This is a little bit late, but Net Neutrality ranks as being one of the most important issues facing every day users of the Internet practically since the inception of the Internet itself and its direct descendant, the World Wide Web.
A serach on Google for the term "Net Neutrality" returns the following number of hits:
Nearly 30 million hits.
Obviously, this is a subject that has been discussed at great length on the Internet, most recently spotlighted by a rambling, incoherent, clueless screed by Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska, wherein he stood in front of Congress and lobbied against Net Neutrality.
Here is a link to the audio: Download stevens-on-nn.mp3
To qoute Mr. Stevens:
"...There's one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.
But this service is now going to go through the internet* and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.
Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?
I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?
Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.
So you want to talk about the consumer? Let's talk about you and me. We use this internet to communicate and we aren't using it for commercial purposes.
We aren't earning anything by going on that internet. Now I'm not saying you have to or you want to discrimnate against those people [¿]
The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says "No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the internet". No, I'm not finished. I want people to understand my position, I'm not going to take a lot of time. [¿]
They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.
It's a series of tubes.
And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.
Now we have a separate Department of Defense internet now, did you know that?
Do you know why?
Because they have to have theirs delivered immediately. They can't afford getting delayed by other people.
[¿]
Now I think these people are arguing whether they should be able to dump all that stuff on the internet ought to consider if they should develop a system themselves.
Maybe there is a place for a commercial net but it's not using what consumers use every day.
It's not using the messaging service that is essential to small businesses, to our operation of families.
The whole concept is that we should not go into this until someone shows that there is something that has been done that really is a viloation of net neutraility that hits you and me.
That someone like this, who is basically a paid spokesperson for the Telecomm industry, is the point person arguing against Net Neutrality is simply terrifying to me. It really is.
And to further complicate things, I suspect that 99% of the people on the street whom you ask about Net Neutrality would just blink at you and say "what the hell are you talking about?"
*Sigh*.
Anyways, below are a list of sites you can go to to learn more about Net Neutrality:
Go there today and educate yourselves and write to your senators. Get involved before it's too late!
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