A blog post by Tim Wu, inventor of the term “network neutrality”, comments on the implications on the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, who have “proposed a new rule that […] permits and encourages […] broadband carriers acting as gatekeepers and charging Web sites a payola payment to reach customers through a “fast lane.”[…]”
“This is what one might call a net-discrimination rule, and, if enacted, it will profoundly change the Internet as a platform for free speech and small-scale innovation. It threatens to make the Internet just like everything else in American society: unequal in a way that deeply threatens our long-term prosperity.”
[…] “The new rule gives broadband providers what they’ve wanted for about a decade now: the right to speed up some traffic and degrade others. (With broadband, there is no such thing as accelerating some traffic without degrading other traffic.) We take it for granted that bloggers, start-ups, or nonprofits on an open Internet reach their audiences roughly the same way as everyone else. Now they won’t. They’ll be behind in the queue, watching as companies that can pay tolls to the cable companies speed ahead. The motivation is not complicated. The broadband carriers want to make more money for doing what they already do. […]”
http://m.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/04/the-end-of-net-neutrality.html