That’s what you’ll be hearing in once Net Neutrality is dead, voted down by Congress. Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, and all the other broadband providers will dance over its grave as they begin to charge for fast loading of websites.

The Federal Trade Commission today dealt a serious blow to “Net Neutrality” proponents as it issued a report dismissive of claims that the government needs to get involved in preserving the fairness of networks in the United States.

The report, entitled “Broadband Connectivity Competition Policy,” was drafted in response to growing concerns about broadband competitiveness and network neutrality. The FTC intends the report to be consulted as a guideline by policy makers and legislators, but it has no binding force. Nevertheless, the report’s findings are yet another sign that US government agencies are not particularly interested in the network neutrality problem right now. In fact, the FTC is essentially saying that they can find no evidence of a problem to begin with.

In a statement, Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras said, “This report recommends that policy makers proceed with caution in the evolving, dynamic industry of broadband Internet access, which generally is moving toward more - not less - competition. In the absence of significant market failure or demonstrated consumer harm, policy makers should be particularly hesitant to enact new regulation in this area.”

The “hands-off” approach is the approach preferred by the telecoms, who will also be delighted that Chairman Majoras cleared them of any wrong-doing in their network management so far. Nevertheless, the FTC says that it will continue to monitor the situation, as will the FCC and DOJ. Perhaps more encouraging for proponents of such legislation, the FTC says that increased awareness of the debate will help them with monitoring the need for government regulation.

Source.

In case you missed it, Net Neutrality is the legislation that allows your site to load as fast as Google or Yahoo. Once this legislation is gone, certain (read: corporate) websites will be able to pay to get in the “fast lane”, to load faster than competitor sites.

So, essentially, how fun it is to have your own domain name? Yeah, that just went down the toilet. Unless you’re rich and can pay for it to load fast. And any thoughts of making money or continuing to make as much money with your site? Kiss those bye-bye, too. With the Federal Trade Commission saying that there is no need for legislation to keep the internet free of bullies who steal the skinny kids’ lunch money…you just got pwned, individual site owner.

Mari’s question is: did you call any senators or do anything about it? If not, time to try again! The odds may be against us, but there are more of us than there are corporate interest groups.

One really simple thing you can do is put this banner on your site.

Just copy this code:
<a href="http://www.savetheinternet.com/"> <img src="http://www.savetheinternet.com/images/blog_image.jpg" alt="Save the Internet: Click here" border="0" /></a>

Which is direct-linkable from the Save the Internet site (Mari just cleaned it up a little) and put it on your site!

Quoting Mari’s own Net Neutrality post in September:

Sign up your blog and write about this, link to their site, add them on Myspace, pass out flyers, call your senators, sign the petition…do anything you can.

Don’t be one of those people who says “Oh, how awful! That’s not right,” then sits back and does nothing. Do something. Anything.

Come on, SAVE THE FREAKING INTERNET. It’s not a joke, it’s not a hoax, this is real.