The End Is Nigh Ryan Hadley

Not the end of the world, the end of the internet.  The issue is no net neutrality.  No rules at all about what ISPs can or can’t do with your traffic.  Most people have probably seen this scary image of a possible reality:

And it’s been a hot issue going around for a while now.  It’s getting scary though…  With Time Warner starting to test using bandwith caps to create a tiered internet, Comcast secretly throttling bit torrent traffic, and now ISP’s with plans of creating the very feared cable t.v. style tiered internet.

It’s not the additional monthly charges to get “the whole internet” that I fear though…  The real fear is what it could do to the Internet itself.  Right now, anyone can put up a web site and have a chance of reaching a large audience, getting a loyal following, surviving…  They can even make money off of it.  Look at Penny Arcade.  They started doing a web comic as an “on the side” thing.  It was a hobby of theirs.  They built enough of a following that they now operate Penny Arcade as their full time job.

So what happens when the majority of users pay for the cheapest internet tier?  And now they only have access to a handful of well known and popular sites?  The genius small sites that are just starting out could quickly die and go nowhere.  Who would invest money in a site that requires the 4th tier in the internet pricing model?  How much harder will it be for the 4th tier sites to develop a large loyal following when they are now working with a fraction of all the internet users out there?

And what’s stopping them from making some sites “premium” like HBO?  So you pay for the “whole internet” but to get to eBay you also have to pay an additional $10 a month.  What would that do to the sites that require premium?

Don’t let them turn the Internet in to Cable T.V.!  Join Google in the fight for true net neutrality so that we can keep the Internet free.

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