Digital Home Thoughts: This is not my beautiful Internet

"It's alarmist, over-the-top pro-net-neutrality propaganda, sure, but this chart goes a long way to explaining why the IT dude at the office wears that "All Packets are Created Equal" shirt to work every Thursday: because tiered ISPs are scary."

Net neutrality has been fought over for quite some time now, with both sides firmly entrenched in their ideas. Gizmodo has put up a picture of a theoretical pricing chart of how an ISP could charge for Internet access if net neutrality were to be shot down. The chart does look a lot like the current pricing chart I see from my cable television provider so it definitely has that plausible feeling to it. For me, being pro-net-neutrality, my bigger concern with what is implied in this chart, is that ISPs would start to revert back to the old days of AOL and CompuServe, where ISPs are no longer just pipes to the Internet, but content gateways, nudging you to only use certain websites. The chart is basically an advertisement for only the major companies. This would not only enforce a static Internet, but put new concepts and ideas from upstart companies at a severe disadvantage. Dark days indeed.