Bellsouth, the company that I get my broadband internet access through, would like to pick and choose which web sites and services load quickly and which ones don't. An executive with Bellsouth is defending the concept of making web sites pay them for priority treatment in regards to bandwidth to Bellsouth customers.

This basically means that if Yahoo! pays Bellsouth for premium treatment on their network and Google declines this extortion, then Yahoo! will download to your web browser through Bellsouth faster than Google.

Of course, this also means that if Bellsouth doesn't want Skype to function as well as their own VOIP services, well, you can bet that it won't.

This is completely out-freaking-rageous! Greed, greed and more greed. NO ISP should be able to limit access to any site on the internet. Bellsouth essentially wants to be able to "throttle-down" any IP that sends data through their network, even to their own customers, if the company doesn't "pay up". I hope this blows up in Bellsouth's face.

Click here to read the article over at the Washington Post's web site.