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House Committee Approves 'Net Neutrality' Bill
An anonymous reader writes "Ars Technica is reporting that the US House Judiciary Committee approved a bill yesterday that will prevent broadband providers from charging extra fees to websites for delivering their content to users." Ars's response is only guarded optimism, unfortunately. From the article: "The fate of the bill is not clear, as there are now two competing bills vying for the attention of the House floor. HR 5252, the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act, was overseen by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and is expected to be considered by full House. That bill is seen by some proponents of 'Net neutrality as being too weak, particularly after a Committee vote tossed aside an amendment put forth by Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) that would have enshrined the principle of network neutrality into US law. There is speculation that today's bill, HR 5417, could be proposed as an amendment to HR 5252."
Check out Savetheinternet.com.
Grass roots campaign for the Net Neutrality bill. They have been helping out by giving information to people on how to contact their reps and so on.
Heck even Moby supports them.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Those who care about it will have the choice to buy from someone else
What your diatribe fails to take into account is that broadband consumers have only three choices: one, their current broadband provider, be it their local phone or cable company; two, the other company not specified by number one; and three, no broadband at all.
If we had true consumer choice in network providers, then we wouldn't need network neutrality laws - the market would work things out for itself. But that's not the case. As with any oligopoly, the government may need to intervene to ensure that the lack of competition isn't being leveraged at the expense of the consumer.