FreeRepublic would not be affected by a system that permits Netflix and Amazon to pay extra for a high speed delivery of HD video. Most web browsing experiences don’t need multi-megabit throughput. Emailing and reading news web pages can tolerate multi-second delays that would be distracting to movie viewers. This is not the end of the world. My first FreeRepublic visit was via a 9600 baud dial up modem. I don’t remember the experience as painful.
True.Also, AMZN is currently a free rider, bandwidth wise. There will be many unanticipated consequences here.
Well, we'll see how FReepers put up with that kind of delay in page rendering.
My recollection is that whenever FR has experienced more than a second of delay, people start griping, and when it's more than a few seconds, they start posting threads about "Is Everyone Else Getting Slow Response from FreeRepublic?".
I've been on the internet since the late 1980's, when a 2400-baud modem was standard access and email was done with UUCP bang-paths. And today, I'm in a rural area of upstate NY, where the best access I can get is 3Mbps down, 0.3Mbps up, from one provider, take it or leave it. And I'm glad to have that.
I'm not happy about the prospect that I'll be further limited because some liberal media group is going to pay to take even that away from me.