The telecommunications companies want to start giving priority to their traffic and charging users and service providers (like google) access to the higher speed services. Meanwhile other “services,” such as this very blog, will be given lower priority and thus be delivered at a lower speed. This is complete bullshit. The internet is supposed to be a free place that fosters the spread of ideas and innovation. It’s not supposed to be about paying extra so information you want to send actually gets to where it’s going. If they succeed at this they will essentially kill the internet as we know it.

I read a really good and detailed article about this very thing a few weeks ago. It explains that the telcos are trying to change the metaphorical image of the internet from that of a place (I’m on the net, browsing the net, meet you in that chat room etc.) to that of a plumbing system (delivering content through pipes). The latter metaphor allows for them to charge for use of their “pipes.” But the entire point of the internet is that it’s “stupid” in the middle. All the “pipes” and routers and such that deliver the data currently have no idea what it is that they’re routing, they just send it where it needs to go and give no special priority to anything. All the innovation, all the “smartness,” happens on the periphery. The internet itself is just a means of communication between any two computers connected to it. It is dumb, and that allows for fair competition and innovation. Now they want to ruin that, to regulate traffic, to charge tolls, to artificially slow down their competitors traffic. Don’t let them, the internet is the most promising and disruptive force humanity has ever invented and it must be allowed to follow its natural course.