They could set different rates for auctions, images, video, audio, then they could charge more for SECURE connections.
Thats not fair to anyone.
My compatriot in the online classifieds world, Craig Newmark of Craig's list, does a great job of summing it up here. http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/06/09/newmark.internet/index.html
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