Net Neutrality Shot Down

[Chajara]

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6081882.html

The U.S. House of Representatives definitively rejected the concept of Net neutrality on Thursday, dealing a bitter blow to Internet companies like Amazon.com, eBay and Google that had engaged in a last-minute lobbying campaign to support it.

By a 269-152 vote that fell largely along party lines, the House Republican leadership mustered enough votes to reject a Democrat-backed amendment that would have enshrined stiff Net neutrality regulations into federal law and prevented broadband providers from treating some Internet sites differently from others.

Of the 421 House members who participated in the vote that took place around 6:30 p.m. PT, the vast majority of Net neutrality supporters were Democrats. Republicans represented most of the opposition.

Okay, so basically what might happen here is big telco companies will be able to do some sort of two tiered system with the internet. Something about prioritizing traffic. In other words, it looks like these companies might be able to say "We don't want anything to do with so-and-so company so good luck accessing their site at a decent speed." There's a big thread on the SomethingAwful forums discussing it, but I didn't see anything about it here so I thought I'd give everyone a heads up. Can someone who understands this better perhaps explain a bit? Word needs to get around so come voting time, the internet will stay like it is.

 

[Dracil]

Welcome to the death of the internet.

 

[ApocryphaNow]

Sigh... this is a major disappointment. That's all I can really say without going off on a rant.

 

[Qrusty]

It was a protection initiative that sadly failed. Many foresee a serious abuse coming in the form of control over what kind of information you'll be allowed to view over the internet. If you think there's a problem with other forms of media today and public perception, wait until powerful groups start controlling the internet.

The initiative failed because of trickery from sites like like this ****://www.votervoice.net/Core.aspx?AID=575&APP=GAC&IssueID=7519 who fool people into showing support for the rejection of the initiative.

 

[moonkitty]

Welcome to the death of the internet.

Sad, but true. Enjoy it while it last.

 

[Maynard Keenan]

So how long until the internet is broken into a small number of corporate approved channels like television with no room for the little guy, and it all becomes more propoganda to make us bow to corporatism.

 

[Nienor]

Boooo!
It makes me mad....I don't see how this can be seen as a good thing and if more people understood what was going on, there would be more of an uproar. Unfortunately, not enough people understand or care. Well, maybe they will care when its too late.

 

[crazyfingers]

So what about the Senate? They tend not to be as in-the-pocket of large corporate interests as are the House republicans.

Of course Bush is no hope. He rubber-stamps anything and then says that He personally don't have to follow the law.

 

[HisEagle]

I wonder how many people will actually put up with this. I personally won't see the need to keep my internet account if I can't reasonably access the sites I want. I can drop it like a hot potato if I need to. No skin off my back - but it would be money out of my IP's pocket, that's for sure.

Guess I'll start going back to the library and bookstores like I used to do when I wanted to learn about something.