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From: Michael Fischer <michael@fishworks.us> Hello, Thank you for the opportunity to contribute my personal opinions. While I do suspect that foreign interests could bring some really good insights into how the Internet should be "run", I strongly believe that the base line of operation should continue to be controlled by the United States. By this I mean the DNS roots, and associated systems. Network Neutrality is vital, and MUST be maintained in order to facilitate continued innovation. Essentially, through lack of regulation congress is delegating the authority regulation to smaller self-interested parties. The argument that website operators are getting a "free ride" is handily defeated by the observation that both the website operator AND the consumer both pay for the same packet transmitted. Effectively every packet that is transmitted on the Internet is already paid for twice. The telco's and other bandwidth providers are in a commodity market and they are not happy about it, and they seek to make the connection have a value that is NOT inherent in the product. The value of the connection lies in what is connected, not in the wire itself. By allowing the bandwidth providers to artificially inflate the value of a particular connection congress is effectively allowing for balkanization of the Internet, and the experience of the user. For instance, consumer with ISP (A) has no problems at all with www.moviestreamsitenotarealname.com but another user at another location can simply not get the site to work well. Why? Because of contracts, payments, and exclusive deals. Now let's assume that the mentioned website is a small operator with an extremely innovative product? What isn't the consumer entitled to the right to make the decision as to which movie streaming site they use? I resent strongly the idea that a company that did NOT pay for the supposed network upgrades (the consumer does) should have the explicit right to tell me what other companies I may choose to do business with! Sincerely, |