Well, I've gotten into a discussion about net neutrality on my blog... www.thegoldenpencil.com... and I don't know what I"m talking about, not really... has Thom written about this?

My instinct says don't trust... we need a law, but I've been wrong before.

help!

Thanks

That URL is malformed. You should fix it.

quote:

Should ISPs (Internet Service Providers) – the folks we pay to get our internet connection, be allowed to control the content allow that travels over their networks?

I don't think there is any argument, it has to happen and it is already happening. The huge popularity of media sharing has cut into the usable bandwidth for regular users, especially among Comcast (and other cable) subscribers. This is because Cable is structured for media downloading, giant files downloadable from a provider to your computer. Cable was never built for persons sharing files from their own computer. when you are getting content from a commercial service, that is OK. When you are getting it from some person, that is not OK. The supply-consumption chain must be strictly commercial.

Comcast, which is the largest ISP in the USA, still advertises its High Speed Internet as "unlimited" even though it sabotages filesharing. One good reason, from the perspective of the consumer, is that Cable internet is shared by a whole neighborhood. When your neighbors are filesharing, it makes internet speed for you very slow. DSL does not suffer this limitation, which is why DSL is not bandwidth controlled. But this is only a start. We will soon be sliding down the slippery slope of corporate control of the internet, and all the way we will hear about how your neighbor's filesharing is forcing ISPs into it. It's a very clever strategy.

That is why we all need to support Google's plan to set up a nationwide 700 MHz ISP on the radio spectrum formerly used by analog UHF television. Google's plan is to release half of that spectrum space to open-source public access internet that will cover an entire city (same approximate coverage as the old UHF TV channels). This 3rd ISP would compete with cable and DSL monopolies with the FCC enforcing public access. While nobody is sure that Google is good or evil, the plan is a good move towards an uncontrolled internet of the future, owned and managed by the public.