[TUHS] net neutrality

[lm@mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy)]

On Mon, Dec 11, 2017 at 02:23:28PM -0500, Noel Chiappa wrote:
> This whole 'net neutrality' campaign drives me completely crazy.
> 
> If all people wanted was a rule saying 'ISPs can't give third parties _worse_
> service, or - more importantly - deny service altogether, unless those parties
> pay up' (i.e. what would amount to targeted extortion), I'd be _all for_ a
> rule like that.
> 
> But the 'net neutrality' aficionados (most of whom, I'm fairly sure, are not
> aware of/thinking about these details) are all signing up for a much more
> expansive rule, one that says 'no ISP can offer anyone _better_ service for
> paying more money' - which is quite different. My problems with this latter
> form are two-fold.

So that's not at all the case.  Go look at the history, various ISPs like
Verizon, Comcast, etc, have done stuff like block bittorrent, skype, etc,
anything that they decided wasn't in their interest.

The problem is I paid for the bits.  Bits is bits.  I paid for a rate, 
that's what they got paid for, why should they get to charge a second
time for the same bits?  That's exactly what they want to do.  You 
pay them, you pay netflix, you've paid for the carrier, you've paid
for the content, oh, you want it to actually stream?  Too bad, Netflix
didn't pay their extortion so your movie watching sucks.

Don't believe me?  OK, how about this?

https://np.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/comments/7i595b/will_the_repeal_of_net_neutrality_actually_help/dqwzn1g/