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Net Neutrality or Not?
Reverse Gear writes "CNN has two commentaries about net neutrality with quite opposing viewpoints. Craig Newmark discusses how the legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives would efficiently remove net neutrality, while Mike McCurry writes about how the big companies should pay their fair share for the physical upgrade of the internet. From Newmark's commentary: 'Telecommunication companies already control the pipes that carry the Internet into your home. Now they want control which sites you visit and how you experience them. They would provide privileged access for themselves and their preferred partners while charging other businesses for varying levels of service.'"
This battle is irrelevant to consumers. Rather, it is a battle of Google et al vs Comcast et al with respect to which group has to deal with the idiotic consumers such as you find here on slashdot.
You pay for your bandwidth one way or another. Either the access providers are going to start to have tiered services to consumers (hell, mine already does to some degree) or they are going to force the content providers who gobble bandwidth to pay more. These content providers will then pass the cost on to you. It doesn't matter in the end from the consumer's point of view. If you use lots of bandwidth, you will pay more, either to Google or Comcast. This is fair, in my opinion.
Most of the whiners around here just realize that without "net neutrality", all their P2P sites will be relegated to the slow lanes. Boo frickin' hoo. Yes, my legitimate VoIP and iTunes downloads should get priority over your piracy.