“I have dozens of friends and the fun never ends
That is, as long as I’m buying”
–”Too Much Time On My Hands,” Styx

In the spirit of being kinder and gentler, let’s recognize our friends at Amazon for their latest effort to turn the Internet into a venue resembling the Los Angeles 405 at rush hour.

Recently, the company unveiled its new video download service. Interested web viewers will be able to check out “Jimmy Neutron”, “Three Kings” and if they’re really desperate, episodes of “Laguna Beach.” With this program, Amazon aspires to send additional terabytes of data to consumers in the form of TV shows, sports events and movies. (By the way, one terabyte = 1000 gigabytes.)

And there’s the problem.

The only way to accommodate the spiraling demands for instant data transfer from Amazon and its online brethren is through expensive network deployment. But if Net neutrality regulations become law, Amazon and its ilk will have a perfectly legal loophole to avoid paying anything for the massive new bandwidth they consume.

So if these guys don’t pay for the bandwidth cost they use, guess who will?