Corolinth wrote:
Net neutrality is popular primarily with ignorant consumers who are told about the evils of capitalism and the corporations out to make money. What they do not understand is that all citizens do not need or merit equal access to the Internet.
The Internet is not a public library, it is a sophisticated data network. You might think of it like our roads, which not everyone has equal access to. Most drivers have had to pull over to the side of the road to let an ambulance, fire truck, or police cruiser go by. There are drivers on the road who have a higher priority than you. The thing people find offensive about this on the internet is that those high priority users are not government bodies, but private institutions. That's fine, people can be offended all they want. Those people are still wrong.
You are trying to talk to your mother or father via email, send pictures of your baby with cake all over his or her face, and watch Netflix. Pfizer is trying to maintain records on all of their equipment over roughly a decade in compliance with FDA regulations, maintain decades worth of research data, take customer orders, track supply chain information, and have all of these records be searchable by various members of the company. Your usage requirements are probably small. Pfizer's usage requirements are large.
Large businesses pay a cost commensurate with their network usage. Network equipment draws a lot of electrical power from the grid, and electricity costs money. Furthermore, network equipment must be overseen and maintained by teams of highly trained engineers in order to keep the Internet running. The Internet isn't free. For most users, this isn't a problem. Monsanto, Boeing, Goldman Sachs, Apple, Google, and so forth pay the bills that keep the Internet running. We charge a family of four a token fee to use the network because they really aren't making a dent in network capacity.
Occasionally, however, there are problems. Some of you are those problems. Some private users consume a disproportionately high amount of capacity. Some people are running BitTorrent constantly, or are otherwise responsible for numerous large file transfers in a short amount of time. These people are not the Pattersons, who twiddle around on the Internet checking Facebook, ordering Christmas presents on Amazon, and having a Skype conversation with Grandma once a week. They are instead high volume users who are sponging off of everyone else's dime. They are paying a fee to use the network, but they are paying well below their usage.
Likely, people like Lenas who think they are being screwed by the service providers. I say likely, because I don't know Lenas' actual network usage. It's possible he's a low-impact user. It's not that providers don't want these high-impact users on their network, far from it. They want business. Providers aren't in the habit of cutting your access to movies and games. People think that, because evil capitalist corporations are evil, but those people are morons who don't understand how money works.
Now let's take a look at a real life scenario involving public utilities. Did you know that electrical utility companies can cut service to a hospital? The circumstances involve a lot of secret sauce, but in a nutshell the NEC has code requirements involving the characteristics of the electrical signal flowing on the power grid. The construction of certain hospitals, the equipment housed therein, and the usage profile of that equipment can cause the local grid to deviate from NEC requirements. Under that condition, the hospital has to be taken offline to protect the rest of the grid. Most hospitals resolve the issue within the allotted time, but a power company can shut off a hospital in the United States.
What I'm getting at here is that regulation of the Internet as a public utility is not going to lead to the result that most of you seem to fantasize about. Actually, it's going to get noticeably more expensive, because public utilities must employ licensed professional engineers. Certain positions within that industry could expect to see their pay increase dramatically, and the savings will be passed on to the customer. This will happen in our llifetime.
This is not how I've understood net neutrality to work. Net neutrality does not stop Comcast from charging more for more bandwidth. Net neutrality requires Comcast to treat everyone the same and route everyone's packets the same. X dollars gets Y bandwidth no matter who you are.
How much would you be willing to pay for Internet if the alternative was not having internet? I'm willing to bet it's a lot more than you're paying now. Since Comcast is a monopoly, they would ordinarily be able to charge you the profit maximizing price, the absolute max you are willing to pay to get Internet. The only reason they can not charge this price is that if they did, you would call your Congressman and tell him to dismantle them.
Without net neutrality, Comcast can get this amount from you by shifting the burden to where you won't blame them for it. The guy streaming 10 TB of Netflix a month will not be hassled by Comcast. They will continue to eat a huge loss by providing him unlimited internet for $30/month. They will then make up that loss by demanding that Netflix pay them billions of dollars or have their viability as a company ended. Netflix will have to raise prices to pay for this, and the consumer will thus blame Netflix for the hike, not Comcast. The consumer loves what he's getting from Comcast. 10+ TB a month for only $30! That's amazing! Clearly giving Comcast monopoly power has not caused them to abuse us. We should give them even more control!
New startups that want to stream over the internet can no longer start up, because they cannot afford Comcast's extortion. Bit Torrent will get quashed, of course, because there's no massive corporation behind it they can extort billions from, and they can use software piracy/illegal activity as can excuse.
Comcast will provide whatever you ask if there's no net neutrality. Fiber straight to everyone's hone? No problem! Internet and cable modems for free? Sure! Who cares how much it costs, Netflix is paying for it.
This is pretty much exactly how Wal-Mart does business by the way. They tell their suppliers that they will supply X goods at Y price or they'll cut off said supplier and instantly put them out of business, because you can't survive if you can't sell to Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart gets to have low prices and everyone else gets to take the risks associated with the razor thin margins.
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