FCC votes to begin crafting `net neutrality' rules

[Credit]

"WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal regulators took an important step Thursday toward prohibiting broadband providers from favoring or discriminating against certain kinds of Internet traffic."


http://finance.yahoo.com/news/FCC-vo...&asset=&ccode=

[Gerry]

I heard this on the news last night.

Quite a battle brewing. And rightly so. There is growing concern that certain telecomms who own certain spectrums could unjustly control the internet. The name being tossed around last night was Verizon.

But companies such as Google, Amazon.com Inc., eBay Inc.'s Skype and Facebook Inc. argue that without such rules, the broadband companies will become online gatekeepers that can prioritize their own online services or those of their business partners -- and potentially put others at a disadvantage.

Markham Erickson, executive director of the Open Internet Coalition, called Thursday's vote "the first step toward ... creating a framework that promotes innovation and consumer choice on the Internet."

[HarveyJ]

AOLTimeWarner is the perfect example of how easy this would be to manipulate.
Time & WB content would be nice and fast, others slow or unavailable, and customers would eventually stop attempting to use other sites for news and content.