Check this out: http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/15/tech/web/net-neutrality-explained/ It better not die. I don't want to have to pay more for good service. I already pay enough as it is for craptastic service over satellite...
I can understand why the carriers sued. Net Neutrality forces them to treat everyone the same but Netflix takes up 31% of peak bandwidth traffic in the US. Youtube takes 18%. When two companies take up half of the bandwidth they should have to pony up something extra. What they need to do is write a law where there is net neutrality until a website reaches a consistant point of excessive usage at which point the carriers can charge them extra. I would also write into the law that the extra fees charged can only be used to improve infrastructure.
FWIW, if this goes through appeals, you might not have to pay more (but you'll still get crappy service). Companies like Netflix will be the ones ponying up the cash. Of course, they will probably pass this cost to you. Not everyone uses Netflix though... What sucks is that we (the general public) aren't going to feel the full effects of this until it is too late in the game... unless... Seriously, why is this still the case today? The Internet is more important today than telephone service...
Something tells me, no matter how much of the general public complain about this like they did with SOPA, the Government will do it anyway just when SOPA fell through the cracks, they still took down Megaupload. It would suck BAAAAAAD for everyone, not just the US population. It seems they want the Internet to become a ghost down or just like BBS in the early days :/
The websites have already paid, they paid for the uploading of the data from their servers. The more users, the more the websites pay - this is how the internet already works! The customer using the data pays for downloading it. If people are using more data due to Netflix then put the prices up. You can't charge websites for upload and the customers download and then charge the customer for downloading the data too, that's just insane. You are charging for the downloading of the data twice. The whole issue is the isps own doing, selling "unlimited" Internet far below what that would actually cost if people used it. Then complain people are using it!
despite this being something US-exclusive right now, I have a really bad feeling about this. I never really thought about US web, but apparently volume-based packages are the norm there and its already expensive as heck (the telekom tried to introduce those here in germany too, but backed out for now because they got a giant punch in the face), in germany, only mobile web uses those while "normal" web is "you pay for this and you can get up to this speed, what you do with it is yours". If this thing gets set up, things would be even more expensive, and thanks to that transatlantic economythingy, it should not take too long until german ISPs try that too because "we have to stay in the game" and things go down the drain. (and all this comes up just when it looked like they try to get fiber connections set up)
basically what the big corps want, is a closed internet, a cable like service similar to what aol was but where you only have access to their content. this is slowly happening in the uk too with all this porn filter nonsense, black listing will soon become white listing. i said it before we'd previously reached the height of freedom on the internet and in general, it's all down hill from here. Unless we as the people stand up and do something.
Yep, many countries follow after the US, but only for the bad things like this. Australia will follow soon, although we don't have any filters as of yet and we don't get monitored downloads on torrents.
Do you think that Youtube, Google and Netflix just plug in somewhere and get access to the major backbones for free?
I would think Google (for example), controls a significant part of the Internet backbone. If push comes to shove, I'm sure they could seriously screw over ISP's if they wanted. All they would have to do is put something up like "Because of unfair practices by <Insert ISP>, youtube can no longer be viewed from your Internet provider. Please speak with your ISP for more information.". In my humble opinion, I feel essential Internet services have way more leverage than ISPs. If an ISP can't get you Netflix or Youtube, people will simply move to one that does. After all, if your ISP sucks you can easily find a replacement. If Google services suddenly becomes unavailable, your pretty much out of luck.
The problem is that, like the article says, this kind of practice will favor huge multinational corporations over smaller groups and companies. So that means that, whereas now anyone can make a site and upload it to the web, and it will be available worldwide - in the future, it might be impossible for anyone but the wealthiest companies to do this. And that sort of kills the cool thing about the internet - that it's free. That everyone can participate, and they're all seen equally in the view of the end-user. Obviously the powers-that-be are not all too fond of freedom, because it makes it harder for them to control things. I think it sets a really bad precedent, and I think that even worse things are to come if we continue to let shit like this happen.
My FiOS Business bill disagrees with you. The internet is not free and that's not the point. The point is equal access (for good or bad).
