Will Comcast Force You to Pay More to Watch YouTube?
What would you think if you received an email from Comcast, or whatever internet service provider you use, telling you that if you want to watch YouTube videos from now on you’ll have to pay an extra premium each month? Think it will never happen? Think again.The war over who owns the Internet in the US, the public or the internet services providers, is on. Depending on who wins this war you may end up paying more next year or in years to come to visit the same websites you visit now. If you’re a small business and you want to show video on your Website you could be out of luck depending on who wins this war.
In our opinion the good guys on this one are the FCC, Google, Amazon, Common Cause, and others who argue for a concept known as net neutrality. On the other side are Comcast AT&T, Verizon etc. who want to control what you can view and how fast you can do that. You can imagine the advantage for a cable company like Comcast. They can choose to show their shows to their subscribers while blocking YouTube or other services.
Recently, the US Court of Appeals decided that the FCC can not regulate cable giant Comcast from slowing traffic to a particular website. Today it’s Bittorrent tomorrow it could be YouTube and the day after that you could find that visitors can’t access your website because they haven’t paid a premium or you haven’t paid off their ISP to allow them easy access to your site.
Some anti-regulation types will cry foul . They’ll say that this is just part of the Government’s take over, it’s attempt to socialize our country. In reality, our country’s infrastructure has always had government regulation and the fastest growing part of the US infrastructure is the Internet. Imagine a free for all in our airspace. What would your next flight look like if air traffic controllers were privatized and the price your airline paid determined your landing or take off position. Does that sound like a good thing?