babbling blue

Dear friends, acquaintances and random anonymous readers:

The internet as we know it is under attack. No, not from bored Chinese programmers or cyberterrorists. It’s under attack from within. The concept of net neutrality, one of the founding ideals of the internet, is undergoing a full frontal assault by some of our biggest ISPs aided by our own members of Congress.

The issue in a nutshell is this: a person on the internet can access every resource on the internet with substantially equal speed (limited, of course, by servers and connections but web servers and high speed internet connections are very affordable). So MSN.com isn’t faster for you than my blog. Nothing is being sped up or slowed down at some point along the way. Essentially, all web sites and net applications are created equal.

But that could change. The nation’s largest telephone and cable companies “including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner” want to charge content providers to provide speedy access to their data. So MSN.com could pay the ISPs and get their data to you faster than my blog’s data. Giant media conglomerates could pay for faster access than local independent news sources. The possibilities are endless, and almost universally bad for consumers (that’s you and me).

Congress is currently considering a bill called the “Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act of 2006″ (COPE Act). An attempt was made to include network neutrality in this legislation but was shot down, thanks in part to heavy lobbying on behalf of the telephone and cable companies.

For more on this, visit the Save the Internet Coalition website.
Then sign the Petition and contact your representatives.