Writing in the Computer Business Review Online, Kevin Murphy has a thoughtful and useful overview of the flap created by AOL's desire to charge bulk email senders as a way of cutting down on spam. Murphy's article points to the "dearAOL" site and signature campaign which is sponsored by EFF, MoveOn.org, and others. I have signed the letter and urge others to do so for the reasons stated by the dearAOL campaign.
AOL's actions are another in a series of steps being taken by large telecom companies to monetize the transmission of content. Much more pernicious is the the recent attempt by Verizon and others to charge large content companies for the priority delivery of media content. Such policies are a fundamental shift from a basic assumption of Internet Service Providers (ISPs), namely the assumption of "net neutrality": no packets are inherently more privileged than any others.
Net neutrality was one reason why the open Internet has grown at such a prodigious rate. As William Gibson wrote a long time ago, "the street finds a use for things" and net neutrality was one of the fundamental reasons why the "street" found and continues to find a plethora of uses for the net.
Verizon and others are abrogating net neutrality because they have discovered that the ISP business is a commodity business with low margins. They suffer from "content envy." They want the higher margins that content providers typical get.
Congress should intervene. Please contact your Representative and Senators and to urge them to fight back against Verizon and others suffering from content envy and to preserve net neutrality.
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