Net Neutrality!

[suarezguy]

It's hard for me to understand why there is so much fervent support for the policy and indignation about the possibility of it being ended.

What would be so bad or catastrophic about service providers charging either consumers or (as I think is more the actual alternate prospect) content providers more if they want faster service?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Here you go.

 

[Avro Arrow]

It's hard for me to understand why there is so much fervent support for the policy and indignation about the possibility of it being ended.

I'm honestly completely surprised that anyone would be against the concept of net neutrality.

As with all things internet, one of your first stops should be the writings of Michael Geist of the University of Ottawa. Lots of good articles on the subject here. (Granted, they're mostly from a Canadian perspective.)

 

[Awesome Possum]

I support it because I’m not a fan of getting shafted by my ISP because I had the audacity to use their service. I honestly believe the people against it are clueless. “Having an open Internet where I can use my connection freely sucks. I want a corporation to decide what I can go to and charge me extra for daring to use a streaming provider.” It’s like if your cable provider decided to charge you extra for using more signal when you upgraded to a movie package. So you’d pay HBO plus the greedy asshole fee.

 

[MacLeod]

It's hard for me to understand why there is so much fervent support for the policy and indignation about the possibility of it being ended.

What would be so bad or catastrophic about service providers charging either consumers or (as I think is more the actual alternate prospect) content providers more if they want faster service?

But is Net Neutrality about treating all data the same so it doesn't matter if it's a streaming service or a simple data file. But what would happen is that the consumer would end up paying for it one way or the other, you want a faster Netflix connection, Netflix will give you that but it'll cost you an additional X(insert currency)/per month. As for ad based sites they'll want to stay fast, if they become to slow people might move onto faster sites so they'll put up their ad prices. And where does the money come to pay for those ads from the products we pay, so likely they'll put up prices they sell their products slightly so as to reover the lost revenue.

There is nothing wrong with ISP's charging more the faster you want to connect i.e

up to 8Mb
up to 16Mb
Upto 50Mb
etc...

 

[Robert Maxwell]

It's hard for me to understand why there is so much fervent support for the policy and indignation about the possibility of it being ended.

What would be so bad or catastrophic about service providers charging either consumers or (as I think is more the actual alternate prospect) content providers more if they want faster service?

To put it in terms you will understand: getting rid of net neutrality is anti-competitive. New firms won't be able to afford to pay for the kind of access established players could pay for. Under the existing system, this doesn't matter. Facebook and a random startup have a level playing field in terms of consumers being able to access them. Without net neutrality, this goes away. The new startup now not only has to compete with Facebook's vast market share, they have to figure out how to attract users when their site is either going to be much slower or downright inaccessible, because they can't afford to pay ISPs to let them in.

To be clear, this is about more than fast lanes and slow lanes. ISPs could decide not to let people access certain kinds of sites and services unless they pay extra. Imagine a "basic Internet" package where all you can get to is Facebook, Google, and email. You want YouTube or Netflix? That's extra. You want access to FTP or torrent services? Extra.

It is against the principles the Internet was built on. Not to mention, the Internet was developed with public money--making it a free-for-all that corporations can carve up as they please is against the public good, and would only be bad for the Internet in the long run.

 

[suarezguy]

I honestly believe the people against it are clueless. “Having an open Internet where I can use my connection freely sucks. I want a corporation to decide what I can go to and charge me extra for daring to use a streaming provider.” It’s like if your cable provider decided to charge you extra for using more signal when you upgraded to a movie package. So you’d pay HBO plus the greedy asshole fee.

With cable television you do have to pay more to get HBO, it is premium rather than included in every cable package.

To put it in terms you will understand: getting rid of net neutrality is anti-competitive. New firms won't be able to afford to pay for the kind of access established players could pay for. Under the existing system, this doesn't matter. Facebook and a random startup have a level playing field in terms of consumers being able to access them. Without net neutrality, this goes away. The new startup now not only has to compete with Facebook's vast market share, they have to figure out how to attract users when their site is either going to be much slower or downright inaccessible, because they can't afford to pay ISPs to let them in.

That is more worrying, at least it can be. I don't think making some sites faster would be the same thing as making others slower (than they are now) or too slow but if it could lead to that that would be very stifling to newer and smaller companies (who don't have a real good chance now but that would be even worse).

To be clear, this is about more than fast lanes and slow lanes. ISPs could decide not to let people access certain kinds of sites and services unless they pay extra. Imagine a "basic Internet" package where all you can get to is Facebook, Google, and email. You want YouTube or Netflix? That's extra. You want access to FTP or torrent services? Extra.

Well most of the public good the Internet serves probably does come from email communication and Google searching. YouTube can provide a lot of individual and some social value but not clearly more than on-cable-rather-than-broadcast CNN or CSpan. But you can argue that the Internet should be more diverse and cheaper than television options, in part because (aside from that it can be) most people wouldn't pay to access several websites that they could learn and benefit from.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

That is more worrying, at least it can be. I don't think making some sites faster would be the same thing as making others slower (than they are now) or too slow but if it could lead to that that would be very stifling to newer and smaller companies (who don't have a real good chance now but that would be even worse).

The problem is without net neutrality, we just don't get a say in the matter, and neither do companies that aren't ISPs. The ISPs can do whatever they want, prioritize however they want, and we all just have to live with it unless we have the money to buy our way out.

Well most of the public good the Internet serves probably does come from email communication and Google searching. YouTube can provide a lot of individual and some social value but not clearly more than on-cable-rather-than-broadcast CNN or CSpan. But you can argue that the Internet should be more diverse and cheaper than television options, in part because (aside from that it can be) most people wouldn't pay to access several websites that they could learn and benefit from.

Do you want corporations deciding what content you should be able to see? The current regime is: nobody gets to decide this in any systematic fashion. It's a level playing field in that regard. All websites, all services remain equally accessible with very few exceptions. (ISPs can move some things around for quality of service purposes but they have very limited rights in terms of blocking people from certain sites or services entirely.) Critics of net neutrality make it sound like government regulation is deciding what you get to see online--but the reality is quite the opposite. The government doesn't decide who gets to have a website, who can get to it, or at what speed--and crucially, ISPs (under net neutrality) don't get to decide that, either.

 

[Kor]

If a website wants to charge me extra for access to subscription-only content, then that's their prerogative.

If an ISP wants to charge me extra for access to subscription-only content that they generate or license, then that's their prerogative.

But if an ISP wants to charge me extra to be able to access third-party sites that are not affiliated with the ISP in any way whatsoever, or charge those sites a fee so that I can see their content, then that would be pretty bogus.

Kor

 

[Awesome Possum]

With cable television you do have to pay more to get HBO, it is premium rather than included in every cable package.

Yes, I know that. I had it in the original post. I said that it would be like paying extra for HBO and paying extra on top of that to use the extra bandwidth. So to make it clear to you. Basic package+HBO+greedy asshole fee instead of Basic package+HBO.

Without net neutrality you'll pay extra for everything. You'll pay have to pay extra for streaming services and that does not include your subscribtion. You'll pay extra to use email, certain search engines, visit sites (possibly this one), access social media and everything else people do online.

I really don't think you understand this at all. We've been through this before with you.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Maybe a little trip back in time is in order.

Before we had the Internet of today, we had a bunch of different, disconnected networks. You didn't have a browser where you could type in an address and get to a particular piece of information. You certainly didn't have search engines. What you had were several different publicly-funded networks: ARPANET, MILNET (a spinoff of ARPANET), NSFNet. Then you had the corporate dial-in services like GEnie, CompuServe, Prodigy, and so forth. These services generally couldn't talk to each other. Email capabilities existed for some of them, but instead of giving a canonical, universal address (like "myname@domain.net") you had to list every network hop necessary to get your email to its destination, because there was no universal system for routing them.

Eventually, the public networks were bridged so that they could talk to each other, and then the infrastructure as a whole was opened up to commercial use, which is how we started to have a commercial Internet. What was extremely important at the time was that whichever ISP you went with gave you access to the same Internet. Sure, some had their own walled-garden content, like AOL, but you could always ignore it and go explore the vast array of websites and services out there.

One effect this had was killing off the private networks like GEnie and CompuServe (and even AOL's walled garden), because these network providers couldn't really compete on content. There is simply no company that has the resources to produce what the entire Internet can offer--not even close.

Problem is, companies like Verizon and Comcast are unhappy with this. They don't like that you can pay them a fee and gain access to all this stuff that doesn't make them any more money. Comcast wants you to buy a cable package, and use their on-demand and PPV services. Verizon wants you to buy their TV and phone packages. Neither wants you to run off and use a service like Netflix which uses up a lot of bandwidth and doesn't make them any additional money.

That's what this is really about. ISPs want to recreate the conditions we had in the '80s and early '90s, where they were the gatekeepers who controlled what you could see and do online. They would love nothing more than to return to the days where your network service kept you as a captive audience, allowing you access only to the content and services they personally profit from.

I don't know about anyone else, but I sure as shit don't want to go back to the crummy, fragmented networks of those days. They were worse in every way. It was the opening up of the Internet as a neutral environment for all players that made it into the force it is today. To go back on that is just turning the clock back to a less free, less useful Internet, purely for the sake of corporate greed.

 

[Timby]

FCC Chairman: We don't need net neutrality, because ISPs will act in consumers' best interests.

God, Ajit Pai couldn't be a more obviously paid tool of the telcos if he tried.

 

[Hugo Rune]

It's hard for me to understand why there is so much fervent support for the policy and indignation about the possibility of it being ended.

What would be so bad or catastrophic about service providers charging either consumers or (as I think is more the actual alternate prospect) content providers more if they want faster service?

13 minutes of your time.

Make a sandwich. Get a drink. Just graze and watch.

Cos if the FCC has it's way you might have to pay extra (or watch in dial-up resolution) to watch a clip of John Oliver describe Non-Net-Neutral tactics as a "Mafia Shakedown"

Tony would be so proud.

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

Hugo - NSFW. Naughty words within

 

[Awesome Possum]

This isn’t a liberal vs conservative thing. This is every single user of the Internet vs corporations and government interests. Our internet is shitty compared to other countries and we invented it. The companies resist demands to innovate and actively keep completion out, they fight to keep Google Fiber out because they can’t compare to it. If you support an actual free market, this isn’t it.

 

[MacLeod]

FCC Chairman: We don't need net neutrality, because ISPs will act in consumers' best interests.

God, Ajit Pai couldn't be a more obviously paid tool of the telcos if he tried.

LOL, act in the consumers best interests, call me cynic but I suspect ISPs will act in the best interests of their fat-cat shareholders. It's only regulations and regulators which keep corporations in check.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

LOL, act in the consumers best interests, call me cynic but I suspect ISPs will act in the best interests of their fat-cat shareholders. It's only regulations and regulators which keep corporations in check.

Yeah, nobody (but @suarezguy, apparently) believes the official line. This is just a cash grab by telcos.

 

[Tribble puncher]

Everyone else pretty much summed up why Net Neutrality going away is bad, I have nothing to add there, but what if, in a weird sort of way, it winds up backfiring on the ISP's, and people spend less time online and actually start engaging more in the real world? That could only be a good thing. So, say this thing passes (which it has a good chance of) what do you think your day to day life would become? I'm guessing you might see a surge in physical media sales, maybe people trying to find things to do that don't involve being online, Probably a surge in popularity of older pc games online because multiplayer uses way less bandwidth, I'd love to pull a "sliders" and see what would happen.

 

[Jayson1]

I was wondering about things on the internet that goes beyond things we watch for fun. Would you be able to make hospitals pay extra when they need to set up a tele-med I think they are called. I used them before when I was having panic attacks and they needed a doctor to ask me questions to see if I needed to go inpatient and don't utility companies and police and everything connect to the internet these days?

Jason

 

[STR]

It's hard for me to understand why there is so much fervent support for the policy and indignation about the possibility of it being ended.

What would be so bad or catastrophic about service providers charging either consumers or (as I think is more the actual alternate prospect) content providers more if they want faster service?

Do you want to have to pay an extra fee to access YouTube? Social Media? I don't mean "buy more gigs". I mean you have the same service, but you have to pay up to visit those sites.

How about to backup your photos or computer? Do you want to pay more to do that? No?

You like the internet the way it is now? Then you want net neutrality, which is basically a codification of how the internet has been run up until now.

If you've been reading Ajit Pai, or any number of people invariably in thrall to the big telcos/cable cos, you have been lied to. They're telling people it's about political speech. That's a lie. They might say it's "stifling innovation" or "preventing infrastructure investment". Those are also lies.

It's a pure money grab by ISPs who have invented none of the services you like online, but have profited immensely from being the middlemen that connect you to the things you like.

Economists call this behavior "rent seeking" and it's a big reason why America isn't growing as much as it did not too long ago.

I was wondering about things on the internet that goes beyond things we watch for fun. Would you be able to make hospitals pay extra when they need to set up a tele-med I think they are called.

Yes, hospitals and businesses could be forced to pay more not only for priority (which isn't much of an issue with a wired connection) but for the ability to connect at all. Much has been invested in routing equipment capable of what's called "deep packet inspection". They can know exactly what kind of service you're accessing and where your end destination will be. They can (technically speaking) restrict, delay or simply filter out your traffic depending on what you're specifically trying to do at that moment.

I mean, Google is going to be the first company targeted by paid prioritization. They need to be online to run their company. If they can be held hostage, why not anyone else?

 

[marsh8472]

Do you think they'll pass it? I'd just laugh if it did.

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies