Will we be saying goodbye to the Internet as we know it?

Posted Friday, June 9th 2006

I wrote about the Net Neutrality issue a few days ago, and it seems that things have turned to the worse.

The US House of Representatives rejected the idea of Net Neutrality on Thursday, even after lobbying by influential people, including Google’s Sergey Brin, and representatives from Microsoft.

Large dotcom companies such as Google, eBay and Amazon.com lobbied the House of Representatives to pass the Net Neutrality bill, however, their efforts were unsuccessfull. Powerfull telcos, such as Verizon, AT&T were able, with the support of republicanrepresentatives to get the bill rejected.

What does that mean for us? Most likely, the end of the Internet as we know it. The concept of Net Neutrality says that all sites should be treated equally. With Net Neutrality gone, the very ideas that shaped the Internet, into what it is today - freedom, equality and merit-based grading, goes down the drain.

And just because you are not in the US, it doesn’t mean that this won’t affect you. All sites hosted on US servers will be affected, and next time you update your webpage, think about where your site is hosted, and where the sites you visit most are hosted. This will, sadly, have a global effect. More info can be found here.

So.. To telecom companies in the US, and around the world: Thank you for trying to fuck up what is one of the best things on the planet right now. Fuck you.

Source: House rejects Net neutrality rules [ZDNet Tech News]

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