Warning

You didn't provide a link, and when I went to the tech/science page I didn't see it listed in the videos being shown, so nope, didn't see it. When I googled the topic I couldn't find any news stories on per minute internet charges being considered. (I admit though, wasn't looking particularly hard)

And I don't have to work for the cable company to have common sense.

I swear I'll never understand people who assume there's some sort of obligation for companies to do what you want for the price you want it. Sorry hunny, that's not how the world works. You want something, it costs money. You decide not to get it, you don't spend money. If enough people decide not to get it, the company either changes their practice or fails. The world doesn't owe you unlimited high speed internet. It's something you purchase... and the price of it may go up.

Why -shouldn't- an industry that feels it has had it's systems taxed by high end users at least attempt to charge more to those high end users to test the elasticity of the market?

AOL is owned by Microsoft....

From what I understand, the added cost is NOT from the ISP to the end user, but from the ISP to content providers. Granted, that may mean increased costs for content on the net.

Basically, the ISPs want to make money from both ends, the user and the content provider. For example, CNN and CBS are now streaming loads of live media content. Those streams may occupy an unbalanced portion of the bandwidth an ISP provides to customers. While an arbitrary number of its customers may enjoy the streams from CNN and CBS, other customers may see decreased internet performance from, say Second Life. To balance the load, and for profit, the ISP wants to charge CNN, CBS, and LL for priority use of the ISP's bandwidth. If CBS and LL choose to pay the ISP for the priority bandwidth, then CNN's content may slow to a crawl. But customers would continue to pay the same monthly fees, nothing extra.

That's what I got out of the news stories when they first hit the wires a few weeks ago. But, it may not matter anyway, because the U.S. Congress has already indicated that ISPs won't be allowed to implement the scheme, as it could limit the ability of smaller voices to be heard (Boortz, Rush, and other right-leaning voices could probably afford the priority fees, however Air America probably could not afford the fee.)