[GohJHM9k]

Here's the Net Neutrality debate in a nutshell: Internet Service Providers see an opportunity to make more money by establishing toll fees for websites to be able to reach their subscribers.

Example: AT&T could decide that they want to charge the Drudge Report $20,000 a month because the site is popular enough that it uses a lot of AT&T Internet bandwidth. If Drudge refuses to pay, AT&T will simply block its millions of subscribers from being able to access drudgereport.com. This would include home access, work access if their office uses AT&T, Starbuck's Coffee locations, etc. Drudge goes dark on all of them until they pay up. Verizon and any other provider would then line up behind AT&T and give Drudge the same ultimatum.

Likewise, AT&T or any other provider could ostensibly decide to charge smaller sites maybe $100/mo or block them. Most smaller sites wouldn't be able to afford it and would go dark.

The FCC just ruled that AT&T and other providers can't do that. Republicans oppose the ruling and say that AT&T or any other Internet provider to be able to do exactly what I described above.

WSJ: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...LEFTTopStories

A divided Federal Communications Commission approved a proposal by Chairman Julius Genachowski to give the FCC power to prevent broadband providers from selectively blocking web traffic.

The rules will go into effect early next year, but legal challenges or action by Congress could block the FCC's action. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) on Tuesday called the FCC's action "flawed" and said lawmakers would "have an opportunity in the new Congress to push back against new rules and regulations."

The new FCC rules, for example, would prevent a broadband provider, such as Comcast Corp., AT&T, Inc. or Verizon Communications Inc., from hobbling access to an online video service, such as Netflix, that competes with its own video services.

The rules would also require Internet providers to give subscribers more information on Internet speeds and service. Broadly, the rules would prohibit Internet providers from "unreasonably discriminating" against rivals' Internet traffic or services on wired or wireless networks.

[TouccuraLar]

Maybe I'm missing the obvious and all, but what's the problem with allowing service providers to do this? I realize that there are potential discrimination issues, as well as just giving a whole lot of power to providers, but really...it's the internet. The whole thing is kind of an exercise in marketing.

[JorgiOLusinio]

The main problem is that it could put a lot of smaller websites, like this one, out of business. It could ostensibly eliminate most blogs, forums, fan pages, anything that's not part of a large corporation that could afford to pay the toll.

The whole thing really isn't an exercise in marketing anymore than everything in a library is a marketing brochure or every driver on a highway is a salesperson on a sales call. There's a whole lot more than marketing going on.

[VrQsgM7c]

GOP lawmakers are mounting a campaign to challenge this ruling.

Once again, here's a real-world analogy. You've ordered something from Amazon. They paid the postage on their side and dropped it off at the post office. All fine, so far.

But then someone at the end of your block, whose house is at the corner that the mail truck needs to pass to get to your house, decides that he's not letting any Amazon deliveries get by unless Amazon pays him an additional fee. That's what cable companies want to do with websites. In all likelihood, Amazon would simply decide that they can't deliver to your neighborhood anymore. Likewise, if AT&T told Photobucket that they'll block all Photobucket photos from getting to AT&T users unless they pay up a new access fee, Photobucket would probably just let their photos go dark for AT&T subscribers.

In either case, as the end consumer, you have no control over this other than to move your Internet access to another provider, but that gets messy if it's tied in with your phone service and TV and cell phones.

Just to be clear, the FCC's ruling is that it's not fair to consumers to let that guy at the end of the block do this, so they've ruled that he can't.

This is what the GOP will be trying to repeal in coming weeks. Because that guy at the end of the block was a big campaign donor.

[klnbgqr]

No, no, no, Richard. It's not because they're big campaign donors. It's because everyone in America has a right to make a dollar. That's the American dream! How do you expect these people to create jobs unless they can charge whatever they want, to do whatever they want? It has absolutely NOTHING to do with being campaign donors!

[/sarcasm]