Did Internet Founders Actually Anticipate Paid, Prioritized Traffic?

[owen at delong.com (Owen DeLong)]

On Sep 16, 2010, at 11:44 AM, George Bonser wrote:

>> Your statement misses the point, which is, *who* gets to decide what
>> traffic is prioritized? And will that prioritization be determined by
>> who is paying my carrier for that prioritization, potentially against
>> my own preferences? 
> 
> I would say that with standard "run of the mill" consumer service, the
> provider decides.  If you want something custom, that would be
> reasonable to offer, but you should be expected to pay a bit more for
> that in order to maintain the non-standard configuration.  Maintaining a
> different configuration for each user would be more expensive for the
> provider than a "cookie-cutter" solution that makes the internet a
> better experience for say 85% or more of the people out there.
> 
> G
> 
The point is that if the provider is deciding based on some third party
paying them and thus my neighbors are getting more bandwidth
than I am, not because they're paying more, but, because they're
choosing to use the services that bribed my provider, then that's
not a good thing.

Owen