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Verizon's Plan To Turn the Web Into Pay-Per-View
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Bill Snyder writes of Verizon's diabolical plan to to charge websites for carrying their packets — a strategy that, if it wins out, will be the end of the Internet as we know it. 'Think of all the things that tick you off about cable TV. Along with brainless programming and crummy customer service, the very worst aspect of it is forced bundling. ... Now, imagine that the Internet worked that way. You'd hate it, of course. But that's the direction that Verizon, with the support of many wired and wireless carriers, would like to push the Web. That's not hypothetical. The country's No. 1 carrier is fighting in court to end the Federal Communications Commission's policy of Net neutrality, a move that would open the gates to a whole new — and wholly bad — economic model on the Web.'"
Total BS. As the operator of an ISP (and a former columnist for InfoWorld who was dismissed because I didn't go along with Microsoft's monopoly propaganda... not much different from monopolist Google's fearmongering above), I can say with authority that no ISP wants to limit what sites users can visit. That's the scare tactics that the lobbyists are using to push so-called "network neutrality" regulations, which are not neutral at all; they're designed to tip the economic balance away from ISPs and toward content companies such as Google. The regulations prohibit ISPs from charging more when content providers waste bandwidth or attempt to demand priority delivery of their content -- in short, when they ask for something for nothing. They also prevent ISPs from blocking software that exploits the ISP's network for the benefit of a content provider. In short, they're all about regulating the Internet in ways that benefit powerful corporations. Worse still, they let the camel's nose into the tent. If the FCC can regulate the Net to advantage Google, it can also regulate it in other harmful ways. Want to see censorship? Government blocking of sites? Even more intense spying on your Internet activities? If these regulations are not overturned, the precedent will open the door to all of those things.