For this Notebook entry, I am simply posting the full text of a message I sent to battleforthenet.com. I would certainly encourage everyone to spread awareness of the upcoming vote.
Hello, I’m The Wildcat [ Jason Holder ] of bwldevelopment.com. We’re a site dedicated to creativity and gaming.
As a very small site, we support Net Neutrality because without it, we would have an exceedingly difficult time drawing any new viewers to our site. Our web host is fairly small and our various accounts do not have much pull. Our site is based around YouTube videos, Comic Pages, games & modifications, and other content.
Neither we, nor our hosting service providers would have the money to pay for a “fast lane”. It’s a charge that I know would eventually be passed on to us as consumers. T
hat’s basic economics.
With our content slower to load then other such sites, we face being skipped over regularly. Even if these companies didn’t eventually “slow down” the regular service, we would face most potential viewers, members, and users passing over our site due to our loading times when compared to a paying “fast lane” site or web host. That is simple business marketing and psychology.
If you don’t have the resources to pay for a fast lane, you will not compete.
Worse, as an AT&T user myself, I have faced DSL caps in recent months that make it difficult to upload or download content without crossing their 150 GB bandwidth limit. I face $10 per each additional 50 GB every month now. When I started using their service, I chose the biggest, most “unlimited” package. These limits showed up some time later, but my price has continued to increase over the years. I pay more now for a far more limited service.
I can see new restrictions like this appearing on websites and content very easily. Want to compete, pay for the Premium or ULTRA package. But be careful, use up too much bandwidth and we’ll need to upgrade your account for a few dollars to get you through. Of course, you could always just go back to the slow lane for the rest of the period.
As it stands, I personally pay for BWL and each of our hosted game servers each month. I cannot afford to pay a surcharge on the website and / or our hosted game servers to keep them competitive. Let alone, collectively pay for surcharges on each of these.
We at BWL really, really don’t want to find ourselves at these companies mercy as to which sites we can view without service drag down – a likely outcome of “premium” or “fast lane” access over a period of time. Further, we do not wish to pay for faster access to the internet to even hope to be a competitive website.
It all feels a bit like “Pay up or take your chances. Oh, and carry these weights while your at it.” No thanks. We’d rather the web stay equal and “provide” at least a chance to be competitive.
