Lament of the Mind

wilwheaton:

Comcast is considering imposing monthly usage limits for all of its Internet customers.

David Cohen, executive vice president of America’s largest cable company, predicted at a conference Wednesday that in five years’ time, the company will have “a usage-based billing model rolled out across its footprint.”

That means Comcast customers could only consume a certain amount of data before facing extra charges for going over their limits.

Internet should be delivered like water. Can you imagine your water utility deciding that it’s going to deliver a certain amount of water to your home, and then shut it off after an arbitrary limit, unless you pay more? What about delivering water faster or at better quality to people who pay more for it? It’s unthinkable.

Companies like Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon and AT&T are using publicly-funded infrastructure (in addition to whatever the companies have built themselves) and should not be allowed to act in a way that’s counter to the public interest.

People need to speak out against this en masse if we ever want to see any real change come. ISPs are greedy evil fucks and need stopped.

Call your congressman and leave the FCC comments telling them you don’t want the Comcast-Time Warner merger to go through. Push for Title II reclassification of ISPs as common carriers. Make noise and share this bullshit with everyone you know and have them make noise too. We can stop this but we have to work together.