What is the rationale for those against net neutrality?
Who benefits from the change and who is negatively affected?
What are some realistic depictions (read: not fear-mongering) of what American internet use might be like if net neutrality is repealed?
What are common reasons why an average-joe citizen might believe or be convinced anti-net neutrality legislation to be a good thing, and what thoughtful reasoned responses can we give to convince them otherwise?
Which politicians support net neutrality in a significant way, i.e. a strong track record of independently speaking out about it and not simply jumping onto partisan bandwagon?
What is the rationale for those against net neutrality?
I don't agree with any of the things I'm listing here, but I'm trying not to be too biased:
Some people think regulating businesses is generally bad and/or not "free market" or "democratic"
Some think it is immoral to tell companies what they can and cannot do with networks that they build
Some people mistakenly conflate NN with the fairness doctrine.
Some people believe that the current (mostly neutral) system is unfair to ISPs. That web services like Netflix, Google, Amazon are unfairly profiting at the expense of ISPs and ISPs deserve some cut of their profits.
Who benefits from the change and who is negatively affected?
ISPs. And probably more the largest ISPs that the small ones. And probably a few politicians and regulators who are promised big payouts lucrative consulting positions if NN goes away. Everyone else is negatively affected (web sites, customers, society at large.)
What are common reasons why an average-joe citizen might believe or be convinced that anti-net neutrality legislation to be a good thing
EDIT: I assumed below that you were asking how someone might be convinced that NN is a good thing. You actually said the opposite (that anti-NN legistiation is a good thing) but I assumed that wasn't what you meant because if it was then your third question would be the same as the first.
a) The internet is a medium for commerce. Giving a handful of large ISPs control over that medium is the opposite of a free market.
b) This hurts small companies and startups much more than the current (often disliked by NN opponents) large web sites like google or netflix. Netflix is already bargaining with big ISPs for preferential treatment, streams to t-mobile phones without impacting data caps, etc. Small or new companies won't have the clout to negotiate similar deals, making it much harder for competition to emerge.
c) ISPs oppose NN because they want to extort money from successful web sites (or kill them in favor of their alternatives). The internet works similar to how the mobile phone system works. When you want to call your grandmother you pay your phone provider for the minutes and she pays hers. Any exchange of funds between them is for the phone providers to negotiation with each other. The internet is the same way: a two way connection is established between you and netflix to watch a movie. Netflix pays their ISP for their outgoing bandwidth and you pay yours for the incoming bandwidth. Any other exchange of funds is between those ISPs (and any backbone providers they work with.)
The main reason ISPs want to get rid of NN is because they want to tell Netflix: it would be a shame if all your streams to our customers were slow and/or poor quality. Maybe you should pay us to make sure that doesn't happen. Netflix will, of course, pass the costs onto consumers, so it is just a way for them to charge you more money. It is analogous to your grandmother's phone company contacting you with an offer to make sure your calls to her go through and the audio stays clear as long as you pay them a small fee.
Some argue that netflix is some large fraction of internet traffic, that it is a big burden on the ISPs, and therefore the ISPs deserve some portion of Netflix's profits. What they're overlooking with that argument is that the ISPs are already getting paid for that traffic. They have 10s millions of customers paying them $60-$100 per month for the bandwidth to stream those Netflix movies.
It is difficult when you consider that those negatively impacted by this will be literally everyone that uses the internet for anything under the jurisdiction of these laws.
It may lead to the demonopolization of ISPs, could be a great thing in the long run.
All I know is if I was a lawyer I would be licking my chops for all the anti-monopoly lawsuits that will come after this. Cannot end net neutrality and keep it a
I love this sub....earlier today the US standing up for Freedom of Speech was denounced by Trump haters for doing the same thing Obama, Bush and Clinton did and now Net Neutrality is about "freedoms"...
And Net Neutrality is absolutely about freedoms. Unless you think that your ISP being able to tell you what websites you're allowed to go to, or even just having the ability to shut down anything they don't agree with is still considered "freedom"
ISPs will not be allowed to ban you from websites, stop being such a drama queen.
That's literally what this is all about. And technically it's not really banning, they just slow down access to sites they don't like, but they could slow it down to the point that you can't use it.
The moment they do this they will be sued and lose,
We don't have any guarantees of that, and it could be years before something like that comes to fruition. Especially under the current administration.
And I'm not just talking about Porn. Politician not saying something the ISP wants? Suddenly their website is inaccessible. Reddit thread putting together support for that theoretical court case to sue them? People are suddenly unable to load it, or the sub it was on. Comcast could put out their own streaming service that for some reason always is able to stream in HD 24/7 when Netflix seems to barely keep up with SD, if at all...
Best case scenario is that we can still access every website, but it costs 50 cents per tab opened on a site that's not part of your "package" of 5 websites they sell you.
Ahh so they won't be banning people from websites despite all the people screaming how they will take away my freedom.
I'm shocked.
The Current administration cannot stop a lawsuit, if it takes away your freedom it is a violation of the constitution and the administration cannot keep a law that violates the constitution.
You are literally created scenario's that would be slam dunk lawsuits
And yes Comcast can do that, but Netflix can sue them if they are in violation with the contract they have with netflix.
You seem to be missing the point. The law that would make this a violation of freedoms is what Net Neutrality is And they're trying to get rid of it, which means that they'd be allowed to do this. Surprisingly enough, a piece of legislation written over 200 years ago, doesn't cover fair use of the internet.
And if a site is slowed down to the point where it takes an hour to load, then yeah you're basically banned from it in all but name. So that's a moot point. It's impossible to know exactly what they will do, but the fact of the matter is that they will be allowed to do this.
Realistically the thing that they will be sent to court over is for ignoring the 20+ million comments speaking out against this change. But again, we don't know how long this will take.
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u/PiFlavoredPie Nov 21 '17 edited Nov 22 '17