The end of the internet?

[Tainted_Girl]

Clickie here

Is this stupid or what?

[cousinlucky]

When I first heard about my phone company being part of this scheme to " tier " Internet service i was alarmed but i have discovered that other big moey interests are also twisting the arms of U.S.A. government officials to keep things just as they are. What will happen of course is that little people like me will end up paying more to use the Internet while the Big Money Interests will not have to pay any more for their service.

Greed may be Immoral!!
I, however, would never label it as stupid.

[Giles]

Many things have been touted as "the end of the internet" before, but there's only one genuine article:
the true end of the internet


Toodle-oo
Giles

[cousinlucky]

According to LinuxForum records on 3-09-2006 at 4:31pm I posted a link:
http://www.alternet.org/story/31753
with this very same title. It seems like it was six months ago. I am going senile!!

[darkrose0510]

Never fear, you can always download the internet.

[Tainted_Girl]

When I first heard about my phone company being part of this scheme to " tier " Internet service i was alarmed but i have discovered that other big moey interests are also twisting the arms of U.S.A. government officials to keep things just as they are. What will happen of course is that little people like me will end up paying more to use the Internet while the Big Money Interests will not have to pay any more for their service.

Greed may be Immoral!!
I, however, would never label it as stupid.

I would still label it stupid considering the fact that it would take really dumb people to just willingly accept this.(then again the US is becoming increasingly populated by idiots) Gaining money on their end may be smart but losing money on ours is just plain dumb.

[dravenloft]

There's actually a petition out to help stop this: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/335672945

It really is a bad idea, because:
a) It'd close the global aspect of things down (in the US anyway). Content from outside the US would likely be trickled down to nil.
b) We already have to put up with TV and Radio only being what some large corporation wants us to see/hear.

While it is true that other things have been touted as the end of the internet before, but this one is frightningly too easy to see happen.

[seopdx]

As a web developer and search engine marketer this puts my career on the edge of the toilet bowl in some regards. But the real issue is how this is going to effect the business sector and their online identity and sales.

*Big business can afford the extra pipe for bandwidth, thus getting better exposure and being more desirable for quicker pageloads. Nevermind the fact that their page could be complete garbage.
*Small business can't afford it, so they have slower pages thus leading to people being less interested in waiting for the page to load.

So this model is really supporting the corporate vs. the mom & pop outfits. This whole thing is just another way for the telecomms to pull a money and power grab from the business sector, and it really sucks in my book. A network engineer I work with said that if this goes through it wouldn't surprise him to see home users popping wi-fi hotspots everywhere to create a new internet and use their boxes as gateways. I got an extra box, I'm down for this!

-sidenote-
The online petitions are great for rallying a battle cry, but contacting your local representitive in congress with a slew of signatures on paper works better.

[dravenloft]

A network engineer I work with said that if this goes through it wouldn't surprise him to see home users popping wi-fi hotspots everywhere to create a new internet and use their boxes as gateways. I got an extra box, I'm down for this!

I don't have wireless yet, but when I do. I'm game for that. Could be fun. Especially since that framework would eliminate the ability for such a thing to happen again (hard to meter radiowaves).

-sidenote-
The online petitions are great for rallying a battle cry, but contacting your local representitive in congress with a slew of signatures on paper works better.

True. I live in Georgia though. Here, Big Business an the Almighty Capitalism are the cheifs of the Gods. Telling my rep would be like telling a brick wall, or the AT&T CEO.

[cousinlucky]

Rest assured and bet the farm that the corporations are going to go after every dollar they can get out of the " public's " pocket. The " government " just sees the Internet as a " freedom " that must be limited or curtailed entirely. Government can not have individual thought, communication, or ideas floating around unless they have been created by " government ". Everyone laugh now to preserve the illusion!!