Artists are not happy with congress not taking action to protect their interests with the net neutrality bill it seems.
http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/2006/06/13/indie-rock-revolution-fueled-by-net-neutrality/Toomey and Bracy ask a series of poignant questions to draw a chilling parallel between the corruption of commercial radio by major broadcast companies and plans by corporations such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast to seize control of the Internet:
What would happen if Sony paid Comcast so that sonymusic.com would run faster than iTunes or, more important, faster than cdbaby.com (where over 135,000 indie artists sell their music)? Would a new form of Internet payola emerge, with large Internet content providers striking business deals with the dominant Internet service providers? How would that affect indie artists? Would it shut down the burgeoning new economy and replace it with one that looks a lot like our closed media market?
“The large broadband providers insist these concerns are based in paranoid fantasy. What they have to realize, and what Congress has to address, is that the connection between radio consolidation, payola and these debates is real. With the passage of the Telecommunications Act in 1996, Congress essentially handed the radio industry over to huge corporations focused solely on the bottom line, with particularly devastating results for local music communities across the country. Now some of the same congressional leaders who oppose strong network-neutrality provisions are also calling on the FCC to lift local radio-ownership caps, which would allow Clear Channel and others to purchase even more stations.”
Toomey and Bracy call upon Congress to expressly state the principle of net neutrality. “anything short of that will simply lead to a de facto form of Internet payola.”
Long live free market ? It seems a pity that politicians abuse their power as legislators after accepting "donations" from vested interests
