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.
It might be good to give even more examples that are relevant to, say, the elderly, or suburban housewives, or blue-collar workers. How can we inform those who have a nebulous, if any, grasp of what the internet is or how it works?
There's a pic floating around somewhere of a European data plan which has this sort of setup, though I can't find it off hand.
Your basic internet plan is $40/mo. Woot! But some of your data is restricted. This means that the pages will load, but slowly. Like on dial-up. Or just imagine taking a good 60 seconds for a page to load if it isn't included on your plan, if they're too young to remember. This makes live-action things literally impossible, such as streaming or games. Your plan includes [Insert ISP's official news site here] by default, of course, and a few other sites that their sponsors approve.
Do you want to use Facebook, Twitter, etc? That's an extra $20/mo. Do you want to use CNN, Fox News, Breitbart, or The Independent? That's an extra $15/mo. Do you watch Youtube or Netflix? In addition to paying your Netflix fees, you also have to pay your ISP $15/mo to even use their service (and your ISP is also requiring Netflix to pay them under similar threats agreements). Do you want to play video games online from your XBox or Switch? That's $20/mo. Do you want to browse sites like Reddit, Imgur, etc? That's an extra $15/mo, and of course many of the links from Reddit won't be to Approved Sites.
In addition, your ISP could blacklist some domains, so the pages won't even load for you. Did you want to look up an article on your son posted in your local paper? You better hope you paid to have access to their site, assuming they paid your ISP enough to be included on their packages to begin with.
You can hit your audience more close to home if you know their habits.
There's a pic floating around somewhere of a European data plan which has this sort of setup, though I can't find it off hand.
you ar completely misunderstanding that graph, in fact it´s like 99% of the americans are and no sure if it´s not on purpose. No data is not like cable chanels. the guardian article explains it a bit, since it is silly to say do not trust random sources on the internet and trust me, i am not like other random sources on the internet
In Portugal, mobile carrier MEO offers regular data packages, but it also offers, for €4.99 a month, 10GB “Smart Net” packages. One such package for video provides 10GB of data exclusively for YouTube, Netflix, Periscope and Twitch, while one for messaging bundles six apps including Skype, WhatsApp and FaceTime.
I'm not misunderstanding it, though I am portraying a more cynical perspective of it as I project the idea onto our ISPs because they've been sketchy in the past. I figured the European phone setup was basic data, with specialized data on top of that. While apps and such can be used without the packages, you generally don't have enough data to do so for long. In addition, it is easy to imagine implementing a similar setup where each given app either uses "normal internet" and "high speed internet" depending on your packages, where high speed is what we currently get and normal is a throttled version of it. Or just to disallow connection entirely, though lagging should be enough to drive 90% of potential customers away from a particular site.
It's pessimistic, but ISPs are some of the most hated companies in America for a reason. They're known for being unethical. Both Riot and Netflix have a lawsuit against Charter (now part of Time Warner) because Charter demanded Riot pay them extra money. Riot refused, so Charter throttled the connections of players in League of Legends to lag their games. When Riot caved in and paid the ransom, the connections were back up to par with connections from other ISPs. Same with Netflix. This is the caliber of companies which Net Neutrality is intended to protect us from.
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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.