We return with the next installment in our Deadly Sins of Net Neutrality series:

“Net Neutrality exempts the huge content providers from contributing to the next generation of the Internet”

So here’s the basic gist: Google, Amazon, eBay and friends have made billions upon billions through the Internet and they want to make billions more by providing you with all sorts of high-tech, high-bandwidth applications. Sounds great.

The catch? They don’t want to help pay for the expanded broadband infrastructure that these new technologies will require.

The good news for them? Net neutrality prevents the pipe owners from offsetting some of the investment costs by charging the big content providers more for massive bandwidth use.

The bad news for you? Guess who is going to be offsetting those expansion costs if net neutrality becomes law.

With Memorial Day weekend upon us, countless Americans are finalizing plans for the long weekend and are looking for that one essential of all travel: the perfect reading material. Well, we here at the Hands Off the Internet blog are here to help you out. Allow us to recommend the newest report from the Small Business & Enterprise Council’s 21st Century Small Business Policy Series, titled Telecommunications Policy Choices & Entrepreneurs. Don’t let the title deceive you – this paper is a page-turner, particularly the section dealing with so-called net neutrality and its potential effect on consumers and small business. The bottom line? According to the SBEC,

“The decade-long run on a pro-investment policy with respect to telecommunications and the Internet has created historical and positive changes, as well as unlimited opportunities for entrepreneurship and wealth creation. Now is not the time to be ratcheting up regulation or regulatory uncertainty when untold billions in new investment dollars will be needed to increase broadband capacity, modernize and upgrade the infrastructure of the Internet and incentivize entrepreneurs to develop more innovations that awe and serve consumers.”

We couldn’t agree more, and that was just two sentences. So save yourself the drudgery of plane rides and lounging on the beach by picking up your own copy [PDF]. We promise you’ll thank us for it later.

Continuing right along with the 7 Deadly Sins of Net Neutrality, we present deadly sin number two:

“Net neutrality raises subscription prices for everyone, whether they use the high-bandwidth services or just check their email and surf the web.”

Mr. McCurry addresses this exact issue in his speech when he states,

“It should be appallingly unfair that a senior citizen broadband user who looks at email once a day and occasionally checks the weather should have to pay the same rate as a user who’s constantly streaming videos and sharing MP3s.”

So not only would a once-a-day user have to pay the same rate as a high-bandwidth user, but that once-a-day user would end up paying more than his current rate in order to subsidize the costs of the high-bandwidth user. Apparently net neutrality supporters aren’t the advocates of fairness that they’d have you believe.

Hands Off The Internet co-chairman Mike McCurry recently spoke at Ohio University where he introduced the Seven Deadly Sins of Net Neutrality. We here at the HOTI blog are going to spend a little time explaining each of the Sins and what they mean for you, the consumer. So without further ado, let’s get started with Deadly Sin number one:

“Net neutrality would finance the future of the Internet by shifting all of the costs onto consumers.”

Don’t believe us? Then just take the content providers’ word for it. For instance, according to a news report this January, Amazon’s spokesman on net neutrality argued that,

“In today’s Internet model, content is not pushed to the consumer by big media companies, but pulled into the network by paying consumers requesting the content. Those consumers and not the content providers, he argued, should pay the price.”

Or maybe you’d believe Google, who has recently asserted,

“By selecting and pulling in content and applications over their broadband connections, the end user is the cost causer. […] Any new charges should be imposed on those end users.”

From where we’re sitting, it would appear that the big content providers are interested more in using net neutrality to protect their bottom line than to protect the consumer.

You may have to click fast to hear it, but our own Hands Off the Internet co-chairman Chris Wolf was on WTOP radio this week to talk about the future of the broadband, the coming bandwidth crunch, and how to pay for the next generation of the Internet.

Click here and look for the third item, or right-click here to download the segment as audio MP3.

In the new Legal Times, Bruce Fein offers us the highly insightful article,

How to Block Broadband: If you want to stall the network, please pass a host of state net neutrality laws.

Bruce argues that local neutrality laws would be not only detrimental to development and innovation but also unconstitutional. As he says:

These attacks are clearly pre-empted by the Constitution, federal statutes, and the open-market broadband policies of the Federal Communications Commission. They should also be pre-empted by wise policy and common sense: By balkanizing the regulation of national broadband service, these efforts risk either arresting important technological innovation or saddling subscribers with the costs of expanding the broadband network.

You can read Bruce’s entire article (and we suggest you do) at LegalTimes.com.

Before we forget, let us happily note that Portia Krebs from USTA has just launched a blog, appropriately titled NextGenWeb.

Be sure to check out her first post introducing the site, and then another one from her colleague, Bill Deere, about testifying before a House small business committee yesterday, addressing the subject of rural broadband — an important issue we’ve talked about here before.

This is an exciting development. In the fight for the Internet’s future, we can always use another ally — especially one who brings institutional knowledge and technical expertise to the table.