Net Neutrality a warning for the future!

[Marquise*]

I honestly don't know if this falls under politics.

But this issue might affect us all so deeply (I asked first if it was a hoax) that I can't believe we might loose all of our communication and creative world wide freedom soon. I would like to see if before the 14th December there is a way to stop that or survive that Webconomic apocalypse!



I am said that it is not because we are out of the country that bill may pass that we are safe because each web domain like .com and .net belongs where those bills will be passed on!

 

[Nightblade50]

But that's insane!

 

[Marquise*]

I know...! That is why I created the tread. I feel it is a hara-kiri upon what everyone now consider as... progress?!

 

[WhiteW]

Why so worried?

There's tons of other countries out there who already charge some extra for certain websites on certain platforms.
Portugal's ISP Meo is one of them, but only does it for the phone.
Never had problems criticizing our idiotic prime ministers ever, no one's democracy has ever been broken.

 

[Dalph]

This is serious and might affect several countries eventually as even non american ISPs might follow the american's model to make more money.
ISPs will get the full power to throttle and even block some websites they don't want us to visit.
The net might be divided in separate packages (one for Social, one for Media, one for Gaming, etc.) triggering additional prices for consumers and making it affordable mostly for rich people.

The current FCC chairman (Ajit Pai) is also making fun of americans and their opinion regarding net neutrality, and is also flat out ignoring thousands and thousands (if not millions) of complaints thus acting like a dictator.

There is nothing good that will come out of this, that's why a lot of people are angry about it.

A lot of people work at home as freelancers and have families, this decision will make things way harder for anyone. And do we want to talk about schools? How are students supposed to access information?

I don't see how this monumentally dumb decision will benefit anyone except ISPs like Verizon and Comcast.

Greed is humanity's worst sin.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

Yeah this is pretty much something that would benefit only those involved with the business...

 

[Poryg]

Why so worried?

Take gaming industry. Huge A++ companies in particular:
In past we did not have DLCs. We had datadiscs instead, that is true. However, even with datadiscs you had a complete and stable game for $20-30.
Now you get a $70 game which is often glitched and then there are DLC, DLC and DLC.
Not to mention, nobody forced you to buy any datadiscs. But now there are already cases of people being forced to buy a game and then to buy a dlc to at least play it! I've seen quite a bunch of reviews on Steam about Elder scrolls online.

There are also more and more cases of companies just milking money from users and trying to gain from the product's popularity. Tony Hawk's pro skater 5 is an example - a $60 game, so much hype,... Graphically on a level of THPS2 and even worse regarding controls and actual gaming content.
Another good example is Activision with COD.

A couple of years ago the gaming community thought that a $70 game with microtransactions wouldn't pass... Yet there you go, loot boxes. The worst thing is, loot boxes are no different from gambling, yet they are unregulated unlike gambling.

Of course I can't say that in past everything was pink and fluffy, with Master of orion 3 being unplayable upon purchase and an unofficial user patch was needed to solve the problem.
But now that the prices are only going upwards and upwards... There is only one thing to say.
Today it maybe just some extra fees. However, I heard 2/3 of US citizens don't even have an option to choose their ISP. If that is indeed true, this gives the ISP free hand to do whatever they please and dictate if the laws get loosened up. If you want to see how a dictate looks, take a look at our phone services providers.
For a long time they kept the prices unreasonably high. So high that they even got fines due to cartelization, but they did not mind, because it was still much more profitable that way. Until finally smaller phone service providers came and pushed the prices so low that new customers have better conditions. But even still we pay more and receive less for what we pay than France, Poland or Britain in their countries. Funnily enough, our salaries are as high as one third of French.
I don't want to be discussing politics here, so I won't go into more detail. But imagine a situation where 7 ISP have free hand to do whatever they please and they are all huge companies. I can't say I feel happy about that perspective.
And then again, USA is a country standing on a pedestial and many like to take examples from them. So I can't imagine this not having an international impact as well.

 

[Frogboy]

We've never really had Net Neutrality in the past, though, so why is everyone so worried about it now? It was only enacted in America a couple years ago by executive order and no one really even noticed because it just enshrined the way the way Internet access had always been done into law. But do we really want to have government lock in place how the Internet works? Advancement happens when companies experiment and try out new things to see if they can offer better products and services for a lower price. Not allowing this is a recipe for stagnation and higher prices, two things that usually happen when government acquires control over an industry.

Net Neutrality isn't going to stop the things that people are really worried about. We as customers tend to not accept companies giving us less for more. What it will do is prevent the opposite. If an ISP decides that it wants to provide a free or very low cost tier that only grants access to low bandwidth web browsing, possibly along with high bandwidth sites that are willing to pay for your data on their site, that's the kind of thing that will get stopped in its tracks if Net Neutrality becomes a permanent fixture. I know that has issues of its own but I'm not going to be the one to tell low income people that they can't have Internet access because I want certain rules put in place.

 

[Poryg]

Good argument. But not entirely true.

It was only enacted in America a couple years ago by executive order and no one really even noticed because it just enshrined the way the way Internet access had always been done into law.

From what I have seen it was not really unnoticed. It is just that nowadays people just take it as a fact, because it's part of their daily life.

Advancement happens when companies experiment and try out new things to see if they can offer better products and services for a lower price.

It indeed does. But then again, for huge companies to push prices lower there must be a competition. I cannot say how true it is, but while I've watched numerous videos over the internet, I saw that in USA the competition among ISP isn't really there. And while maybe things like entertainment packages etc. are perhaps a superstition, there is something that is pretty real and that is network throttling, since that has already happened and it's not that long. And just like games don't have any competition, so AAA+ companies have free hand to do whatever they please, even American ISP could head that way. Slowly, but surely enforce more and more limitations...

 

[Frogboy]

It's true that competition is a bit lacking in the ISP industry but that is its own problem. The reason that competition is scarce is many areas is because cable companies made deals with government to build out the infrastructure and then when other companies want to enter the market, even if they're willing to build out their own infrastructure, they get turned away or are offered terms that make entry entirely unprofitable. If a company the size of Google isn't able to make inroads, pretty much no one can and it's not for lack of money. The problem here, though, is government involvement. So asking the government to get even more involved and heavy handed isn't going to fix things. It's just going to make it worse.

Edit: People took Net Neutrality as fact because that's what the market shaped out as well before government got involved. All of the what-ifs are purely speculation at the moment. The only real life issues that have come up have been with cell carriers like T-Mobile who offered music and video streaming that doesn't count against your datacap. Throttling was a way to prevent people from using too much data but as long as you have a decent amount of competition to meet the demands of the customer base, there won't be any need for it and it'll be death sentence for any company that tries to implement such a policy when others don't.

 

[Poryg]

It depends. On one hand it prevents innovation, on the other hand it prevents the huge companies from going completely rogue. If there had been competition, I'd have no problems with lifting net neutrality in USA. But when companies have a monopoly in certain areas or work not in principle of competition, but cartelisation, I find the intervention here justified, since the threat of the ISP going rogue is real. Of course now depends what is the lesser of these two evils. But I'm going to stop here, because I've begun to talk about politics.

 

[Frogboy]

I understand your position. I just lean towards working to fix the underlying problems.

 

[Philosophus Vagus]

It's not so bad as most people seem to think, @Frogboy explained why very well, so instead of repeating the arguments they made I'll take a different avenue.

Do any of us (and I am an American) really trust the American government to be any fairer laying down arbitrary rules for the companies that already lobby them for influence than the companies themselves are likely to be? At least as long as it's company called company they will have a little incentive to compete with each other. The thing that people often overlook is that these kinds of arbitrary rulesets often end up defining the industry into a government supported Monopoly more than anything else, look at GM for example after they started regulating that industry in a similar manner, now instead of rising and falling by the demands of customers it merely stays around, producing frequently recalled crap and getting bailed out by taxpayers every few years. Or look at what's happened since they got into healthcare, granted before that there were only three providers competing in my state, but now there is only 1 with the wealth and clout to keep in business amongst the governments new rules of fairness and equality.

If history shows us anything, it's that once the government takes control of an industry in this manner it actually stifles far more business than it helps. There are always great talking points like fairness bandied about but this government is an out of control bipolar beast at the moment and I find it laughable so many people still believe it is the answer to fair and balanced trade in any market.

 

[WhiteW]

This is serious and might affect several countries eventually as even non american ISPs might follow the american's model to make more money.

?????? This "Net Neutrality" law or whatever is USA only!! No one else will be affected because that doesn't exist besides the USA! Several countries already charge a bit extra for certain websites on certain platforms, and no one is crying about it like the internet is going to end.

A lot of people work at home as freelancers and have families, this decision will make things way harder for anyone. And do we want to talk about schools? How are students supposed to access information?

What are you even blabbing about?? You think each and every website on earth is gonna have it's own price?!?!
Not to mention - libraries and schools have computers!

Stop listening to what those crybabies on youtube and all that are ranting about.
You won't die for an extra $10 if your ISP decides so. Not to mention, ISPs will compete and the one with the cheapest prices/best connections will win.
And don't blame net neutrality's vanishment for lack of SEO skill and knowledge.

 

[Matseb2611]

It's crazy. They keep trying to push all these crappy borderline oppressive regimes akin to TPP again and again, no matter how many times people vote against it. Paying $5 for using Google or Youtube is ludicrous. And the bit about them controlling what websites show up or don't is another step towards a dystopian, Orwellian world.

By the way, is this just concerning America or the whole world? I went to this video on Youtube in a hope to check those petitions he mentioned, but the links seem to talk about Congressmen and the like.

 

[D.L. Yomegami]

Two big reasons why Americans should be really worried about this:
1. Competition among ISPs in America barely exists. A lot of Americans don't even have access to two ISPs.
2. American ISPs are greedy as -arg-.

Taken together, it's not unreasonable and highly likely that American ISPs will jump on the loss of regulations and exploit it for all it's worth. This goes just beyond slow websites; this could also mean that there's nothing stopping, say, Verizon from censoring websites it doesn't like or preventing its customers from accessing anything it doesn't own unless they fork out lots of money. Chances are they won't jump on it immediately, but the risk is very real.

Furthermore, if the ISPs weren't planning on exploiting the loss of net neutrality, then why are they all advocating it?

Non-Americans aren't going to be affected by this decision...or rather, not immediately. But given America's place in the world, it's not unreasonable to assume other countries will look at America and think "Hm, that looks awfully tempting...."

Fortunately, this decision's extremely likely to get challenged in court, and furthermore net neutrality has already been upheld in court twice (or so I've heard; sadly I don't have any links to prove it). So chances are it's not going to be as bad as (or worse than) all the doomsayers would have you believe.

That being said, until there's a way to get rid of the ISP's local monopolies, net neutrality is America's best bet at having a free and open internet. Do be worried, and do fight this decision through whatever means you can.

 

[Marquise*]

@Matseb2611 I felt the 1984 feel too and tried not to refer it as such or at beginning of century when there was one phone for many apartments and the operator listened to the conversations.

I try to see this on the most neutral way possible here.

Internet is kinda just as vital as electricity now so if this example can help understanding what is going on;
We just have one electricity provider here, apart prohibitive costs what would I chose for service in the winter between the cooking package, warming package, working package or recreational package? Apart how to get our electricity we have to sell it to US at a cost way lowest than the one we are charged and in order to produce more we have to get our aboriginal peoples out of their homes. But it means if we had to get an extra 5$ for any part of use we do with our own electricity and have their company control what is vital for us to put in a package, we create a social cleavage there. Would you cook in someone else house while others share the warmth of your home and wait in line to work and study elsewhere while trying to get your entertainment from another neighbor?

I understand that HD is busting up my net billing and that in all my streaming I have to force it at the lowest resolution if I want more content and I am fine with it. I do not own a phone, but I do understand that it might get bloated a lot by the increase of Izombies I get in my way everywhere. But, to the point of getting what I call a GPS in the rear end, pay per use while using mailing/web post system... Sorry, but if another country block my Canadian rights of communications and owns my information to use it to make me tell anything that I don't agree to -and publish anything I didn't typed or agreed upon, using my name- or just getting figuratively the knife at my throat to block my activities/job/researches or voicing an opinion from the safety of my own country this is as malevolent as net terror! And it'll have ramifications effectively about everywhere but the peoples who won't be able to abide or afford to that disaster will have to chose what to do only with their services on top of their ISP fees, equipment and energy cost. This might means being cut out of everything but gaming or p*rn or homework or socialmedias with extra cost to access their games and videos and pictures and some comments. -_-;

It would be better to charge the multinationals costs for every single of our farts so we can repurpose that methane as natural gas energy! You know, like recycling cans 5cents each!

 

[Freank]

Reddit is supporting the net neutrality in several way.
Good luck America.

 

[WhiteW]

Paying $5 for using Google or Youtube is ludicrous.

You're not going to be paying $5 to access Google. Use common sense!

Non-Americans aren't going to be affected by this decision...or rather, not immediately. But given America's place in the world, it's not unreasonable to assume other countries will look at America and think "Hm, that looks awfully tempting...."

America isn't in the center of the Earth. There are countries that already charge extra for certain website packages on certain platforms.
And guess what, they aren't crying about it.

In the end ya'll most likely only add about $20 to your bill in total or so, a month.
The solution? It won't hurt to work one extra hour a week, now would it?

And if you can't afford that, use Tor Browser if you must.
Change your DNS to Google's.
Use a proxy.
Get a VPN.

 

[Tuomo L]

If you use services such as Facebook, Youtube, Netflix, Steam, etc. This will affect you no matter where you live.

Case in point, I think it was Comcast that wanted more money from Netflix, so they throttled their connection so that Netflix output connection was slower. This meant no matter where you were you would have buffering and other issues with Netflix, because of the ISP. Netflix had to pay them to restore the connection back to what they had or potentially go out of business because the throttling was hurting their business.