Why we need Net Neutrality

Most of the concerns I've seen regarding net neutrality are the jocking of position of the communication carriers over encroaching services and cross-offerings such as cable providers providing telephone service and popular websites eating up enormous traffic.

We've had a sort of n-tier INTERNET for awhile.  I've got Broadband, I've had it since 1996, different services, sure, such as ISDN, ISDL, Wireless Broadband, and Cable, but I've paid extra for that service.  I expect to be able to use up to the limit of bandwidth that I've paid for each month that my contract allows.  What I shouldn't have to pay for is different rates for different traffic.  And neither should certain traffic be limited.  I'm paying for the pipe and what I want to send through it is my concern, assuming I'm not breaking any laws doing so.  This should also apply to Google and the like, who have already paid enormous sums to maintain their 0C3's.

There is also another, more sinister look at what could happen when carriers can control what goes and how fast it goes through their pipes based on content.

Here's a purely hypothetical example;

Let's say Dick Cheney doesn't like a particular, perhaps popular website that is against the U.S. efforts in Iraq.  He decides to talk to his friend Kenneth Derr, CEO of Chevron, who sits on the board of directors at Haliburton and also sits on the board of AT&T, and Citigroup.  Let's say that Kenneth is friends with C. Michael Armstrong, who also sits on the board of Citigroup as well as Comcast.

Now lets go a little further.  William R. Howell, who sits on the board of Haliburton and Exxon Mobile, talks to  Walter V. Shipley, who sits on the board of Exxon as well as Verizon.

So here we have a nice little group of very influential individuals who have connections to big oil as well as some of our largest communication providers.  A little whisper here, a handshake there and wow, an n-tier INTERNET structure works in their favor.   

I'm not saying the companies would completely block the site, but maybe slow it down a little.  It would be very hard for the website to resolve slow access issues, since the communication companies could then point to the n-tier structure and state that other sites were being given preferential treatment.

Oh, If you want to research some of the big company connections on your own, go to http://www.theyrule.net