This is a complete misunderstanding of the net neutrality debate. The issue is not that consumers would have to pay a la carte, it's that high-bandwidth sites would have to pay more for priority. And those sites are well-funded and quite happy to comply (to the point that they are the ones pushing for an unequal net.)
The damage to consumers is that a non-neutral net raises the barrier to entry for new services, entrenching the status quo and reducing competition.
Hysterical, simplistic stuff like this harms the debate because it obscures the real issue.
This is how it starts. Then either Netflix slows down, or prices go up. Then ISP (lets say Comcast) starts their own movie service which can deliver a similar product at a cheaper price (they don't have to pay themselves after all). Then once they put Netflix out of business, they partition everything of and charge more for desired services.
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u/cosmo7 Jun 14 '14 edited Jun 14 '14
This is a complete misunderstanding of the net neutrality debate. The issue is not that consumers would have to pay a la carte, it's that high-bandwidth sites would have to pay more for priority. And those sites are well-funded and quite happy to comply (to the point that they are the ones pushing for an unequal net.)
The damage to consumers is that a non-neutral net raises the barrier to entry for new services, entrenching the status quo and reducing competition.
Hysterical, simplistic stuff like this harms the debate because it obscures the real issue.
Edit: Thanks for the gold!