I would hope not, but it seems that the lovely US Justice Department (oxymoron if you ask me) has dropped the hammer on this.
The USJD thinks that all content on the net is not equal, and that big name providers like AT&T and Verizon should be allowed to charge for what they deem premium.
No surprise really. There has been talk around the net that AT&T may have some friends in high places and with things going the way they are, those friends are inline to make a considerable amount of money.
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September 9, 2007 at 6:43 am
Brent
The DOJ equated the tiered Internet to the postal system. They fundamentally don’t understand what is going on. Priority mail works so well, if you want faster access, just send it overnight, first class, etc etc.
http://www.betanews.com/article/DOJ_Net_Neutrality_Precludes_Broadband_Investment_Threatens_Free_Markets/1189113258?do=reply&reply_to=962978
There are deeper things going on here. Big companies like Google, Yahoo, etc that make a lot of money will be able to pay these bills. The small guys like us will be the ones ultimately affected the most.
Crappy things going on in the world.
September 9, 2007 at 6:49 pm
zaknicola
I agree Brent, there won’t be much room for the little guy. A bigger, further outlook could be even worse. Imagine your IP is local, and you can access only local stuff. Gee, that sure would make it easy to control what people can share. How easy it would be to snuff out posts, just like this one. The internet is feared by politicians, they can’t silence what is writen, and they can’t restrict its access.
A blog can be a very powerful thing, but it is the unchecked access to the content that is the key they want to remove. With out it, our words would fail to be read.