Why are you so intent on avoiding the question I’ve asked?
I mean, really, if you’re philosophically opposed to regulations in general, why don’t you proudly say so. Why don’t you say that it doesn’t matter if net service is degraded, controlled by a few companies, so long as regulations are decreased?
In answer to your question, it’s true, I live in Australia. A couple of points:
I am an American, born and bred, and still a citizen thereof. I’m concerned because it is still my country, and what happens there is important to me.
America is the center of the internet, insofar as it has a center. Games I play, content I watch, often originates in or passes through America. The effect of repealing net neutrality may well impact me negatively - not to mention the rest of the world.
It’s reminding me of the struggle to get those opposed to same-sex marriage to describe a specific reason for that opposition. I gather it’s more dogmatic than rational. I can see the philosophical satisfaction in it, but at this point and as a matter of practicality, something likely to put roadblocks on the internet causes more harm to the country overall than benefits the profit margins of the blockers. I suppose it’s like a private toll road - sure, the owner of the road can charge a fee for usage, but now he wants to make deals with companies to give their delivery trucks right-of-way and denying access to the delivery trucks of their competitors, potentially.
By the way, I’m not a U.S. citizen, nor have I ever seriously desired to be one. The topic interests me on a technical level and there’s a certain point-and-laugh amusement value.
And I totally agree with you. Net Neutrality is a terrible idea and we’ll all be better off when it’s gone.
When I go to Panera, they are not required to practice “Bread Neutrality” and serve every customer in exactly the same amount of time, treat every ingredient exactly alike, and charge the same price for every sandwich. Instead they can offer a huge variety of items at a variety of prices, taking a variety of different amounts of time to serve those items, and generally organizing their business around the obvious truth that different customers want different things.
OIO supporters imagine a world where ISPs slice and dice internet access into tiered packages, similar to cable subscriptions. This misleading image is a popular one: It shows a hypothetical broadband package where consumers are forced to pay $10 for a “Hollywood” package including YouTube and Hulu, and a $5 “Playground” offering access to Steam and World of Warcraft. Of course, no ISP has ever come close to proposing anything like this arrangement, but this scenario has curiously lodged itself as a chief anxiety of many “net neutrality” supporters.
Recently, this hypothetical fear metastasized into a seemingly real threat. None other than Tim Wu himself, the brains behind the concept of “net neutrality,” shared a scary story about the dystopian world of Portuguese broadband provision, where ISPs had seemingly started to act more like cable companies. An image shared by Silicon Valley congressman Ro Khanna seemed to confirm this worst-case-scenario, sharing an image of a breakdown of Portuguese telecom packages by category.
But there was a huge problem with this story, as an excellent post by Ben Thompson pointed out. That Portuguese telecom provider was not slicing and dicing the 'net for no reason, but rather was an offer for an extra 10 GB of access to a collection of apps on top of the existing family data plan for €25 a month, or about $30. There are examples from the U.S., too. In 2010, then-tiny MetroPCS began offering zero-rated, or discounted, access to YouTube content to be competitive. But net neutrality activists went berserk over this benefit to MetroPCS customers, putting this and similar services in legal jeopardy. Consumers like these kinds of plans because they can be cheaper than all-inclusive data packages while giving them access to the services that they really need.
The repeal of “Net Neutrality” will allow ISPs to offer data packages tailored to the needs of individual customers. Those of us who don’t watch tons of video or play games could be offered a bare-bones package at a lower price; those who do want tons of video could be offered a more expensive plan that guarantees extra resources to make sure their connection never slows down. Who could possible be opposed to letting customers get products that meet their needs?
Of course whenever government regulation is reduced, the debate follows a predictable series of steps. (1) Hysterical advocates of the regulation insist that the sky will fall if it’s removed. (2) The regulation is removed. (3) None of the bad things that were supposed to happen actually happen. (4) The hysterics don’t admit that they were proved wrong, but just refuse to talk about it. A year from now, it will be clear that the Chicken Littles were wrong about “Net Neutrality”, and that everything goes just fine without it.
Recall the deregulation of the airlines in the 80’s. Whiners assured us that if it happened, the industry would collapse, airplanes would fall from the sky, and evil monopolies would gobble up the competition. What actually happened was the exact opposite: the industry thrived, the number of competitors grew, prices went way down, the total number of jobs in the industry went way up.
D’Anconia, you’ve developed the habit of just repeating questions over and over. This is debates, asking questions is not debating. Take a position and defend it.
Any more of this sort of thing - out of anyone - and it’s warning central.
Why is it silly? “Games and content” over the internet represent billions of dollars in sales and service, no? You could argue that movies are inessential and caring about them is silly, but nevertheless they represent a significant economic resource to California and the United States in general.
I don’t generally care about professional sports, but if there was a significant regulatory shift under discussion that could significantly affect how people who are fans get to see the games and they expressed concern over this, I’d at least recognize the amounts of money involved even if I couldn’t care less about how many home runs Gretzky will kick this year, or whatever.
I’m prepared to say you may be right, but you also may be horrifically wrong, and your confidence seems to be largely without basis, as best I can tell.
I’m mildly curious if internet access will become a commodity-like product, with content creators trying to buy futures to ensure that when their content goes online weeks or month down the road, it will reach the widest possible audience. Naturally, where the are commodities, there will be commodity trading, as people try to make a buck off of others’ risk-aversion. And where there’s commodity trading, there’s temptation to unethical or shady commodity trading - commodity manipulation, as it were.
Maybe a year from now there will be no discernible change. I’m curious if ten years from now, there will be an internet equivalent of Enron.
Sorry, but this is absolutely inaccurate. I could craft vague tie-ins with almost any political cause and the Preamble. This is why the Preamble has no particular legal force or effect, and isn’t a source of substantive rights or power.
There’s a worthy distinction to be made, I gather, between Company A deciding what it will put on the internet and Company B deciding what it will pass on the internet.
…I don’t live in America: but I do pay for and watch Netflix. I host (and pay for) my images archive to a company in the United States. I don’t care about the American people at all. But if Net Neutrality remains repealed it will have an effect world wide. We don’t get a vote on it though. So the very least you can do is allow us to have our say.
I have no idea what the charter status of Twitter is, and I do not really fucking care. Twitter is a service, in the same way that SDMB is a service. Hosted by servers. That connect to the internet. I stand by my assertion: Twitter is neither The Internet, nor is it an ISP. Hence, it is not at issue in the net neutrality debate.
Please study up on the subject before blorting out more ridiculous nonsense.