Representatives Ed Markey and Chip Pickering I introduced a bill at the U.S. House today, called the Internet Freedom Preservation Act (HR 5353), that would not assure net neutrality but would include favorable provisions into the list of principles that the FCC is required to consider when entertaining the requests of phone and cable companies that they be permitted to charge consumers for access to certain sites. This sort of “gatekeeping” would fundamentally change the nature of the internet and is ardently opposed by consumer groups..
February 14, 2008 at 9:36 pm
Without a net neutrality law in place, publicly traded service providers will always straddle the fence between their customers and shareholders. More often than not, they will opt for the bottom line, leaving consumers rights by the wayside.
It is exactly the absence of such legislation that has allowed the cell phone industry to wall in their gardens, offering dumbed down browsers that only access the content that the provider wants you to see (and pay them for). Left to their own devices, ISPs could be headed down the same road. If it starts with BitTorrent, where does it stop?