What is net neutrality and how could it affect you?

[joew771]

Net Neutrality is not about restricting what a web site can or can't do.  It is about restricting ISPs from blocking your ability to visit the web site or charging you more for the ability to visit a web site.

Net Neutrality isn't about forcing ISPs to let others use their infrastructure for free.  It is about making sure the customers who have already paid to use it can do so without arbitrary restrictions.

If you like having ISPs take your money and then tell you what you can and can't do with your internet connection, go right ahead and be happy with the recent decision.

It's absolutely about what a website can and can't do.

Say you have a certain service provider, and I have another. We both have netflix. Your provider can charge netflix to go faster for them. So can yours. So what happens? Netflix pays one or both of them to go faster. Netflix chooses who to pay or not to pay, and which should go faster or not. It's 100% netflix's choice what to do. Not the government telling Netflix it has no choice and has to give to both of them equally or else.

How does that affect us? We get netflix faster, and our internet bill goes down, because netflix is paying for part of it. Because of supply and demand. The more demand for netflix somewhere, the cheaper it will be.

Now let's see what happens with 'net neutrality'. Same providers. Same netflix. Both of them get netflix at the same speed. Netflix doesn't pay for anything. Our bill stays the same, and so does our internet speed. Yay.

If a provider is forced to give everyone the same speed, what reason do they have to build up to the max speed? Let's say I give you a dollar if you drive from here to across town and I give your nieghbor a dollar to do the same thing. You would both putt putt over to the other side of town in crappy cars and get your dollar. But if I give 10 dollars to whoever gets there first, the one with the best car would win. That's called competition. And that's a good thing. It gets us faster cars. And faster internet.

And if the government says that we all have to be equal, what if my neighbor has a high speed cable line, and I have a 256k modem dialup?

"Supporters of net neutrality want to designate cable companies as common carriers, which would require them to allow Internet service providers (ISPs) free access to cable lines"

Similar to what they did with telephones back in the day. Everyone had a phone then, and they were all the same, but the internet is different. Some internet is faster than others. Shouldn't companies be able to charge more for a faster service?

It really all just comes down to a free market. With net neutrality, it's about telling isp's and sites what they can do. Without it, faster cars. Vroom!

[Kingfish]

Your missing the point Joew, the point is you pay your ISP for internet access not for Netflix access thus its not the concern of the ISP what services you use as you are paying for basically line rental nor is it for Netflix to pay the ISP's because you have already done that.

[K80theShade]

Net Neutrality is not about restricting what a web site can or can't do.  It is about restricting ISPs from blocking your ability to visit the web site or charging you more for the ability to visit a web site.

Net Neutrality isn't about forcing ISPs to let others use their infrastructure for free.  It is about making sure the customers who have already paid to use it can do so without arbitrary restrictions.

If you like having ISPs take your money and then tell you what you can and can't do with your internet connection, go right ahead and be happy with the recent decision.

It's absolutely about what a website can and can't do.

Say you have a certain service provider, and I have another. We both have netflix. Your provider can charge netflix to go faster for them. So can yours. So what happens? Netflix pays one or both of them to go faster. Netflix chooses who to pay or not to pay, and which should go faster or not. It's 100% netflix's choice what to do. Not the government telling Netflix it has no choice and has to give to both of them equally or else.

How does that affect us? We get netflix faster, and our internet bill goes down, because netflix is paying for part of it. Because of supply and demand. The more demand for netflix somewhere, the cheaper it will be.

Now let's see what happens with 'net neutrality'. Same providers. Same netflix. Both of them get netflix at the same speed. Netflix doesn't pay for anything. Our bill stays the same, and so does our internet speed. Yay.

If a provider is forced to give everyone the same speed, what reason do they have to build up to the max speed? Let's say I give you a dollar if you drive from here to across town and I give your nieghbor a dollar to do the same thing. You would both putt putt over to the other side of town in crappy cars and get your dollar. But if I give 10 dollars to whoever gets there first, the one with the best car would win. That's called competition. And that's a good thing. It gets us faster cars. And faster internet.

And if the government says that we all have to be equal, what if my neighbor has a high speed cable line, and I have a 256k modem dialup?

"Supporters of net neutrality want to designate cable companies as common carriers, which would require them to allow Internet service providers (ISPs) free access to cable lines"

Similar to what they did with telephones back in the day. Everyone had a phone then, and they were all the same, but the internet is different. Some internet is faster than others. Shouldn't companies be able to charge more for a faster service?

It really all just comes down to a free market. With net neutrality, it's about telling isp's and sites what they can do. Without it, faster cars. Vroom!

Just one problem: Fast cars are not a civic amenity, but fast Internet is.

But guess what? Fast cars AND fast Internet cost extra money.
Not merely adequate cars or adequate 'Net speed, but extra speed.
With the loss of 'Net neutrality, that could be compared to your gas station charging you extra for gas to drive to Wal*Mart vs. gas to drive to work.
It is not only a gigantic invasion of privacy, but it's also a waiver of rights: specifically, YOUR right to drive wherever you want/surf wherever you want.

Which is also why there really is no such thing as, "'Net neutrality." There hasn't been ever since Prodigy.
Ever since ISP's have been able to monitor your web activity, the only "'Net neutrality" available to anyone anywhere has been via VPN/Gnutella/TOR.
Just ask brokep and Anakata....

[joew771]

Your missing the point Joew, the point is you pay your ISP for internet access not for Netflix access thus its not the concern of the ISP what services you use as you are paying for basically line rental nor is it for Netflix to pay the ISP's because you have already done that.

No no no. That's not how it works. Netflix has to reach your house somehow right? It does that through your ISP. Your ISP charges (or can charge) Netflix to prioritize it's speed over another site on their network. Say Netflix wants to go faster on your ISP than Hulu does. They will pay your ISP to prioritize Netflix speed over Hulu speed. If you have both Netflix and Hulu, but only Netflix paid your ISP, then Hulu will go slower. That's how it works.

And that means that if Netflix or Hulu or whoever, is paying your ISP for faster speeds, then you have to pay the ISP less money, because they already get a good chunk of cash from them, and whatever other sites want to pay for the higher speeds.

Maybe you like Hulu and they didn't pay, so they are slower. Then call up Hulu and tell them to fork over the cash to go faster. Or change to an ISP that they do pay.

It's called a free market, and if the government steps in and says they can't charge Netflix to go faster, then your ISP loses money. And who do you think they will get that lost money from? You, that's who. Everything will go the same speed, but it will cost more. And probably go slower overall, since Netflix, which you want to go fast, will have to share the bandwidth, and divide up your overall speed with stupid sites you don't give a rat's ass about.

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Just one problem: Fast cars are not a civic amenity, but fast Internet is.

LOL. Try living without a car for a month. You'd be screwed. Try living without fast internet for a month. See which you like better.
Cars, or more generally, fast transportation (trains, cars, buses, etc.) are far more important than how fast you can stream a movie.

[politux]

In the US most ISP's have near monopolies so now that they can throttle with impunity and restrict access to sites and services they are going to fuck over consumers even more than they already were. Be prepared for rate hikes and discrimination by Comcast against Netflix content, while prioritizing content from NBC/Universal, which Comcast owns. Comcast also said they "won't block legal content." Hint: now they can throttle bittorrent and be within the law. Before they couldn't. They were sued successfully in 2008 for preventing seeding. You think they won't pull crap like that now that there are no rules to protect users? Hahaha.

Joe trusts corporations to play fair but is afraid of government regulation to protect consumers. That's funny. If there was real competition between ISP's users could punish the ones that misbehaved but a lot of regions have one choice for broadband. Net neutrality, as Moe pointed out, means ISP's can't discriminate against different protocols or content. If you don't understand that stop watching Faux News and reading Breitbart.

Also do you seriously believe that if Netflix pays Comcast to prioritize their traffic that Comcast will pass savings on to consumers? They will pocket the cash. There is a reason corporate profits are at an all time high.

[joew771]

Also do you seriously believe that if Netflix pays Comcast to prioritize their traffic that Comcast will pass savings on to consumers? They will pocket the cash.  There is a reason corporate profits are at an all time high.

Profits are at an all time high because more people have internet access, and more specifically high speed internet, than ever before. It has nothing to do with net neutrality. In fact it's most likely because of the lack of it that many people even have high speed internet.

And do I have to remind you all that this whole 'net neutrality' business has only existed for a little over 2 years. What do you think was going on the 20+ years before that? Did the internet collapse into nothingness? Did the price of the internet grow so high, that only the rich could afford it? No. It grew into one of the most important things in our lives today, and one of the most important socialogical and culturally significant things that has ever existed in the history of mankind, and btw, one of the most profitable for everyone involved. That virtually everyone has access to. So how was it so horrible before the so called 'saviour' that is net neutrality?

So net neutrality can bite my ballsack. If something ain't broke don't fix it, as they say.

[politux]

:fp:

I didn't say corporate profits were high because of net neutrality. I said they are at record highs because corporations fuck over consumers every chance they get. Net neutrality existed before 2015, it just wasn't protected by law. As usual you miss the point or can't get past the chorus in your head. Sad!

[joew771]

Comcast also said they "won't block legal content." Hint: now they can throttle bittorrent and be within the law. Before they couldn't.

They could before. That's one of my points. I've been using bittorrent for 20 years and not once has it ever been throttled by anyone. Why do you think they would all of a sudden do it now? That makes no sense. Like it was throttled before, and for the past 2 years it hasn't been, and now it will be unthrottled again. LOL. What fantasy world do you live in?

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Net neutrality existed before 2015, it just wasn't protected by law.

So if it existed before, yet wasn't 'protected by law' and now they remove that 'protection' again, what's going to change? And what difference did it make in the past 2 years?

And you quite explicitly said that lack of net neutrality would let ISP's become more profitable.

"Also do you seriously believe that if Netflix pays Comcast to prioritize their traffic that Comcast will pass savings on to consumers? They will pocket the cash. There is a reason corporate profits are at an all time high."

[politux]

You hear what you want to hear, not what people say. That's why talking to you here or on IRC is pointless. Fin.

[joew771]

I'm pretty sure it's you who wants to hear what you want to hear. I rarely, if ever, listen to anyone, so I don't hear what they say, unless it makes sense. It's all noise to me. And I haven't heard any sense from you yet, only noise.