Net neutrality at risk again

Trump picked a guy named Ajit Pai to run the FCC and Pai is not a fan of net neutrality. He's been explicit about it in the past and there's no reason to think he won't try to remove it from the FCC rules. This is an American institution, but of course it affects the rest of the world.

Worried anyone?

Very much. This and the UK making the investigatory powers act law could new the end of the open internet. Or not, I guess for now it's a case of waiting to see what happens.

Lucario said:

Very much. This and the UK making the investigatory powers act law could new the end of the open internet. Or not, I guess for now it's a case of waiting to see what happens.

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US law != UK law, jsyk

Tsutarja said:

US law != UK law, jsyk

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i know, but if the US decides against net neutrality other countries may see fit to make their own anti-net neutrality laws.

What Pai is most content on removing currently is the 2015 Open Internet order, which prevents ISPs from paid promotion of services such as Netflix, as well as being unable to block legal content.

An example of what could happen if this order didn't exist is this: Netflix pays Comcast to promote Nextflix through their services, and Comcast can block Hulu from Comcast customers if they wish.

Personally, I'm not really a fan of removing the work of the Open Internet Order. ISPs already have plenty of power and money, and they don't need any more. Plus, I feel like this could shut out many smaller businesses.

Supporters of this act consider Open Internet to promote a fair business environment that promotes healthy competition, and I agree.

Opposers such as Pai feel like paying ISPs for promotions could be a good way to promote buisness, as long as the ISP allows any company to pay them without discrimination.

The thing is: big companies have money, small ones have much less. Companies such as Netflix can shut out the competition if they pay enough. The counter-argument is that anyone can without discrimination. That's basically saying that it's fair to have an absolute financial advantage, since any company is allowed to in theory.

Overall, not a fan of undoing Open Internet.

Prior to Net Neutrality, how bad of an issue was the stifling of competition? Ive yet to formulate an opinion on it.

BadSheep said:

Prior to Net Neutrality, how bad of an issue was the stifling of competition? Ive yet to formulate an opinion on it.

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I have no clue. That's probably a good idea to look up, though. I'm not too informed on the earlier days of the internet.

Can someone explain to me what net neutrality is? My brothers talk about it all the time, and they have explained it to me but honestly I didn't get it, so I'm hoping someone can explain it to me again ^-^;

BadSheep said:

Prior to Net Neutrality, how bad of an issue was the stifling of competition? Ive yet to formulate an opinion on it.

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Net neutrality is not just about competition, but also prevention of throttling of certain websites or having to pay your ISP more to use stuff like Netflix to receive sufficient bandwidth for just a single site/service.

Cordeline said:

Can someone explain to me what net neutrality is? My brothers talk about it all the time, and they have explained it to me but honestly I didn't get it, so I'm hoping someone can explain it to me again ^-^;

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Basically net neutrality gives us the right to browse all of the internet with equivalent access and rights regardless of whatever you're doing with a flat fee set by your ISP.

BadSheep said:

Prior to Net Neutrality, how bad of an issue was the stifling of competition? Ive yet to formulate an opinion on it.

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It wasn't really an issue initially, but then a bunch of companies consolidated into a few massive providers who realized that without much competition they could get away with prioritizing certain content and generally getting away with things that you can get away with when there isn't any recourse for the consumer. Since those few big providers are still mostly all that's available we need the protection of net neutrality or else there wouldn't be any way to stop them if they chose to throttle certain content.

Esper said:

It wasn't really an issue initially, but then a bunch of companies consolidated into a few massive providers who realized that without much competition they could get away with prioritizing certain content and generally getting away with things that you can get away with when there isn't any recourse for the consumer. Since those few big providers are still mostly all that's available we need the protection of net neutrality or else there wouldn't be any way to stop them if they chose to throttle certain content.

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That sounds pretty bad, but it seems there are a lot of criticisms that the gov't can now effectively take control of the internet and restrict freedom of speech. I really doubt that will occur because it would be incredibly unpopular and there isn't any reason to do so, but is this something that could theoretically occur? Especially with more recent anti big media sentiments and Trump, could those companies take a hit with Net Neutrality?

BadSheep said:

That sounds pretty bad, but it seems there are a lot of criticisms that the gov't can now effectively take control of the internet and restrict freedom of speech. I really doubt that will occur because it would be incredibly unpopular and there isn't any reason to do so, but is this something that could theoretically occur? Especially with more recent anti big media sentiments and Trump, could those companies take a hit with Net Neutrality?

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I'm not sure I'm entirely understanding you here. Do you mean that with NN the government could control free speech or that it would happen without NN? Government restrictions on what people can do online aren't inherent to the idea of NN. They'd be the opposite, really. Of course that's not to say that the FCC or other government agencies (in America and elsewhere) wouldn't try to propose both NN and some amount of government restriction concurrently, but AFAIK there isn't anything egregious in the rules the FCC has about free speech censorship. The main thing (aside from potentially gutting NN) that I think people worry about is spying on internet activity and government subpoenas for records from ISPs.

As for whether removing or weakening NN is likely, the big companies that provide internet would prefer to have no neutrality because then they could charge for different tiers of access. Trump is a pro-business so even if NN is popular it's not necessarily popular to business types and Trump has already shown (like with DAPL) that he's capable of choosing a large business over the people.

Esper said:

I'm not sure I'm entirely understanding you here. Do you mean that with NN the government could control free speech or that it would happen without NN? Government restrictions on what people can do online aren't inherent to the idea of NN. They'd be the opposite, really. Of course that's not to say that the FCC or other government agencies (in America and elsewhere) wouldn't try to propose both NN and some amount of government restriction concurrently, but AFAIK there isn't anything egregious in the rules the FCC has about free speech censorship. The main thing (aside from potentially gutting NN) that I think people worry about is spying on internet activity and government subpoenas for records from ISPs.

As for whether removing or weakening NN is likely, the big companies that provide internet would prefer to have no neutrality because then they could charge for different tiers of access.

Spoiler:

If you're a website (or youtube star, or whatever) and you want to have your content load quickest you'd have to pay extra for that first class-style access. If you're a competitor to the ISP (or a competitor's subsidiary) they could make your content load extra slow. Most people don't assume that their ISP is controlling the speed of different sites and assume that if a site loads slowly it's the site's fault. That can hurt one's business or reputation or otherwise limit the exposure or access you have.

Trump is a pro-business so even if NN is popular it's not necessarily popular to business types and Trump has already shown (like with DAPL) that he's capable of choosing a large business over the people.

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I just see that as a criticism. I haven't actually looked into it myself, but from the sounds of it, it actually seems pro-business for Net Neutrality to exist so companies can't have their websites slowed down by larger competitors.

BadSheep said:

That sounds pretty bad, but it seems there are a lot of criticisms that the gov't can now effectively take control of the internet and restrict freedom of speech. I really doubt that will occur because it would be incredibly unpopular and there isn't any reason to do so, but is this something that could theoretically occur? Especially with more recent anti big media sentiments and Trump, could those companies take a hit with Net Neutrality?

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The government wouldn't impact freedom of speech directly, but Ajit Pai's focus on deregulating ISP's could eventually lead to a situation of the few companies that provide internet access in your area are also the ones that sell cabe tv. Without net neutrality, your ISP and by extension, your cable tv provider could give higher priority 'internet speeds' for their own content whilst slowing down everyone else.

This happened in the past when it came to Netflix having to pay preimums to ISP's in order to not slow down their service. I doubt smaller businesses could do the same.

Apologies if this doesn't direct;y answer your question, but this is what I understood from your post.

I looked more into it, and a counterargument was that there is limited bandwidth, and as a result, companies that take up more bandwidth have to pay more (for obvious reasons. This would include Netflix because I assume it takes up a lot of bandwidth. There seems to be evidence to back this up because apparently there were multiple studies done that prove that there is less investment in the industry and thousands of jobs lost. If I find the article again, Ill link to the studies in this thread.

Thoughts?

BadSheep said:

I looked more into it, and a counterargument was that there is limited bandwidth, and as a result, companies that take up more bandwidth have to pay more (for obvious reasons. This would include Netflix because I assume it takes up a lot of bandwidth. There seems to be evidence to back this up because apparently there were multiple studies done that prove that there is less investment in the industry and thousands of jobs lost. If I find the article again, Ill link to the studies in this thread.

Thoughts?

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I mean, on the surface that sounds like a good counterargument. I'd want to hear more about it (and perhaps a countercounterargument). I dunno how the investment and job loss elements enter into it though. I'd assume that having net neutrality in place would be better for competition/the consumer. I have a few friends who work at a local internet provider and they get pretty good business because the only alternative is Comcast (which is, for those who don't know, a large internet/phone/cable provider who is notorious for bad service and overly high prices). They probably wouldn't have jobs there if Netflix (or whoever) paid money only to the bigger service providers because then Netflix wouldn't load as quickly for their customers compared to the big companies and the consumer would just blame the provider for not being fast enough.

Esper said:

I mean, on the surface that sounds like a good counterargument. I'd want to hear more about it (and perhaps a countercounterargument). I dunno how the investment and job loss elements enter into it though. I'd assume that having net neutrality in place would be better for competition/the consumer. I have a few friends who work at a local internet provider and they get pretty good business because the only alternative is Comcast (which is, for those who don't know, a large internet/phone/cable provider who is notorious for bad service and overly high prices). They probably wouldn't have jobs there if Netflix (or whoever) paid money only to the bigger service providers because then Netflix wouldn't load as quickly for their customers compared to the big companies and the consumer would just blame the provider for not being fast enough.

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Let me get back to you on that so you can find the countercounterargument and perhaps there is a countercountercounterargument XD

So ill edit this post or something unless you reply back, in which cause ill just quote that post.

I'm fairly busy this week, but like Thursday i should be able to do it.

I'm just going to suggest looking into the contracts made between the federal government and ISPs to provide a certain level of "high speed" coverage by specific dates in exchange for the corporations getting assigned "territories" to operate in, and then the corporations failing to meet those dates.

I'm trying to find sources on it as I know this was definitely a thing (and still quietly continues to be a thing), but I'm having no luck so far, since it's been 8 years since I initially found anything on it.

Incineroar said:

Europe is the forefront when it comes to the Internet.

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Fixed, USA is more like laughing stock, they should learn from Europe when it comes to the Internet. EU has protected net neutrality so there wont be any anti-net neutrality laws in Europe. USA will just shoot its own leg if it removes net neutrality.

i dont watch alot of tv with most stuff on tv these days is reruns or shows that are absolute garbage i dont want my ps4 or xbox being throttled