Sustainable Democracy

It appears that more heads in the United States government may be turning away from net neutrality. I caught this new story from Google Blogscoped, and their reporting on new information from the Associated Press.

As reported from the AP:

The Justice Department on Thursday said Internet service providers should be allowed to charge a fee for priority Web traffic.

The agency told the Federal Communications Commission, which is reviewing high-speed Internet practices, that it is opposed to “Net neutrality,” the principle that all Internet sites should be equally accessible to any Web user. (…)

The agency said providing different levels of service is common, efficient and could satisfy consumers. As an example, it cited that the U.S. Postal Service charges customers different guarantees and speeds for package delivery, ranging from bulk mail to overnight delivery.

The internet was created to spread ideas to people. For a long time it has almost become the equal opportunity information highway available to anyone and everyone. Luckily they have given a reason to destroy this system.

The Justice Department said imposing a Net neutrality regulation could hamper development of the Internet and prevent service providers from upgrading or expanding their networks. It could also shift the “entire burden of implementing costly network expansions and improvements onto consumers,” the agency said in its filing.

The reason is that upgrading the networks that most companies have with almost certain purpose let fall into continual decay would cost money. It would cost a great deal to replace the existing wires and fiber optics that companies have refused to upgrade or expand for years. So they will simply create multiple tiers of service in order to leverage more dollars from you.

Perhaps a better idea would be to ask your internet provider what exactly they have been doing with those dollars you send to them monthly. After all, as a dutiful consumer you have already been paying for this access. In addition, you have already been paying for tiered internet access. You pay higher premiums for higher connection speeds. Now they not only want to charge for your end user speed, but charge everyone upstream so that they can attempt to send you data at the speed you already pay for.

Don’t let phone and cable monopolies limit your access to information you have already paid them for. Don’t let big business be the arbiters of the cost of allowing information make it to the fiber optic highways that now drive our society.

After all, shouldn’t the free market avoid the practices of information control for blatant profiteering?