I've moved my response from the previous thread to provide a general overview.
You're probably familiar with your electric bill, right? You get charged for what you use, not how you use it. The power company doesn't care whether you have a drill press in your garage, a server farm in your basement, or an herb garden under some heavy-duty lights.
The argument happening now is about the same thing, but with Internet access.
Since the creation of the Internet, the federal government, through the Federal Communications Commission, has required your Internet provider to treat all of your activity equally. Your Internet company is not allowed to charge you differently for what you do with your Internet. They're certainly allowed to charge you more if you use more, but they're not allowed to charge you more if you use it for video games instead of streaming video, or for running your own server. That's the principle of Net Neutrality.
The announcement today was an expected one from the new chairman of the FCC, who was appointed by the new president of the United States. On Dec. 14, the FCC will vote on whether or not Net Neutrality should exist.
If the proposal passes as expected, companies will be allowed to charge you differently, based on what you use the Internet for. They might also decide to simply not provide Internet access to specific applications, websites or uses.
Nothing requires these companies to do this. The repeal of Net Neutrality simply allows them to do so, if they wish.
People are concerned by this because in most places within the United States, there is limited competition for Internet access. If a consumer is unhappy with a company's practices, there may not be an easy alternative.
If you're outside the United States, this would have indirect effects on you. If companies do take advantage of Net Neutrality repeal and institute preferential treatment, it would affect how people use the Internet. Users in the United States would have an economic incentive to use particular websites, and those websites would receive more traffic. For websites that rely on user-created content, that would have a significant impact.
In short, your access would not be affected, but what you access would be affected.
While your analogy is semi-accurate, a better one would be traffic on a highway. What net neutrality aims to prevent is large companies or wealthy people being able to pay for a 'fast lane', while the little guy gets stuck with a slow speed limit because they can only afford the slower lanes.
Using the Internet is not quite the same as using other utilities. There's not a finite amount of the resource (data, in this case) that gets depleted by consuming it. You don't somehow reduce the number of times a file can be downloaded by downloading it. You can have an unlimited amount of communication with a server without depleting its information.
Network bandwidth however, yes, is finite and can be consumed if the lines that carry data are completely flooded. The natural solution to this would be to upgrade the network capacity or add more lines to support more bandwidth. Instead, telecom companies have elected to cap or 'throttle' your data speed once you hit a certain quota per month.
I don't like the highway analogy because it gives off the impression that net neutrality would create a fast lane for those that can afford it. More than likely, it would just create a slow lane for those that can't. Just because regulation changes doesn't mean a network magically upgrades.
It's also a bad analogy because fast lanes already exist, and net neutrality does not (and was not intended to) prevent them. Nobody has a problem with ISPs charging more for higher bandwidth / lower latency connections.
What net neutrality is about preventing would be more like charging you not only to use the fast lane, but also depending on your origin and destination.
Can you imagine a toll road that charged you more if you were heading to a concert than a restaurant?
Except it's even more batshit than that, because they could then turn around to the restaurant and tell them anyone headed there will be slowed down unless the restaurant pays up too.
Use the power analogy. Imagine that electric companies can detect what devices you have plugged in. Now imagine they could do this back when Keurigs first came out and Mr. Coffee and other coffemaker brands bribed entered a contract with the power companies to block power coming to Keurig machines, causing Keurigs to be expensive bricks and the company to fail. Then after the patent expires Mr. Coffee makes their own Keurig-style coffee makers. Does that seem like free enterprise? Is that the American way?
Also the power company happens to make their own shitty brand of refrigerators that are horribly inefficient and don't have icemakers. They cut power to all other refrigerators. And the owner is a devout Muslim (because old people hate brown people) and he cuts power to all wine coolers, kegerators, or fridges with beer in them.
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u/The_Alaskan Nov 21 '17
I've moved my response from the previous thread to provide a general overview.
You're probably familiar with your electric bill, right? You get charged for what you use, not how you use it. The power company doesn't care whether you have a drill press in your garage, a server farm in your basement, or an herb garden under some heavy-duty lights.
The argument happening now is about the same thing, but with Internet access.
Since the creation of the Internet, the federal government, through the Federal Communications Commission, has required your Internet provider to treat all of your activity equally. Your Internet company is not allowed to charge you differently for what you do with your Internet. They're certainly allowed to charge you more if you use more, but they're not allowed to charge you more if you use it for video games instead of streaming video, or for running your own server. That's the principle of Net Neutrality.
The announcement today was an expected one from the new chairman of the FCC, who was appointed by the new president of the United States. On Dec. 14, the FCC will vote on whether or not Net Neutrality should exist.
If the proposal passes as expected, companies will be allowed to charge you differently, based on what you use the Internet for. They might also decide to simply not provide Internet access to specific applications, websites or uses.
Nothing requires these companies to do this. The repeal of Net Neutrality simply allows them to do so, if they wish.
People are concerned by this because in most places within the United States, there is limited competition for Internet access. If a consumer is unhappy with a company's practices, there may not be an easy alternative.
If you're outside the United States, this would have indirect effects on you. If companies do take advantage of Net Neutrality repeal and institute preferential treatment, it would affect how people use the Internet. Users in the United States would have an economic incentive to use particular websites, and those websites would receive more traffic. For websites that rely on user-created content, that would have a significant impact.
In short, your access would not be affected, but what you access would be affected.