From the recent thread: "Net Neutrality or Not?"

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/06/06/11/2057234.shtml

METAPHOR

"...[T]hink of the pipes and wires that you use to go online as the car you pay for by renting. The question is, should the rental car actively resist the steering wheel when you pass by a burger king and instead redirect you to a McDonalds because McDonalds paid the rental car agency a bribe."

TELCO'S GOING BROKE? - RAISE THE PRICE OF BANDWIDTH

"Google pays for the bandwidth it uses. I pay for the bandwidth I use."

"If the telcos are so worried about big sites not paying their fair share, why don't they just raise bandwidth rates?"

"Not enough money to upgrade the internet? RAISE THE RATES. Google Yahoo and other content providers getting a "Free ride"? RAISE THEIR RATES."

NEW MODEL INTERNET

"Prioritising packets has nothign to do with protecting the bottom line. its totally uneccessary for the reasons they give. It is about being able to finely control every little packet you get, so you can be billed accordingly. Why give up the incredibly profitable Long Distance business model for the 'flat rate' model of the internet, when you can convert the internet into another 'long distance' service?"

"What rankles network service providers is that the current infrastructure doesn't give them much freedom to charge by what people are able to pay; that greatly reduces their opportunity for revenue."

"Every time the big telecom corporations talk about offering tiered levels of service so that they can offer improved, lightning-fast content, what they are really saying is that they want to restrict the flow of the internet so that customers are drawn more to their commerical poopfest."

"I paid for internet access, not Verizon's Paying Friends network."

RESISTANCE

"Google should not pay, and simply post a front page explaining that 'Your ISP is reducing your access to us'. Other companies that bill their users should pay, and pass that cost directly to the users in the form of a line item 'verizon (or whatever) charge *' with a '* please call verizon customer service at 1-888-whatever for questions concerning this charge'"

"...[I]f internet companies have to pay to send their content over telco pipes, then the telcos should pay the content providers for providing the content that makes people want to have internet connections."

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

"I don't know why people are surprised by this. The internet has become the only effective free press that almost anyone on the planet can both read AND write to. As such, it's a constant thorn in the side of everyone who wants to control the flow of information. That means every government, every business, pretty much everyone who has soemthing to gain by focusing any segment of the public towards their own goals."

"The only way our government is going to stop screwing everybody in order to help out big business is if the one's who are responsible for this crap get voted out of office. Don't forget that in November."