[governance] FW: [Dewayne-Net] Verizon's diabolical plan to turn the Web into pay-per-view

[michael gurstein]

-----Original Message-----
From: listmom at warpspeed.com [mailto:listmom at warpspeed.com] On Behalf Of
Dewayne Hendricks
Sent: Friday, September 13, 2013 5:38 AM
To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net - Sent by
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Verizon's diabolical plan to turn the Web into
pay-per-view

[Note:  This item comes from friend Gary Rimar.  DLH]

Verizon's diabolical plan to turn the Web into pay-per-view The carrier
wants to charge websites for carrying their packets, but if they win it'd be
the end of the Internet as we know it By Bill Snyder, InfoWorld Sep 12 2013
<http://www.infoworld.com/d/the-industry-standard/verizons-diabolical-plan-t
urn-the-web-pay-view-226662>

Think of all the things that tick you off about cable TV. Along with
brainless programming and crummy customer service, the very worst aspect of
it is forced bundling. You can't pay just for the couple of dozen channels
you actually watch. Instead, you have to pay for a couple of hundred
channels, because the good stuff is scattered among a number of overstuffed
packages.

Now, imagine that the Internet worked that way. You'd hate it, of course.
But that's the direction that Verizon, with the support of many wired and
wireless carriers, would like to push the Web. That's not hypothetical. The
country's No. 1 carrier is fighting in court to end the Federal
Communications Commission's policy of Net neutrality, a move that would open
the gates to a whole new -- and wholly bad -- economic model on the Web.

As it stands now, you pay your Internet service provider and go wherever you
want on the Web. Packets of bits are just packets and have to be treated
equally. That's the essence of Net neutrality. But Verizon's plan, which the
company has outlined during hearings in federal court and before Congress,
would change that. Verizon and its allies would like to charge websites that
carry popular content for the privilege of moving their packets to your
connected device. Again, that's not hypothetical.

ESPN, for example, is in negotiations with at least one major cellular
carrier to pay to exempt its content from subscribers' cellular data caps.
And what's wrong with that? Well, ESPN is big and rich and can pay for that
exemption, but other content providers -- think of your local jazz station
that streams audio -- couldn't afford it and would be out of business. Or,
they'd make you pay to visit their websites. Indeed, if that system had been
in place 10 years ago, fledglings like Google or YouTube or Facebook might
never have gotten out of the nest.

Susan Crawford, a tech policy expert and professor at Yeshiva University's
Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, says Verizon wants to "cable-ize the
Internet." She writes in her blog that "The question presented by the case
is: Does the U.S. government have any role in ensuring ubiquitous, open,
world-class, interconnected, reasonably priced Internet access?"

Verizon: the new Standard Oil
Verizon and other carriers answer that question by saying no.

They argue that because they spent megabucks to build and maintain the
network, they should be able to have a say over what content travels over
it. They say that because Google and Facebook and other Internet companies
make money by moving traffic over "their" networks, they should get a bigger
piece of the action. (Never mind that pretty much every person and business
that accesses Google or Facebook is already paying for the privilege, and
paying more while getting less speed than users in most of Europe.)

[snip]

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