Internet "Freedom" Act

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So, this is a rather interesting piece I heard on The Daily Show Monday night.

http://trueslant.com/jeffhoard/2009/10/ ... t-freedom/

That link also contains the The Daily Show clip.

Apparently, McCain is attempting to legalize net traffic shaping for ISPs. I'm not sure how many here that would affect (I would assume the majority) but I know it would for certain affect me and in a huge factor. Anyone that DL's or UL's in significant amoutns or visits any sites their particular ISP doesn't like would be negatively affected. I know all Comcast users would essentially be unable to game over the net, and quite a few telecom coorporations are strongly conservative and would drastically lower broadband available to any liberal or "questionable" websites. It'd make gaming much more difficult for almost everyone because it takes a decent amount of bandwidth and it's easy to throttle back to save money for the ISPs. (Comcast already does this and has constant arguments with various game server providers) Sites like South Park Studios, Colbert Report.com, even CNN or ABC (as liberal media) could be restricted under a whim with this law.

There's also another bill in Congress right now, the Internet Freedom Preservation Act. This is pretty much the exact opposite of McCains' bill. It essentially keeps the FCC's current regulations on the net and ISPs.

It seems to me to be dangerous to lose net neutrality. I means that those with the most power and money will dominate the internet. Not only will this affect your gaming but other aspects of your online life. This could drive little online business out and give a bigger monopoly to the giants. Little sites like WP could become even slower and sidelined. There could also be impacts on democracy - with parties buying more bandwidth for their own sites and election messages and possible even paying ISP's to reduce traffic of their opponents. It is a dangerous slippery slope.

May I state the obvious and point out that this "Internet Freedom Preservation Act" is the exact opposite of freedom? I know that senate bills aren't supposed to have descriptive names anyways, and that they frequently have names that are the exact opposite of what the bill actually does, in order to confuse people, but I just hadda point it out..

This would shut down pretty much all gaming and virtual worlds.. Not just gaming, but Second Life, IMVU... anything like that too.

No Maggiedoll, there are two different bills currently going through Congress with very similar names that are basically exact opposites of one another. The Internet Freedom Act by McCain is the bad one, while the Internet Freedom Preservation Act by Representative Edward Markey is the one that legally gives the FCC power to regulate the ISPs, which is what you want as an internet consumer.