Net Neutrality in the US

Started by Dter ic May 10th, 2014 2:47 AM
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Dter ic

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Age 26
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(Un)united Kingdom
Seen December 15th, 2018
Posted July 9th, 2018
741 posts
10.7 Years
what is the whole thing about anyway?

Network neutrality is the idea that your cellular, cable, or phone internet connection should treat all websites and services the same, similar to other utility companies like the electricity company simply charges based on how much you use, rather than charging differently depending on what appliance you use.

What this means is that every website on the internet should be treated the same. Users should be able to make full use of their bandwidth (as long as its legal of course) and ISP shouldn't prioritize certain traffic based on the type of website you use.

On the other hand, ISP's are commonly against net neutrality. AT&T for example, want to charge differently by categorizing websites depending on how much resources it uses. They can then charge you differently depending on what websites you visit. ISP's argue that doing this allows them to manage the level of traffic on their network. E.g. streaming videos on Netflix uses more bandwidth than visiting a websites on the internet - ISP's could get you to pay more for special priority access to Netflix.

So what's your view on net neutrality? Should ISP be allowed to prioritize websites based on how much bandwidth they consume or should we just treat all websites the same?

The Void

hiiiii

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MOTHA RUSSIA
Seen May 29th, 2019
Posted August 9th, 2015
1,416 posts
13 Years
Obviously the latter. The Internet is not the plaything of the ISP's business -- the only reason they are doing this is basically because they want to make more money out of web users, which is plain wrong.
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Tsutarja

Age 28
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Throttling connectivity of users is just a "scam" from internet service providers to get more money from their subscribers. Same with data caps as well, really.
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Seen June 21st, 2017
Posted June 21st, 2017
811 posts
10.3 Years
No, they shouldn't. The internet should not be something isps squeeze to make the most amount of money out of it as possible. Places like South Korea and (I think) Japan have 10x faster internet than us with cheaper prices. Ahh America... But either way, they should be treated as common carriers (As the video says) because they provide a similar service as other companies, like television and phone service providers, and those companies can't discriminate.

Alexander Nicholi

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Age 25
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Research Triangle / Jakarta
Seen February 15th, 2023
Posted March 5th, 2021
5,498 posts
13.5 Years
Corporations (along with business in general) tend to be rather skilled at milking their customers out of as much money as humanly possible, and in other industries they are insanely successful. It's clear that the government is no power to stop these greedy businessmen from getting what they want (i.e. more for themselves and less for everyone else), and in reality such malicious behavior relies on the passive consent from the people being taken advantage of; the only way to truly stop this is to refuse what they want (our money). The issue lies in the fact that many Americans care more about having their internet at all rather than giving it up for a bit to let it retain the liberty it represents. Who's to say they won't continue and implement this without a word said edgewise in the media, since they have practical control of that too?
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droomph

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Seen February 1st, 2017
Posted January 3rd, 2017
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11.7 Years
As long as they carry it to a rate at which I couldn't tell. I mean, take for example 2 GB/h. I could use that without any bandwidth issues on a predominantly text-based site such as this one, but if I'm streaming HD Netflix, then I'm most likely going to run into some problems at the 40-minute mark. One byte could stand for a whole word in ASCII, whereas on movies that could be a whole megabyte for a sound-clip. And multiply that by millions of users, and I can see a potential problem arising. So I think that they have the right to partition it, but there should be rules to ensure our rights.

For example, there should be a rule that states while internet bandwidth can be partitioned, there must be a standard to which most websites will not be affected. And there should be an easy complaints-filing system, like a customer service tab that's one-click and connected immediately to the complaints processing center (third party, of course). So if you say "my Netflix isn't loading", they will take a reasonably-lengthed screen capture showing proof that your internet isn't fast enough, and some network stats and data-requested rate to go along with that screen capture, and the complaints will have legal consequences to the ISPs if the bandwidth is smaller than the average data requested rate for that website.

I may not be a lawyer but I think I'd do my part when I just deal with the laggy Internet and not pay them any more.

However I don't know how well that'll turn out so ;;
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