End of Net Neutrality: Savior of newspapers?

I don't know if anyone here knows anything about Net Neutrality (I, for one, don't), but I ran across this site by a group called I Power: http://ipower.ning.com/netneutrality

They have been Net Neutrality (which, as far as I can tell, basically means keeping the Internet deregulated) advocates for awhile and are reporting that Internet Service Providers are currently negotiating to create a TV-like subscription setup for the Internet wherein you would pay, say, $29.99 for a basic package featuring the 60 most-popular Web sites, $39.99 for an advanced package that would expand the offerings to 200 or so sites or $49.99 to be able to blog and have access to 2,000+ sites. They say this changeover would happen around 2012. It's interesting stuff, though I have no clue whether there's any truth to it or not.

I'd be interested if anyone here knows anything about this, but I was also wondering, if true, what effect this would have on newspapers. The vast majority of papers would have no use for their Web sites because nobody would be able to visit them, thus eliminating the Internet as a viable source of income or information distribution for all but the biggest companies. So we might be right back where we started with print, pre-Internet era.

But you have to think that one of those big 60 or so sites, with all the hits they're now getting, would do classifieds, thus continuing to sap that revenue stream for papers. And without classifieds or any Internet revenue whatsoever, could that be enough to kill many papers completely?

I don't know the answers but was curious if anybody else had thoughts on this.

 

If, and that's a huge if, that's true, I think there would be some major anti-trust considerations.

 

Certainly seems that way, Rosie. I agree.

Can the ISPs feasibly argue their product (the Internet) should be regulated and distributed in the same way as TV? I really don't know.

If they could, I wonder what the effect would be on the newspaper industry.

 

The newspaper industry? Who cares! What about the porn industry!!!

 

My wife promises to check it out tomorrow. Her old boss was very involved with net neutrality...

 

Won't someone please think of the children?

 

FIXED

 

You mean like R. Kelly?

 

I don't think you've got the plan right, Shifty.

From what I've read, the ISPs want to quit offering flat rates no matter what your usage. They want to do it kind of like cell phones did a few years ago, where you pay X per month for X bandwidth and then pay extra for each kb over that. It's designed to hit downloaders and movie/TV watchers with higher fees.

It's a horrible idea.

 

mlb.tv was fun while it lasted.

 

All it would take would be one internet provider to keep the current format and all the rest would fail.

 

i'm not well-versed in net neutrality, but my limited understanding is that it is something that would be legislated, so ISPs wouldn't have the option of saying, well, we're not going to do it.