The following link is an article from the New York times titled: “Why the Democratic Ethic of the World Wide Web May Be About to End”
http://www.freepress.net/news/15726
There is this extract from the article that tells what the real battle is about:
”... Last year, the chief executive of what is now AT&T sent shock waves through cyberspace when he asked why Web sites should be able to “use my pipes free.” Internet service providers would like to be able to charge Web sites for access to their customers. Web sites that could not pay the new fees would be accessible at a slower speed, or perhaps not be accessible at all. ...”
The ”...use my pipes free.” quote is an interesting perspective since each of us who use the internet here in the US already pay for those pipes.- We pay for them in our monthly service fees.
- We pay for them with our tax subsidies to Telecom companies
- We pay for them by the Free use of public rights-of-way for their cables and wires
- We pay for them through sanctioned monopolies and duopolies that control price and restrict competition.
The issue is not that it costs to build out the internet… the issue is that the Cable and Telecom providers want a share of the revenue stream generated by business that use the wires you already pay them for… and guaranty them a profit for. The Telcom/Cable industry wishes to make money from both sides of the equation.
It must be understood… that the likes of MSN and eBay already pay to connect to the internet. They pay large fees each month for large pipes… they don’t receive their connections for free. You also pay for your connections… What is at stake here is the question of “can acces be charged for twice?” You pay your provider for bandwith to your home. eBay pays its provider for access to its data centers. Each of us pay right now. What the Cable/Telcom companies want to to charge twice for access to your home. They want you to pay for your pipe (your bandwidth allocation) and they want the like of eBay to pay for the same bandwidth you’ve already paid for.
It time you make your voices heard… its time to tell Congress to quit caving into the Telcom/Cable lobby and protect an open internet where monopolies and duopolies are not handed protection to raise their prices at will with no where for you to go to find competition.
