How our internet is to be affected

I had thought that with net neutrality, they would try their best to change it. The internet is fine the way it is but the powers that be constantly want to control it.

Even though I'm not worried, because it didn't pass before so why would it now when people are more adamantly against it. What is your take?

Sadly, we live in a capitalist society. So my take on it? The big businesses that have everything to win by this passing will pour money into this to make it happen. Just like how many things that are illegal but should be legal (eg. marijuana because it could've replaced paper) or things that should be illegal but aren't (eg. flamethrowers) are there because big corporations have made it so. They protect their investments like good business people, by buying politicians.

Sadly, this whole thing may pass, more likely than not. And when it does, it will be dark times for all of us.

It may but it may not. Nothing is set in stone fortunately. If it does pass, it will be harder to get rid off but they will only invite more backlash. Whenever the government gets involved, the cost goes up and the quality goes down.

We haven't really been capitalist though. More like crony capitalism and corporatism with some socialist methods.

What are the benefits of getting rid of it? I guess it's interesting from a security standpoint, to minimize massive data breaches or at least cripple them enough to better allow detection and response. Which is a pretty thin reason, but if lost then they'd really want to have some minimum service provisions in place to ensure sufficient capacity for normal business was available to everyone else. Otherwise net neutrality seems more democratic and therefore best serving of capitalism, then allowing particular enterprises to have privilege - as that would just seem to be redefining government hegemony into corporate hegemony.

We need net neutrality. That’s about all I know on the subject.

As far as pros and cons for getting rid of it? Haha. There are no pros for anyone except the big corporations. Nobody wants to lose net neutrality. (At least, no one that understands what it means.)

The scary thing about all this is that it's the FCC that's seeking to abolish net neutrality regulations and laws. We have no real control over what the FCC does.

Here is a different take on why to do away with net neutrality:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/fcc-chair-ajit-pai-explains-wants-scrap-net-neutrality

Can't say I trust it completely, but it does make sense that breaches in anti-trust law or consumer protection law should be dealt with on a case by case basis. As with all deregulation, the burden will go to the middle class to pay for innovation in low-income sectors.

I can relate to the lack of competition argument; where I live it’s AT&T, Comcast, and maybe a satellite provider (I forget which). Both AT&T and comcast have absolutely abysmal upstream bandwidth unless you buy a “Business Plan” and have a dedicated fiber-line installed. It shouldn’t be that costly for me to do a livestream, but for whatever reason I have (optimally) 29mbps downstream bandwidth, and about 4.5mbps upstream. If you’re a gamer, that makes twitch.tv simply unusable for content creation. And so here’s the rub, big ISPs are already engaging in anticompetitive practices; by limiting upstream bandwidth so severely in comparison to downstream, they are able to effectively muzzle a huge portion of customer-generated media content.

In other words, they’re afraid of competition from their own customers.

Net Neutrality is one of the single most important decisions this generation can make. It's vital to the way the world currently works, and without net neutrality in place we essentially lose everything that makes the internet function the way it should.

steamboat28 wrote: Net Neutrality is one of the single most important decisions this generation can make. It's vital to the way the world currently works, and without net neutrality in place we essentially lose everything that makes the internet function the way it should.

Correct me if I am mistaken: isn't the changes they are trying to make going to undo only the last three years of new regulations? What exactly is being changed in this law?

Manu wrote: Correct me if I am mistaken: isn't the changes they are trying to make going to undo only the last three years of new regulations? What exactly is being changed in this law?

https://www.savetheinternet.com/net-neutrality-what-you-need-know-now

Thank you Steam.

Truth is, Pai's arguments seem to read like the kind of statements you get from politicians. I'm still trying to connect how LESS neutrality leads to more innovation.

I guess the network owners want another profit stream, by operating some measures currently available to ISP's - but its a question of competition, a market needs fair competition. ISP's throttle speeds and can block services, at least where I live - but the ISP's minimize it probably because their is market competition, the customer would go to another ISP...... something which probably does not exist among backbone networks.

Manu wrote: Correct me if I am mistaken: isn't the changes they are trying to make going to undo only the last three years of new regulations? What exactly is being changed in this law?

Basic rule #1 for dealing with politicians, elected or appointed (this also applies to corporations): give an inch, and they’ll take a mile.