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http://ipower.ning.com/netneutrality

please take a look at this.. its damn scary

just imagine if we had to pay to access this site?? or couldn't at all because it closed?

please read this and spread the word. many ISP company employees are under NDA's. we're under no such restraint. the farther we spread the word the faster support will build for maintaining net neutrality

NaZ

Anyone have any way to verify this? This is scary.

Darrian

I don't think it could happen. It was pretty scary at first but when you think about it the internet is building itself up as an economy similar but different to television already. I doubt if they changed the internet to a pay service that many would pony up the cash rather than find an alternative. There will always be a provider in that kind of market willing to give you the entire internet 'for free'. That subscriber would be the one everyone immediately turned too. There is just too much incentive for one company to offer what the internet 'used to' offer. Besides, websites are so vast and many they could never let you subscribe to just a package. What then would happen when I googled something? I would get a long list of unusable links.

Edit: Also riots in the streets, a peasants revolt if you will.

If they can, and think they MIGHT be able to turn a profit on it, they will try. I know it sounds kinda conspiracy theory, but I wouldn't put it past them.

While the thought is scary, it isn’t going to happen. At least not like that web site claims. The whole thing is that with faster computers, more internet users, and things like streaming media and massive amounts of downloadable programs and content, the “Information Super Highway” is getting rather congested. The current data lines that provide the backbone of the net are simply getting full and ISP’s are working on trying to figure out how to pay for upgrading the system. This web site is going the alarmist route and assuming that instead of upgrading the system and finding a way to pay for it, that ISP’s will just limit what you have access to and thus cut down internet traffic that way. That is simply a ridiculous idea. If they tried that, most people would just stop using the net since it would end up being prohibitively expensive to really see what you wanted to see, at least for the standard user. They would really be shooting themselves in the foot doing something like that. In addition, this is also assuming that every ISP out there is working together in one big conspiracy and, quite frankly, that many individual businesses are just too disorganized and untrusting of each other to actually accomplish that. If something like this did happen little ISP’s would spring up overnight that would offer you everything for one low price and put all the majors out of business.

Now, while I dismiss the extremist view presented here because it is really silly, net neutrality is an issue of importance because it can (and likely will) affect us, just not in quite the way it’s presented here. What is much more likely to happen is that to accommodate the extra internet traffic, ISP’s will handle data differently than they currently do. Right now servers treat all net traffic the same. 100 kb coming to me from AOL is the same as 100kb coming to me from DakkaDakka or any other source. What the ISP’s are talking about doing is no longer treating all data the same. They are talking about setting tiers or whatever you want to call them at the site or domain level. So, if a server gets information from AOL which is one of their “gold” customers (paying more for its traffic), its data will get put through before data from an economy customer like DakkaDakka. The end effect is that if you want your data to go though faster, you have to pay more money. For the end user, it means that sites with money will be much much faster than those that are not backed up with cash. The problem is likely to mean that lots of internet sites that we currently know and love will become hard to impossible to access due to ISP’s slowing down their data transmission in favor of their higher paying customers.

Yes comcast sucks. Wait, what was this about? Well, whatever, comcast sucks.

Even if this started to happen, it would only take a coalition of sites like facebook + myspace + google and another couple of large sites to team up and block all access to their websites from the offending ISPs regardless of their 'tariff', then the free market would take care of the rest. The top 10 websites are big enough to bully ISPs into whatever terms they wanted, and it is only the tier 1 service providers that can push back which ultimately leads to a mutually assured destruction scenario.

Important inside sources say it is true!

I'm sure the same sources can verify the three other shooters on the grassy knoll as well.