Unabogie
Philosopher
Nothing about net neutrality prevents ISPs from metering their rates of they want to. Some tried doing this back in the early days of the internet, consumers didn't like it.
So now they want to fool the consumers by advertising "20Mbps download speeds and unlimited use", and then throttling down high-bandwidth sites so as to restrict the amount of data you can d/l.
So the Netflix user sees that advertised for an attractive price, only to find out later the ISP is throttling Netflix to 56k dial-up speeds so it takes you a week to d/l your movie. But it just so happens they have a competing movie d/l site you can subscribe to, and they won't throttle that one!
And this is exactly what the ISPs want to do - create vertical monopolies by stifling competition from competitors through the throttling I just described. Under net neutrality, they wouldn't be allowed to throttle any particular site. All sites get the same priority and speed.
Without net neutrality, any web site capable of making money could thus be forced to make a deal with the few large ISPs (and by "make a deal" I mean pay money to them like a mafia protection racket) to keep from being throttled. Or the ISP might want to get into that business themselves if it's a big moneymaker and throttle all the competition.
In short, an absence of net neutrality rules places way to much power in too few companies, is anti-competitive, and will encourage vertical monopolies. This will stifle innovation and growth, not encourage it.
Again, well said. Net Neutrality simply means that ISPs must be "neutral" about the originator and content of the packets they consume. And as infrastructure becomes cheaper and cheaper, the prices should be coming down, not going up. The suggestion that this is in response to ISPs facing cost pressures is a canard.
Allowing an ISP to decide which packets warrant top speeds is basically death to the web as we know it.