Republicans defeat net neutrality bill
If you have been following the latest news releases, you have probably heard about some ISPs (like AT&T and a tiered Internet. In this tiered system, Verizon would charge companies, like Google and Yahoo, for access to more bandwidth. Let’s say that Yahoo paid for the higher bandwidth access and Google did not. Users with Verizon as an ISP would discover that searches and page loads on Yahoo would be faster than on Google.
According to a CNet article published on April 5, “A Republican-controlled House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Wednesday defeated a proposal that would have levied extensive regulations on broadband providers and forcibly prevented them from offering higher-speed video services to partners or affiliates.”
Does this mean that the promise of the Internet and the WWW as a place to freely exchange ideas and share knowledge is over? Or just that it will be commercialized and exploited like everything else?
Well, for now it’ll just be commercialized and exploited like everything else, but there’s pressure to make sure it’s not a free exchange of ideas anymore, between privacy concerns and marketing decisions abroad. But that’s just me being cynical…
I completely agree with you. The Web was started as a forum for idea exchange and collaboration. And now, commercial interests are attempting to subvert that to the Dark Side…
Maybe we are fighting for the Light Side of the Internet?