Keep it free...

...and demand that it BE free.

Why am I not surprised that the CEO of AT&T (among other greedy telecommunications bastards) wants the world to pay for website access? Because when you are a horribly mismananged humongous irrelevant company, the best you can do is try to get money wherever you can find it.

According to the NYT:

Last year, the chief executive of what is now AT&T sent shock waves through cyberspace when he asked why Web sites should be able to "use my pipes free." Internet service providers would like to be able to charge Web sites for access to their customers. Web sites that could not pay the new fees would be accessible at a slower speed, or perhaps not be accessible at all.

A tiered Internet poses a threat at many levels. Service providers could, for example, shut out Web sites whose politics they dislike. Even if they did not discriminate on the basis of content, access fees would automatically marginalize smaller, poorer Web sites.

Obviously, this idea is loathed by everybody in the world, except for the greedy bastards, so hopefully it will not come to pass. However, they are wily and they have tons of money:

The companies fighting net neutrality have been waging a misleading campaign, with the slogan "hands off the Internet," that tries to look like a grass-roots effort to protect the Internet in its current form. What they actually favor is stopping the government from protecting the Internet, so they can get their own hands on it.

So be aware of the ruse and don't let idiot companies like AT&T push you around.

By the way, that British guy Tim, who invented the internet, shouldn't he be like Man of the Century or something?