More on Internet Censorship

If Telus were the only company to ban websites it didn't like, then the situation wouldn't be that bad. But now in the US, the House of Representatives is on the verge of passing a law legalizing this sort of behavior, and far worse abuses. TPM Cafe and Majikthise are on it: what it entails is allowing AT&T and other giants to charge people premium rates for "preferred lanes" (most likely the same quality of service everyone gets today, as opposed to a basic version, which will have people pining for 1998), and to charge websites money for being allowed on the lanes.

The current doctrine of net neutrality forbids corporations to do that. Just like big telecom can't disconnect a unionist's phone service or charge him extra, or lower the quality of calls to competitors and their allies, so can't big cable charge you extra for reading blogs, or create two tiers of net service. Now the House is about to change this, and allow monopolization of the Internet. A hundred years ago, American railway tycoons gouged prices so much that it was cheaper to send goods from New York to San Francisco via London than directly. Today, the Internet is global enough that London won't be an option.

The free Internet's about to become as free as the German Democratic Republic was democratic. You can forget about Skype, or for that matter about lower-quality, paid services operated by your ISP's competitors. You can forget about any sort of competition, since ISPs are usually monopolies or oligopolies. You can forget about surfing at more than 5 KB/s without going broke. You can forget about reading dissident websites. You can forget about Wikipedia, which is already overwhelmed by traffic and can't pay for privileged treatment.

Save the Internet - because a monopoly isn't a free market.