According to the New York Times Google and Comcast may form a huge takeover of the internet, where they can charge you money to go on certain parts of the internet and prevent you from going to other places, unless you pay them big money.

Subversive websites will be almost impossible to get to, while corporate sites would have easy access. This is pretty awful news. We all need to fight this and hope the FCC does something about this before we lose freedom of speech as we know it. This is not a left right issue.

Too bad, the days of free porn are over for you guys, LOL.

Doesn't net neutrality have to do with equalizing the costs associated for bandwidth/P2P/FTP?

It is not about charging people for accessing certain websites.

That is my understanding of it.

And actually the FCC and the government have been involved in establishing net neutrality since 2005-ish, I think.

I just googled the deal that sounds like has been agreed upon by those 2....

http://www.comcast.net/ar...-INTERNET/

...The deal centers on a set of rules, called net neutrality, that determines how Internet traffic moves over land lines and to wireless devices involving payment by Internet companies seeking a faster traffic...

Interesting... We will have to be more aware of the the need for speed that we want and be willing to pay more for it. I wonder how long it will take before we actually start seeing any changes.

Thanks for the heads up, 2freaky!

I don't believe this will ever happen in the "controlling the internet" way that people are interpreting it. But if it does somebody else will come along and write some code to get around it, or just build a whole new network that gives people access to exactly what they want again. This beast is never going back in the box. What is going to change is the cost of the internet. That new network would certainly cost much more per user. Bandwidth charges, for everyone, based on personal use (like buying gas) are probably not very far in the future. There have been a lot of studies recently that show a very small percentage of internet users sucking down a very large percentage of total bandwidth. It only makes sense that pay scales will change, with the heaviest users paying more than the casual, 15 minutes to an hour a day browser. But internet "censorship", naaah. I won't believe that until I see it happen.

Cerebus said:

I don't believe this will ever happen in the "controlling the internet" way that people are interpreting it. But if it does somebody else will come along and write some code to get around it, or just build a whole new network that gives people access to exactly what they want again. This beast is never going back in the box. What is going to change is the cost of the internet. That new network would certainly cost much more per user. Bandwidth charges, for everyone, based on personal use (like buying gas) are probably not very far in the future. There have been a lot of studies recently that show a very small percentage of internet users sucking down a very large percentage of total bandwidth. It only makes sense that pay scales will change, with the heaviest users paying more than the casual, 15 minutes to an hour a day browser. But internet "censorship", naaah. I won't believe that until I see it happen.

ditto - too many hackers out there.