Inevitable?

MC Etcher made a comment on my last post about how the end of net neutrality is inevitable.

I don’t think that’s true.

Here’s the thing. The only reason this bill is starting to go through is simply because the telecom people are flat out lying to congress. They’re pouring millions of dollars into fake ‘grass roots’ support groups, and distorting the truth to where net neutrality sounds like a terrible thing.

The sad truth is that most of our leaders simply don’t understand this concept, and as usual, go where the money or perceived ‘popular support’ is.

Like I said in my last post, the end of net neutrality is simply a way for the telecom companies to double-dip (In fact, considering website owners pay the telecoms, and we pay the telecoms, it’s actually triple-dipping).

However, the way they’re representing it makes it sound like net neutrality is a terrible thing for everyone.

What they’re telling congress is, in essence, this:

We’re forced to charge our customers, the average internet user, far too much. This is because the evil corporations such as Microsoft, Google and Yahoo are refusing to foot the bill for their service. Their sites use a large portion of our bandwidth, and as they aren’t willing to pay us for this service, we’re forced to charge our customers extra. When we’re allowed to control exactly what passes through our networks, we can force these large corporations to pay what they owe, saving us money, savings which we can pass on to our subscribers.

Basically, the situation we have is that the people who are deciding this issue don’t actually understand it. So we have a group of people voting on an issue that they have no knowledge of, while the telecoms are feeding them lies that we, as internet users, are staunchly opposed to Net Neutrality. Add to that the sheer number of fake ‘grass-roots’ pressure groups the telecoms are funding, and Congress is being given the impression that the general feeling is that we don’t want Net Neutrality.

Add to the mix the politicians penchant for voting whichever way they believe will either get them the most funding, or keep them in office the longest, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Again, I don’t want to sound overly dramatic here, but I like the internet the way it is. I like being able to visit the sites I like with no slow-down or re-directs. I like not having to pay to send an email. I like being able to buy things off the internet, and being able to find the lowest price, and not be limited to just those suppliers that are willing to pay the telecoms a bribe.

I pay $40 dollars a month for my internet service. I don’t want to end up paying twice as much for a lower grade of service, as well as having to pay subscriptions to all the sites I can currently view for free…just because the telecoms suddenly decided they aren’t making enough money.

The end of Net Neutrality is only inevitable if we don’t do something about it. The telecoms are feeding Congress lies that state we’re against Net Neutrality. The only way to battle this is to is to make it painfully obvious that the telecoms are, indeed, lying.

If your local Congressman goes into work tomorrow and finds his answering machine and email inbox stuffed with messages saying we are for Net Neutrality, they simply have to take notice.

Net Neutrality is in the best interests of every single person who uses the internet. If we let Congress know this, and that we’ll be pretty displeased about Net Neutrality ending…you’ll see their opinions change.

Through savetheinternet, over seventy five hundred thousand emails have been sent to Congress. If everyone in the blogosphere added themselves to that list, we’d number in the tens of millions…and those kinds of numbers can’t be ignored.

As in my last post, please visit www.savetheinternet.com and let your voice be heard. It’s the only way we can beat this.