I'm Not Internet-Neutral

I'm going to come out and say it right here, at the risk of having this blog blocked by Internet service providers, or ISPs, later on:  I am opposed to the change of rules proposed by Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler that is coming up for a vote by the FCC board next Thursday (May 15).

The details of this "reform" are complicated, but the bottom line is that ISPs will have the ability to pick and choose who gets faster connections and downloads on the Internet and will have the ability to charge a fee for faster speeds. This means that political Web sites with biases unpalatable to big business, small start-ups, and, yes, small-time bloggers like myself could and likely will be affected.

Now, maybe my own ISP won't block me or slow me down, but another ISP - yours, maybe - might.  If you have an Internet service provider whose CEO doesn't want little guys like me cluttering up space that could be given to a blog sponsored and/or owned by a media conglomerate with lots of loot, well, you might not get to read me anymore, or possibly wait for longer than a second - much longer - for my blog to appear, in which case you might not want to bother waiting.  Personally, I don't think any of my political biases are going to get me blocked; not only am I a little guy, I'm too little to cause trouble.  But other progressives with blogs could be strategically priced out.

Yeah, I signed all the petitions urging Wheeler not to go forward with presenting this lame-brained scheme to the FCC board, but it's not likely to have an effect on him.  Not only does Wheeler support this Internet-neutrality-killing proposal, so does President Obama, despite his pre-presidential 2007 position to the contrary.  All we can do is that the FCC board votes down and kills this proposal before it gets any farther.