The Nation warns of impending "End of the Internet"

As Ed Whitacre, chairman and CEO of AT&T, told Business Week in November, "Why should they be allowed to use my pipes? The Internet can't be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment, and for a Google or Yahoo! or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts!"

They're not using them for free! The people who pay you for internet access are paying for them. It's exactly as if he'd said "Phones can't be free in that sense ... for a pizza joint or taxi company to expect to receive calls for free is nuts!"

(What's more, I imagine Google pay plenty for their pipes to their peers as well)

On the other hand, lots of companies have been hoping for ages to get really fine-grained internet charges. Download caps used to be unheard-of, now they're pretty common. How much longer till you're paying more to download music than email? I know squat about "deep packet searching" but if it can't be fooled, that's certainly a bit grim.

Perhaps this is why Google's so keen to set up its own network? They've been buying huge amounts of unused fiber capacity.

Maybe this is too optimistic, but I feel the people who will be in a position of power in a decade or so are part of the above generation, and are going to feel ambivalent about trying to derail the original internet and try to force-feed this more controlled Internet #2 on us.

I've been hearing this story in various incarnations for over a decade, and since the initial ones, Internet #2 was already supposed to have arrived by yesteryear or earlier. it didn't happen.

i've read a little about the "net neutrality" thing. i don't know enough to have more than an uninformed opinion, but my uninformed opinion is that this stuff probably is alarmist, but it's a good kind of alarmism. because, i mean, of course the internet is going to change, along with the ways we use it. and of course people who see opportunities to consolidate money and power will try to take them. so it's good to have these fights at every step.

How can you own the pipes and be a narc at the same time, man?