A few months back, the Telecom industry began to beat a drum. It was way different than what you and I march to, and it sure as hell didn't sound pretty to people who make a living online. Did anyone see where I put my soapbox?
Net Neutrality, is a serious issue and you should know about it. Essentially, a number of corporate big-wigs at TimeWarner and AT&T decided they weren't making enough money from internet users. They wanted to charge us and people who run the websites we go to, extra money to continue doing what we already do freely.
They claim that websites like Google, and eBay hijack their bandwidth when we run searches and purchase goods. They claim that it costs them so much money to let us go to any website we want, download whatever files we want, watch whatever streaming media we want, or do anything that internet users do everyday. Lemme show you how.
The Internet Backbone, is something most people don't know much about. It's the collection of physical trunks and transmission grids that make up the "superhighway" of information you're hopping across right now. They come from military, government, commercial, and academic data lines. Your ISP (Internet Service Provider) might, or might not, be in possession of a backbone grid of it's own, but either way they use the backbone for connectivity. Check out this map of the major backbone pipelines in the US.
Everyone does in some way. We purchase pieces of this pipeline. When you set up an account with your ISP, you agreed to a contract for a slice of the pipeline. You're never to exceed the amount you can get, but they guarantee you'll at least be able to get a slice you both agree is fair. With most DSL customers, this is 1.5 megabytes a second of download speed, with 384kb of upload speed, depending on proximity to a relay.
The contract you sign for service makes your ISP responsible for holding up their end of the agreement too. They set lots of clauses in the agreement to prohibit fraud and misuse of the bandwidth, but they also agree to abide by the laws in the US that demand they provide you access to everything you choose. They can not inhibit this freedom, and the US government has actually enforced this law before. (Anyone remember AOL in the mid-late 90's?)
Companies like Google and eBay also have ISP's. They pay lots of money to have large amounts of upload bandwidth for sending transmissions, handling searches, sales, etc. They sign a contract with their ISP for agreed amounts of speed as well. This means that both you and every website out there has paid a telecom money for the bandwidth they are using. For telecom companies to pressure Congress to remove these restrictions for "fairness" is a joke, and a ploy to control the future of the internet.
Watch this video. It's a little dinky, but it covers a lot.
Contact your member of Congress now. The House has already screwed us by sucking down the lobbyist propaganda from the telecom industry. If you want the internet to remain neutral, you need to get through to your Senator NOW.
Preferably, a Republican Senator because the telecom companies have positioned themselves in a pro-business, "hey we're being over-regulated by liberals" way. This is playing the parties against each other because the REP's have majority power in the Senate. If we can convince just enough conservative members that this is a bullshit ploy that will screw up businesses EVERYWHERE, then we can beat this.
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