Well seeing as how Jordan already went on a tirade on EA I’ll take on the Government.

For those of you who are unaware, on the 21st of December 2010, the FCC granted the Federal Government the right to Regulate the internet.  This rant is about said ruling.

First off I fully support the idea of net neutrality in its purest sense: no Corporation or Government should limit access to any site in order to force a profit or stifle an idea.

The idea that people were worried about was that some Internet Service Provider would limit your internet access to only their version of a web page, lets say you want to go to “Friend-face” the (mythical) premier internet networking site.  But the ISP says “Nope, you have to pay extra for that package, but on your standard package here’s our version which you are free to use.”

Now has that happened at all?  No. Really not in the whole history of the internet? Why?  Because there would be a huge backlash from an extremely internet savvy generation of people. Namely you, our readers, and people of like age and mind.

But did that stop the fear mongering? Nope…  So those people who feared so much for their ability to visit “Friend-face”… wrote their Government Rep and demanded them to take action… Big mistake… These Politicians just lost their jobs and a new group is coming in (for better or worse I guess we’ll see) but those fearful consumers just handed these Politicians (too bad you can’t hear the venom in my voice when I say that word) an easy way to pad their already stuffed coffers with more lobby money.

“Yes Sir or Madam I can help you” exclaims the Politician. (Visualize a cartoon where his eyes turn into dollar signs)…

Just think about it this way… you just asked a group of people who think that the internet is a, and I quote, “Series of tubes” to write the rules governing its use… Duh duh duH! You feel that inner retard coming out yet? Yeah even he thinks that was stupid…

So here’s the skinny on the new rules passed by a government group that gives the Government the right to regulate the internet… (the Gov gave itself the right to regulate something I thought they were limited to only certain things? Oh well they must know best…)

The FCC, Federal Communications Commission, voted 3 to 2 that the Federal Government should have the right to regulate the internet.  This ruling stated that ISPs are not allowed to interfere with any legal web traffic… of course they get to decide what is legal and what isn’t.  Now they also came to an agreement with the ISPs that they should be able to charge varying rates based on the speed of data transfer… Ok here’s where it gets bad… Also it expressly allows for providers to charge based on the amount of data consumed.

What does this mean?  It means that the Government just told the ISPs that they can charge us a base rate determined by speed and also a variable rate based on how much data we access.  Scared yet? (Yoda voice) You should be…

Lets say that they limit us to 3 gigs of data a day.  Thats nearly 100 gigs a month… sounds like a lot right?  Well any avid gamer has noticed how large many of these games have gotten, lets use Battlefield Bad Company 2 as an example.  Its nearly a six gig download. So you either better have a very accurate data transfer counting program running the moment you click that little button to open the browser or you’re going to get charged overage rates on three gigs plus of info. Thats an overage of 100% on a relatively small sized game. Imagine downloading Civ 5, off Steam with a plan like that.  It would take over a week just to download the game without going into a data overage that would cost you dearly.

So in protecting our ability to view content they, the Government have given permission to limit how much content we can view via increased costs… This has huge implications for the online gaming businesses like steam not to mention things like Netflix.

Love watching your movies on the tv through your Wii, X360, or PS3? Get ready to pay for it or to limit your viewing based on what you can afford to spend every month.  How about you WoW or EVE fanatics?  You may have paid for the whole month of play time but unfortunately you can’t even afford to log on due to data transfer rate charges.

The fact of the matter is that Government is a big, clumsy, heavy, and slow stick except when there is a Headline to be made or pockets to fill…

So what happens when some Democrat Congressman decides that you have to go to sensitivity classes because you pwned some noob and rubbed it in a little hard or decides that violent multiplayer games have to be banned? Any one remember Tipper Gore? Or how about if a Republican Senator decides that certain unmentioned websites of questionable moral standards shouldn’t be allowed?  How happy will we be when the Political weasels dig their claws deeper and deeper into the internet?  This is a Pandora’s box we should not have opened.

None of this may come to pass… and I pray it doesn’t… but instead of relying on this Congress which is disapproved of by 80% of people maybe we should stand up for ourselves and tell the Government and the ISPs to:

“KEEP YOUR GRUBBY HANDS OFF TEH INTERNETS!”

Read more @ The Wallstreet Journal

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