Dear Meg (Whitman), I got your Call to Action, and I have a few suggestions.

What makes the Internet the world’s most important and influential medium to date? It’s the content, stupid.

While I don’t condone spamming, even if it’s for a reportedly good cause, I don’t think you quite understand how important it is to prevent the cable and phone companies from instituting a tiered Internet. If you think this is a skirmish between “a pack of spoiled zillionaires fighting another pack of spoiled zillionaires,” think again. This affects the ENTIRE Internet and anyone who uses it for anything.

As long as we have a neutral Internet, anyone can access any service provided on it. On a tiered Internet, those who provide content will have to pay DSL and cable companies (who, as Meg accurately stated, control access for about 95% of Internet users) for the privilege of reaching their customers. Since you appear to run this emailbattles.com site, you probably have access to its web stats. Go ahead and take a look at the section that tells you how many of your readers use which ISPs. I’m looking at the web stats for one of my sites right now and with the exception of AOL, cable and DSL companies comprise the entire “top 10″ list. How would you feel if all of these companies approached you and said, “You know, a large portion of your visitors come through us. Pay us a reasonable fee and we probably won’t block their access to your site.” If you say “no” to enough of them, you’ll probably find that your readership has shrunken to the point that it’s not worthwhile keeping the site up any longer.

I agree that legislating the Internet is bad. But the DSL and cable giants are actively spending millions of dollars to end and permanently kill net neutrality. If we can’t get a law in place that illegalizes tiered Internet extortion, we’ll soon find megacorporations like Comcast and Verizon controlling not just the people’s access to the Internet, but the content that’s delivered to them too.

Beware: I received the exact same email from Ms. Whitman, or, I thought I did. When I looked at the message’s HTML source code, I found that all of the links pointed to a non-ebay domain (unfortunately, I deleted the message, so I don’t remember what the domain was). Phishers have already cloned it, so DON’T CLICK THE LINKS.

Jeez BJ, how can you be so short-sighted…but then again you ARE an American. I live and work in an Asian country, and I am a Brit. I sit over here watching the arguments and counter-arguments over Net Neutrality and I can’t believe how stupid you all are. The fact is, the Internet can’t be controlled as the US Telcos would like. They can only control the US. But the rest of the world is a much BIGGER PLACE fellas. The Euros are setting up their own internet to challenge you. Others will follow, and soon you will be sidelined, just as you are getting marginalized in the world through your horrible ‘leadership’.

The fact is, we do want to see a free and open internet. Meg is right and you are wrong BJ. If she makes money off the internet, then she has a vested interest in keeping it free and open. What’s wrong with that?

What’s your vested interest? A piddling little rant that probably doesn’t make much more than the beer and peanuts you probably down on the couch as you come up with asinine ideas to write about.

Hi Mark.
Don’t drink, but I do like cashews. How kind of you to notice.

No dog in this fight, either… beyond knowing how politicians operate and how naive billionaire geeks can be when dealing with them.

Why on earth would a Brit living in Asia, both of which you note are building their own internets so they they don’t need us, care what self-marginalizing stupid Americans do with their silly little internet?

Try as I might, I am unable to find anything in your comment beyond insults, prejudice, and empty slogans. But that doesn’t make all Brits air headed, backward, or an embarrassment to all things Anglo-Saxon.

I’m thinking that this malady is tightly constrained.

Marc,

Name-calling isn’t usually the best way to make a point… But you don’t have a point, do you?

Had you taken the time to digest this article before unleashing your id, you might have noted that BJ isn’t endorsing a tiered Internet. He’s suggesting that it might be prudent to hold off on legislating until there’s an actual problem to legislate against. Every new law has consequences, both intended and otherwise, so it’s best to wait until the scope of the issue is fully understood.

Too often, our representatives simply want to look like they’re doing something, and we end up with bad laws that we pay for for years to come.

I’m glad that I have British friends, or I might assume that all Brits were ignorant, predjudiced a**holes, like yourself.

Sure, calling you a name undermined my point, but it sure felt good.

Hi Goodman.
Your reading comprehension would be an inspiration to those of Mark’s ilk… if they aspired to comprehension.

As Mark’s host, I refrained from describing my guest as a specific and odiferous part of the human anatomy (allthough I insist on spelling Mark’s name as it was likely printed on his birth certificate).

But it sure feels good seeing you do it.

wow, some stupid comments on here. Yeah, if you really think the big bad evil isp’s are gonna block your content, you really have been smoking the ganja a bit too much. That would be
A) Stupid
B) A Business Killer
C) Punishable by existing law
D) Covered in another provision of the TeleCom Reform act besides Net Neutrality.

And has anyone stopped to think about the “Tiered Internet” you keep complaining about? First, the tiers are what you have now, and faster. If they developed a new infrastructure for the bandwidth hogs and charged them extra to access that, so freaking what? They pay if they want and now they are off the other lane and free up bandwidth the rest can use. If you stay in the “slow lane” you are no worse off than you are now, in fact, you are probably better off since you no longer have to compete with the bandwidth hogs.

If NN passses, then you will only ever have that same single slow lane but you will also have to compete with the bandwidth hogs.

But eBay rairly if EVER uses their email system to warn the members of the Scams and Fake Second Chance Offers!

Hi Doc.
Who could trust it?

BJ, your correct, Zillionaires will be unaffected by a tiered system and they all have hidden agenda’s somewhere. Its us little users who will be squeezed for for capitalistic greed. We shouldn’t waste our typing on Meg or Europeans who want to matter but just cant. We need to mobilize and write our congressmen and vote OUT the ones who vote agains the people. Our real enemies are corporate lobbiests. Fight for what is right!

OK, BJ, I was a bit tough on you. But, you see, it was the flippant tone in your post that got up my nose on a bad hair day. Ignoring a problem, as you suggested, is not going to make it go away.

The fact is, the telcos are doing all they can to control our internet experience. That Meg cared enough to do something about it shows she is a better net citizen than those who want to bury their heads in the sand and pretend the problem is not there.

So what if Meg is a gazillionaire? She is another net citizen concerned enough to care about what happens…for all of us. And of course I care too. I make my living off the internet. I spend perhaps too much time surfing the internet finding websites like yours to read

My point was that unless we join together to fight for our web, we will only have ourselves to blame when it is controlled by big business.

Isn’t that weird how she never contacted you before and now suddenly she is asking for help? This is actually the way to help eBay and consequently her at the end. She does not care about the internet users. Like she has not other things to do in her life but suddenly she started caring for average people. Please!

Total absurd! Heads up for http://www.oltiby.com