We already have, and always have had, a tiered Web. My Internet speed is dependent upon what I pay my ISP; faster service costs more money. This is nothing new.
What Cecil should have said is this: “…where premium pricing buys you faster, better service according to content.” That is where the fear is – if your ISP wants to slow down (or speed up) your data for any reason, they will be able to if Net Neutrality is not the law.
Ignore the vintage interboard snark; the point is that net neutrality is of particular relevance to a democratic participation in being a content provider (or being able to select from a wide range of content providers). It may also have other consumer-centered relevance but the biggest threat from ending net neutrality is that it could raise the $$$ bar to being able to put your own content out there; that it could turn the internet into “television where you can directly order the products in the ads”.
The biggest problem, I think, is that consumer Internet access is mostly sold by the phone company and the cable company, both companies which are seeing their main product outcompeted by Internet-based products. And since both the phone company and the cable company are monopolies in most places, they’re fighting back by hamstringing their competition, instead of by improving their own product, or moving into more productive lines.
Not exactly. If I’m accessing Netflix, then I’m getting TV shows from somewhere other than Cox Cable, and so I’m taking myself out of the customer pool for Cox TV. Cox (which happens to be my ISP) doesn’t like that, so it throttles my connection to Netflix (or charges me more for the privilege of not being throttled). But I could use the exact same amount of bandwidth downloading (say) black-hole merger gravitational wave forms, and that’s no threat at all to Cox, and so they won’t throttle that.
This (and let’s get it out of the way right now) vile, repulsive piece of scum has had his domain canceled by both GoDaddy and Google.
In a neutral net, the domain registrars would be treated as common carriers, not responsible for (legal) content, and not allowed to block it, either.
While Cecil mentioned nytimes.com, we now have a non-theoretical, real-world situation where the people who run the Internet are deciding what (vile, repulsive piece of scum) legal content you can have access to.
In quite the same way that the telephone company cannot cut off your conversations if you insult someone or express glowing admiration for Hitler’s painting skills (two coats!).
As a First Amendment Theorist, I’d say that is a good thing. But even if you support ISPs cancelling accounts for content reasons, the end result won’t be as your ideal; there will always be someone who is eager to host scum, whether for ideological or profit reasons.
Hosting is really a much lesser concern. There is no significant barrier to entry for web hosting, anyone moderately tech savvy can even do it themselves:
If web hosting services choose to discriminate based on content, it’s still fairly easy and inexpensive to get your content out there. If you don’t have the tech savvy, maybe it’s a little difficult to find an IT professional to help you if you’re a Nazi, but I’m not sure that there’s any pressing regulatory concern there. It might also be fairly difficult to find somebody to mow your lawn or fix your plumbing if you’re a Nazi. If the only barrier to getting your content out there is that you can’t find anyone to help you to do it because they think you’re an asshole, I really don’t think that’s something that needs to be addressed through regulation.
It’s the ISP infrastructure (the physical cables going into everyone’s homes) that is a monopoly or oligopoly with a massive barrier to entry. If the ISP won’t carry your content, or the ISP demands an extortionate price to carry your content at acceptable speeds, then you are screwed. So it’s the ISP services where there’s a pressing need to enforce content neutrality. If a Nazi has figured out how to provide his content, I don’t think the ISP should be allowed to block it.
Net neutrality really applies to ISPs, not hosting sites. There are many, many hosting sites but many Americans may have only one or two ISPs to choose from. So, let’s not confuse the issue here – if they can’t find a hosting site, that’s not really a net neutrality issue. If their content is blocked by the ISP, that may be a net neutrality issue, depending on whether the content is legal.
Another item is linkage between ISPs and services. What if your ISP is owned by Disney and you want to watch Netflix? Or vice-versa? What if you find that, in order to get acceptable service, you need to employ multiple ISPs and put a complex router in your house?