""Some of the big ISPs, who never paid for the creation of the internet in the first place, have decided why shouldn't they grab ownership of a public resource that was developed with public tax monies, just like the big pharmas seized ownership of drugs developed by federal grant money, and the mining and oil companies have seized public park lands that have resources on them. Now they want to take over the internet, redesign the infrastructure to support multiple tiers of privilege, and charge you by the kilobyte to download files and by the message to send email - just like Compuserve did via its own private network (where it was fair since it was theirs) back in the 1980s."

Thats not exactly true. While they had little to do with the creation of the internet, they had EVERYTHING to do with the expansion of the network. Ie. they own the fiber. Like it or not it was the bigguns (Qwest, Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, Etc..) That went on a crazy spending spree in the 90s to expand thier data infrastructure capacity and speed. They put up the capital and i can see thier poitn that they want a more signifigant retunr on that investment - especially since the ones that once relied mainly on voice profits supplemented by corporate data contracts are getting edged out of the voice market by VOIP which they themselves arent providing. Secondly the plans they are proposing from wht ive heard wouldnt require a reworking of infrastructure. Packets would simply be traked with a software based system that allows them to flag them as say VOIP, or VIDEO, or EMAIL, or HTTPREQUEST or what have you. They woudl then apply specific charges to data depending on type, origin destination and bandwidth.

That said i dont agree with it at all. Persoanlly i think now that the internet is a mainstay of culture and community - i would even argue a necessity at some level - i think theyve lost all right to excessive profits, or per packet/packet type tiered pricing. The benefit of a neutral network is more important and beneficial to society than thier profit margin. On top of this i totally disagree because i as a consumer dont have a choice over what netowrks the data im requesting travels to get to me. Like lets say im trying to access www.tribe.net. There are a neare infinite number of routes the data exhcahnge to take on every request, and lord only knows who alls networks that data is apssing through. If i dont have the ability to control my routing and choose my cost, or at least see that cost - then youre forcing me to pay fess i may not agree to and theres no way for me to make an informed choice on what network to use.

Lastly, assumign they do succeed in doing this, i think they would quickly find that if this trickles down to the consumer in a way that is something like:

=========
DATA TRANSFER
129mb @ 128k/s
VIDEO
www.gagonmycock.com

.05¢/mb
$6.40
==============

on an invoice , they are going to lose alot of revenue real quick in one of 2 ways.

1.) Peopel will stop using the internet so much for this type of transfer/service.
2.) After a certain period of time consumer outrage will be so great congress will have to legislate, and given the probable climate, will be VERY harsh.

Actually its not technically a monopoly. Theres plenty of comepetition between telecoms... in fact its cutthroat right now. This is one of the reasons for this push. Now if all the telcos got together and decided they were goign to arbitraily raise (or lower for that matter) prices for data services that would be an antitrust violation.

"Unless I'm mistaken, the internet isn't really free anywhere. ISP get paid by comsumers, they pay for bandwidth and I know telecoms must be getting some sort of usage fee out of it. So somewhere down the line, even if you are using free wifi at starbucks or something, someone is paying up. I doubt Google or Yahoo! really use the internet for free. But, that is really beyond what I know.
What they seem to have a problem with is WHAT gets transferred across the wires. With only the introduction of broadband the ways the internet is used has multiplied many times over, without really requiring anything more from these telcoms other than the broadband, and boy do I pay more for broadband. An especially sore point would be Vonage. Free long distance over the internet with none of the benefit to the telcoms. It cuts into their profits. I'm not sure what Google is doing on their lines that would piss them off.
The way I see it , we pay for bandwidth. What we do inside of it, barring breaking laws, is our business. They provide the tools, we provide the content. Charging for what kind of content we choose to use would be like charging more for electricity beyond how much you use, but also what kind of appliances you plug in. Perhaps I'm off the mark here, but it seems overly intrusive and very complicated."

No youre not really that far off the mark. Youre correct, EVERYONE pays for bandwidth in some form or another currently. Youre also right about the main gist of it... they are sore because all this traffic is passing thier network and beyond the bandwidth fees the people connect dirctly to thier network pay (For instance a user with Verizon paying for DSL, or a Datacenter paying the lease on a T3 pipe to a Qwest backbone) they are missing out. They arent getting a share of the profits from the transient traffic (ie. the file im uploading to my webserver might be hitting 5 or 6 hops on whoevers network to ge there). Now they claim that the traffic is soo great that they need to be able to expand capaity, upgrade, etc.. and to do that they need capital, but that they are losing revenues that would help provide this capital because they arent capturing a direct fee for every packet that graces thier network. Further, they claim that without the ability to somehow put int o play supply/demand/cost to limit the amoutn of transfer across networks (ie. Fast lane for "premium" subscribers, slow lane for "basic" subscribers) it causes more losses in terms of maintenece, capacity upgrades, management etc..

While i see the logic in all thier arguments, i stll call "bullshit" on 'em. Bottom line is they are losing to the competition and trying to come up with all kinds of schemes to save thier asses. Same as the music industry really in that its not Priracy thats cause huge losses for major labels - its thier own contempt for the consumers (cranking out britney spears clones left and right and spening 1mil to CONVINCE people they are awesome an dbuy thier record) and thier complete failure to embrace technology and convert thier old business model into something viable in todays market place. Likewise with the the network owners, they are too big and too diversified. They need to choose what they want to to do, focus on the network, or focus on providing access. To do both you have to be a behemoth, and those arent going to last very long whit the direction technology is going.

"Google is also reported to own a hefty amount of dark fiber."

Ehhh? Is this liek dark matter??? Zero Point Memory? What!?!

"I fucking loathe the telcom industry, I would rather deal with the shit of the almost-as-corrupt cable providers like Adelphia or Comcast than swallow the ridiculous attempts by the telco's to push DSL into the fucked up cellphone-style years-long contracts model. Their service is so abyssmal as it is, and now they're forcing people into signing away their free choice for a year? The cost of owning a basic telephone landline + the cost of DSL is way more than cable modem service where I live, and I have no need for a landline, the bastards are already gouging me every month on my cellphone bill."

Amen brother, amen.