The big arguments against Net Neutrality remain (whatever your view of Obama and the BOM, government and innovation) that the ISP’s will be able to determine what users have access to. In highly granular ways - at will.
In the US, Comcast could - in theory - penalize RealMac (and any of our sites) unless we/they pay Comcast (and AT&T, Verizon etc) a premium.
Users of our (their) sites may find access slowed down or blocked.
Happy with that?
All net neutrality does is prevent your ISP from charging for(you or the website), blocking, or throttling the speed of content based on the domain providing the content.
This whole issue started with ISP’s like Comcast and Verizon charging services like Netflix a surcharge to not throttle or block their services because it was direct competition to their cable TV service.
Since many users in the U.S. only have one choice of internet service providers, the net neutrality rules treated internet services like any utility companies.
Net neutrality is the principle that all traffic on the internet should be treated equally.
Almost if not all developers are in favor of the net neutrality rules, including Steve Wozniak co-founder of Apple.
And all decisions about the future of net neutrality should be passed by Congress, not by few extreme-partisan individuals who are appointed to rule FCC by an equality-hostile president. 
The Internet was an invention of the US government (Google “Arpanet”).
If you have a fire, I’d bet you’d call a government agency known as the fire department. They’d arrive at your residence on streets and highways built by the government. You’d probably watch the fire department while standing on a government built sidewalk. If you lived in California, you’d be eternally grateful for these firefighting government employees this year. Then there are other government agencies, like the highway patrol and police department, that you probably also find useful from time to time.
Net neutrality existed de facto prior to becoming law. Apple (which, as you may remember, used to be a small, struggling company) would have been buried by Microsoft and IBM without net neutrality. The iPhone wouldn’t exist without Apple.
Without net neutrality, the sites you build using Rapidweaver could be relegated to the equivalent of cable’s public access channel.
Lastly, the government hired private companies to build healthcare.gov.
There are lots of good reasons to kill net neutrality, and some good ones to keep it. Here is a smart, balanced piece on the subject.
Well, ok, I’m not going to argue w/ anyone or praise anyone’s views in particular either, but I believe most are missing the main point about the internet. And that is, that it is lightly regulated by the govt. & has been since it’s inception, till a couple years ago. So why is that so massively important to everyone, because it allows marketplace economics to work & rewards those for hard work & dilligence, whether you are espousing a thought, selling a product or providing a service. The customers and consumers determine who has the ‘best’ of whatever, which also drives innovation & taking risks. Govt. intervention & the massive restrictions that it always imposes on things do just the opposite. [End of Soapbox Rant]
Everyone have a good day.
Bill
Wow! He’s very eloquent. Never heard of him before.
Im with you Bill. ANYTHING that limits the US government in our lives is a GOOD thing and allows capitalism, free trade and market driven economies to flourish.
I’ll tell you what will happen without NN. Anybody here have cable or satellite TV? You notice how you can’t just pay for the channels you want to use, and you can only use the channels you pay for? The business model is already in place. Your internet provider sends you a list of subscriptions. You can get the basic “email” package for free, but if you want YouTube there is a surcharge, and you can only get it with the Video package which includes a lot of other stuff you don’t want. Or, somebody in the ISP decides they don’t like Planned Parenthood, so the priority of PP website traffic gets dialed down to the point it takes 45 seconds to load the home page and people just give up. I will bet good money on this scenario happening soon in a test market.
So what if they have to tell you what’s being throttled? How many broadband providers do you have to choose from, if you don’t like it? What you gonna do about it, Willis?
Back in the early times, people bitched about ads on the net. There was an argument that the internet shouldn’t be used for profit-making businesses. People wrote cool things like, I don’t know, internet browsers called Mozilla and made the code open source. There wasn’t much interest on the part of broadband providers to provide any broadband because they couldn’t see how to make money on it. They are making plenty of money on it now. But greed has no bounds. As long as Netflix has a market, HBO will be plotting how to take it from them. If they can’t take it by creating better programming, maybe they will take it by putting some squeeze on ATT to throttle them down. The business interests in play here do not have your best interests in mind at all. You are just a potential source of revenue, and will be managed to create the greatest amount of revenue for the least expense.
Thanks for such a clear description, Karen!
The prospect of what you write inspired my original post.
That, BTW, is ‘allowing capitalism’ to continue to degrade, wreck and destroy.
If the US FCC’s ruling stands, it will affect us all adversely - no matter where we live and work.
How does allowing Comcast to be a monopoly promote “free trade and market driven economies”?
Tim Berners-Lee invented www at CERN that made use of the existing network
Was one Among the more than 20 tech trailblazers that posted a letter to the FCC asking to keeping the net neutrality rules in effect.
Check the link in my post above
Net and tech pioneers: Hey FCC, don’t repeal net neutrality
Along with Vint Cerf, and Steve Wozniak.
But really all Americans know that Al Gore “invented the Internet”.
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