Bye Bye to Net Neutrality

The House of Representatives yesterday passed up the opportunity to keep the Web neutral, essentially giving cable and phone companies the green light to charge users of their broadband services more depending on how many users are coming to their website.

This is kind of a big deal as phone companies will now be able to give certain favored (read "high-paying customers") versus those who don't pay quite as much (and thus causing them 'access problems').

Google, eBay, Amazon, IAC, etc all teamed up and lobbied Congressmen in the Nation's Capitol to try and get them to keep the Web neutral. Unforutnately, it didn't work. The phone/cable companies (i.e. AT&T, Comcast, PacBell, etc) essentially now control who sees what on the Web and at what price.

Our trip down the slippery slope continues.