If it was as the NY Times piece (which seems to be fairly heavy on editorializing and weak on facts for a straight news piece) describes -- "will allow a company like Comcast or Verizon to negotiate separately with each content company [...] and charge different companies different amounts for priority service." However, the other reports on this have not described it that way -- e.g., the WSJ report [1] (which also hit HN today) says that the new rules to be proposed "would allow broadband providers to give some traffic preferential treatment, so long as such arrangements are available on 'commercially reasonable' terms for all interested content companies."
Then again, this Reuters piece [2] says it won't address these types of agreements at all: "However, the rules are not expected to address the issue of interconnection, or agreements in which content companies pay network providers for faster access to their sites or services."
Maybe we should wait until the rules are actually released for public comment before freaking out over the specific details (about which there are many conflicting stories.)
Honestly, hell no, we need to raise hell now. If they're even thinking about this as a realistic possibility, the entire notion needs to be burned from their minds. Purged.
Edit: Normally, I'm an arbiter of the 'wait and see' variety, but this is such a horrible, unethical, undemocratic, un-American idea that it cannot possibly for a moment be considered.
> Honestly, hell no, we need to raise hell now. If they're even thinking about this as a realistic possibility, the entire notion needs to be burned from their minds. Purged.
I'm just saying it will be more effective to react to the actual proposal when it is actually proposed and we know what it actually is. We have at least three conflicting news stories from anonymous sources supposedly close to the process, which suggests that at least two are mistaken (if not outright lies).
Something actually will be posted with concrete terms for public comment, and that's the time to respond to the specific content -- now, its probably better to talk about what should be in any new Open Internet order, rather than flying off the handle at rumors of what will be in the next Open Internet order.
Especially since one of the reasons extreme versions often get leaked ahead of actual proposals is to get activists to blow their top about something worse than the actual proposal, so that they aren't taken seriously when the actual proposal (bad in many of the same ways, but substantively different from what the activists have spent some period of time complaining about on the basis that it was the forthcoming proposal) is released.
Then again, this Reuters piece [2] says it won't address these types of agreements at all: "However, the rules are not expected to address the issue of interconnection, or agreements in which content companies pay network providers for faster access to their sites or services."
Maybe we should wait until the rules are actually released for public comment before freaking out over the specific details (about which there are many conflicting stories.)
[1] http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702304...
[2] http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/23/us-usa-fcc-interne...