Google Wants Our Help! Must Read!

[goodaswine]

Hello everyone, this is my first post but I felt it was important for all of us to read. I am pasting an e-mail from the Inside-Adsense group I received today. Our future may be at stake. You read and decide. Thanks!



== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Thurs, Jun 8 2006 12:52pm
From: Inside AdSense Team


Freedom of access to information on the Internet is a topic that we believe is of great interest and importance to _Inside AdSense_ readers. Our CEO Eric Schmidt has written a letter to you, our publishers, on the subject of "net neutrality" -- read below for the full text: Dear AdSense Publisher,There's a debate heating up in Washington, DC on something called "net neutrality" – and the outcome of this debate may very well impact your business. Therefore, we are taking the unprecedented steps of calling your attention to this looming crisis and asking you to get involved. Sometime in the next few days, the House of Representatives is going to vote on a bill that would fundamentally alter the Internet. That bill would give the big phone and cable companies the power to choose what you will be able to see and do on the Internet. Today the Internet is an information highway where anybody – no matter how large or small, how traditional or unconventional – has equal access to everyone else. On the Internet, a business doesn't need the network's permission to communicate with a customer or deploy an innovative new service. But the phone and cable monopolies, who control almost all broadband Internet access, want the power to choose who gets onto the high-speed lanes and whose content gets seen first and fastest. They want to build tollbooths to block the on-ramps for those whom they don't want to compete with and who can't pay this new Internet tax. Money and monopoly, not ideas and independence, will be the currency of their Internet. Under the proposed "pay-to-play" system, small- and medium-sized businesses will be placed at an automatic disadvantage to their larger competitors. Those who cannot afford the new Internet tax – or who want to compete directly with the phone and cable companies – will be marginalized by slower Internet access that will inevitably make their sites less accessible, and therefore less appealing. Creativity, innovation and a free and open marketplace are all at stake in this fight. Imagine an Internet in which your access to customers is constrained by your ability to cut a deal with the carriers. Please call your representative in Congress at 202-224-3121. For more information on the issue, and more ways to make your voice be heard, visit www.ItsOurNet.org <http://www.ItsOurNet.org/contactcongress/>. Thank you for your time, your concern and your support.Eric Schmidt CEO of Google Inc.P.S. -- If you are unsure of who represents you in Congress, you can look them up by zip code at http://www.house.gov <http://www.house.gov>. And if you would like to stay informed about this issue, and other policy issues affecting Google, you can opt-in to our policy mailing list at http://groups-beta.google.com/group/googlepolicy/subscribe <http://groups-beta.google.com/group/googlepolicy/subscribe> (powered by Google Groups).
Posted by Julie Beckmann - AdSense Publisher Support --Posted by Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense <http://adsense.blogspot.com/2006/06/letter-from-eric-schmidt-ceo.html> at 6/08/2006 10:00:00 AM

Thanks for reading the above. I believe it is time to take action.

Danny Ethridge

[tridean]

Seems no one is tooo concerned. I don't think there's a lot of knowledge in history anymore because these sorts of threats are real! And I'm not just talking about Internet history. Since the dawn of civilization, the ultra rich have always had to control.

[Diddy1]

This letter is everywhere on the net these days since this may cut our internet usage.

Thank You

[nukemdomis]

Pretty scary if you ask me. If this was to happen then there would be several major "internets" 20 years down the road.

[aaanativearts]

This has already been voted on.

[nukemdomis]

While this was probably voted on already, the major players involved have been planning this for quite some time and will not give up with a single vote.

[Sbabb]

I believe that the vote was a committee vote and the full Senate has not voted on it yet.

I called my senator (Sununu) to express my displeasure with his vote in committee and also e-mailed him to encourage him to change his vote when it comes before the full Senate. I received a USPS-mail letter from him explaining that he opposes Net Neutrality and he's not changing his vote. It was full of the typical "not thinking even one step into the future" stuff that I see everywhere these days.

I'm considering sending him another e-mail (not that he'll ever see it, of course, but I might as well try) to explain how killing Net Neutrality could negatively affect him personally. Imagine that the bill that would allow ISPs to selectively limit bandwidth based on the destination address passes. Now imagine that tens of thousands of small internet businesses are outraged because they cannot afford to pay this new "private tax" to Comcast, Verizon, Sprint, etc. to get full speed traffic to their sites. These tens of thousands of outraged registered voters might decide to send e-mails to their elected officials to express their unhappiness, right? Now imagine that the telecom industry (who has donated millions to those elected officials and now has the ability to restrict bandwidth as they see fit) decides that as an additional "service" to their legislative friends, they won't "burden" them with having to read all of these nasty messages from ignorant nay-sayers. So they cut the bandwidth on these messages so that only a few bytes gets through at a time. Of course the receiving mail servers in Washington will time out and reject the messages. Problem solved! Until the next election when dozens of legislators are shocked to find long lines of angry small business owners voting against them.

There are days when I think we should all join the NRA: Never Re-elect Anyone!

In the meantime, it's probably worth it to express your feelings to your elected officials on the subject. Mine wouldn't listen, but maybe yours will.


Scott

[TheCoach]

will this is anyway affect the UK ISP's such as BT, PIPEX etc ?

[carminejg3]

its time we all go out and vote in "New members" until congress and the senate look after our best interest....

these current clowns have forgotten what their real jobs are and just float around issues trying to fatten up their personal piggy banks....

[AuctionMan]

I called my senator (Sununu) to express my displeasure with his vote in committee and also e-mailed him to encourage him to change his vote when it comes before the full Senate. I received a USPS-mail letter from him explaining that he opposes Net Neutrality and he's not changing his vote. It was full of the typical "not thinking even one step into the future" stuff that I see everywhere these days.

If he opposes it surely that is the right vote isn't it, the net neutrality bill should be opposed should it not?

[golden14]

a.) this post is IS NOT ADSENSE NEWS
b.) my response isn't political, anti-semitisim, racist etc and thus Mr moderator it will hopefully be allowed to stand.
c.) Every e-mail, phone call,mobile call in the UK is recorded, I know this for a fact (AND NOBODY HAD BETTER GO THERE!!!!), not ideal? No, but if it means we can all fly today without worrying, then to my mind then that's the job done, end of story, it makes me sick about these mothers who complain at having to taste their baby's bottles milk? why? Why not I say?

[Sbabb]

will this is anyway affect the UK ISP's such as BT, PIPEX etc ?

The Net Neutrality bill is designed to modify another bill. The bill it would have modified effectively gives U.S. internet carriers the legal right to charge web sites for traffic service levels (among other things.) Obviously U.S. laws don't extend to the UK, but the effect of them certainly does.

Imagine that your web sites are hosted at a medium-sized web host. The host either doesn't want to or is unable to pay these "service level" fees to Comcast, Adelphia, Roadrunner, and the other big U.S. home internet providers. Those providers would be within their rights to limit bandwidth to your web host, which limits bandwidth to your web sites. The hosts that pay the bandwidth ransom (OK, I'm not too biased, am I?) get full speed traffic. The hosts that don't are slower. We don't know how much slower. They could make it very noticable, if they wanted. Like the difference between broadband and a 28.8K modem, for example.

There are other possiblities, too. They may decide to limit bandwidth based on what type of protocol traffic has. All of a sudden you could find that your VOIP telephone doesn't work well with people who are using a certain ISP. Why? Well, maybe your VOIP service is a competitor to their VOIP service. That already happened in 2004 at one North Carolina ISP. They blocked Vonage VOIP. The FCC intervened and made them unblock it then, but if this law makes it legal to do that, who knows?

So if getting traffic from people in America is important, that could impact you. Of course I don't know if the U.S. internet providers would be allowed to levy their bandwidth fees on non-U.S. sites.

The senator I contacted has received considerable campaign donations from the telecom industry. Over US$40000. It's not a big surprise that he voted for his corporate sponsor's best interests over those of his constituents.

If this passes, I hope that the senators sponsors in the telecom industry take it upon themselves to "help" the senators out a little more, too. My idea is that they don't want the senators' e-mail filled up with useless e-mail from angry voters who aren't happy with their vote on telecom bills. So as a "service" they reduce the bandwidth on those e-mails to the point where the receiving mail server simply keeps timing out when it tries to receive the message. (Holy cow! Content-based bandwidth limiting? OK, that's a stretch, but this is MY fantasy.) So without all of those bothersome e-mails from voters, the senators can continue blissfully shafting their constituents to benefit their corporate sponsors. They don't know anybody's unhappy, so they can't do any spin control. The next time they're up for reelection, they suddenly find themselves back home, looking for a real job. One would hope they'd know better than to try to start an internet business.


Scott

[ricklomas]

I assume this is some sort of constructive spamming done by either a script or someone who doesn't realise they are making themselves look like a tw@t.
This article is just copied from http://adsense.blogspot.com/2006/06/letter-from-eric-schmidt-ceo.html
:mad:

[ricklomas]

I still don't see the point of just copying an article from the web and posting here.
BTW what's a 'sky slope'?

[mann3r]

http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/2006/12/08/congress-closes-telco-bill-dies-on-the-vine/

[Diddy1]

http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/2006/12/08/congress-closes-telco-bill-dies-on-the-vine/

Good job to everyone who help out guys we did it!

Thank You