NYcarbineer
Diamond Member
Right now we pay for broadband with a flat fee for a certain speed.
With Net neutrality, it is my understanding that this would stay the same...?
And without Net Neutrality, Internet service providers are considering making us pay by usage, not the flat fees we all pay now....
So, someone who uses Nexflix and/ or streams movies, will be charged much much more for their service??
Am I understanding this correctly?????????????
You are close. Currently, the common practice is for service providers to offer packages based on speed. This is entirely a market phenomenon. In times past providers would offer packages based on amount of data. The progression was: Pay for amount of data used > unlimited data for everyone > dialup/DSL speed options with unlimited data > assorted speed options at tiered pricing > the current precipice.
Information traveling the internet requires two connections. As the end user, you receive data through an internet connection, but it has to come from somewhere that also has an internet connection. Your internet experience can be affected indirectly by interfering with the source. What some service providers have been starting to do is that they want to throttle internet speeds based on the origin. It does not really have anything to do with how your service package would be designed. At least, not yet. It's certainly possible that providers could start having Netflix booster packages for an additional $14.95. In fact, I would put money on someone trying to develop such a thing right now.
The case of Netflix is the most prominent example. Not long ago Comcast decided that it didn't like the fact that people are using Netflix instead of buying Comcast cable, so they throttled Netflix speeds to unusability, until Netflix relented and agreed to pay millions of dollars to Comcast. Net neutrality seeks to make actions like this illegal. It would require that all data be treated equally. Service providers cannot black out or throttle data from certain sources while giving preferential treatment to other sources. Comcast would not be able to block google search results for news content that comes from places other than NBC (which Comcast owns). Proponents have many concerns. There are worries that requiring companies to pay to simply be visible would be particularly harmful to small businesses who use the internet as their primary avenue for operations. Everyone from small online retailers to local services who rely on their websites as their key form of advertising and marketing would be substantially effected if they had to pay hefty prices (seen as mafia style bribes) for "protection" against their sites being blacked out to consumers. There are also consumer advocates who find it objectionable that a consumer pays for X speed, but does not actually receive X speed. There are then others who believe that it is a conflict of interest for service providers who nowadays are also content providers to block content in order to pressure consumers to consume their own.
Opponents to net neutrality fall into four categories:
The Uninformed - These people tend to mistake net neutrality for government screening of internet content. Net neutrality involves no government screening of content. "Net neutrality" is itself just a concept. It is an internet where information flows freely and without discrimination; i.e. where information is treated with neutrality. It is what has happened for the vast majority of the time the internet has existed, and only recently has it been infringed upon. Some have proposed legislation as a means to protect it. Obama has proposed that the FCC take regulatory power to classify the internet as a utility, which would liken internet data to water; nobody knows the origins of one drop of water from the next, it just comes out of our faucets without discrimination.
The Obama Deranged - These people dislike net neutrality because Obama supports it. If not for their ODS some of them would be members of The Uninformed. But more often than not, these people are outright lying. They often make up the lies that The Uninformed have fallen for. They invent their fictions because they do not want something Obama has supported to take place. They will not address facts. If asked to provide facts to support their fairy tales they will most likely resort to name calling, with references to government censorship in China and to Nazi Germany. They will often make the ass backwards claim that net neutrality is an attack on free speech. But they will offer no facts to support their claims because they have none and don't care about them anyway.
The Libertarian - These people have a sincere support for service providers, such as Comcast, charging content providers, such as Netflix and Fox News, additional money. The Libertarian sees it as a simple business transaction and typically believes that the market can and will handle it well enough. The Libertarian does not find any problem with alleged conflicts of interest in the fact that large service providers are also content providers. If a service provider like Comcast chooses to throttle or block content that it does not own, then that is Comcast's right as a business and nobody should interfere. The Libertarian is generally unshaken by concerns about large corporations exerting power or control over the people, because The Libertarian believes that amassing and exerting power over the people is only evil when done by the government. The same power wielded by corporate interests not only lacks evil, it often is deemed righteous.
The Cable Company - The Cable Company provides media, in the form of cable, and they provide access to other media, in the form of internet. The Cable Company wants you to buy both things so they can make money from you, but they don't want to deal with competition. In recent years internet has led to competition for The Cable Company, because through the internet alternative forms of media can now be delivered to consumers. For The Cable Company, this is the business equivalent of lupus; their right hand is killing their left hand. Contrary to popular misconception about corporate ventures being decidedly conservative in mentality, The Cable Company is typically a liberal entity who feels entitled to other people's money whenever it wants it and seeks greater and greater power to force itself upon you and your wallet. Hence, the two predominant cable companies in the country (Time Warner and Comcast) own the two most liberal news outlets in the media, CNN and NBC respectively. So naturally, they object to you using the internet to consume media that they're not producing (and thus, not making a profit from). But the overall effect on them was not so substantial (or immediately quantifiable) as recent trends whereby people have resorted to the internet to consume video media that was previously consumed through cable service. After a mad scramble, The Cable Company decided to start throttling content coming from competition for their own content. This event marks the death of the old free market net neutrality and has given rise to calls for legally enforceable net neutrality.
So all of this so people can watch movies faster? Is that what I am getting out of this?
Right now we pay for broadband with a flat fee for a certain speed.
With Net neutrality, it is my understanding that this would stay the same...?
And without Net Neutrality, Internet service providers are considering making us pay by usage, not the flat fees we all pay now....
So, someone who uses Nexflix and/ or streams movies, will be charged much much more for their service??
Am I understanding this correctly?????????????
You are close. Currently, the common practice is for service providers to offer packages based on speed. This is entirely a market phenomenon. In times past providers would offer packages based on amount of data. The progression was: Pay for amount of data used > unlimited data for everyone > dialup/DSL speed options with unlimited data > assorted speed options at tiered pricing > the current precipice.
Information traveling the internet requires two connections. As the end user, you receive data through an internet connection, but it has to come from somewhere that also has an internet connection. Your internet experience can be affected indirectly by interfering with the source. What some service providers have been starting to do is that they want to throttle internet speeds based on the origin. It does not really have anything to do with how your service package would be designed. At least, not yet. It's certainly possible that providers could start having Netflix booster packages for an additional $14.95. In fact, I would put money on someone trying to develop such a thing right now.
The case of Netflix is the most prominent example. Not long ago Comcast decided that it didn't like the fact that people are using Netflix instead of buying Comcast cable, so they throttled Netflix speeds to unusability, until Netflix relented and agreed to pay millions of dollars to Comcast. Net neutrality seeks to make actions like this illegal. It would require that all data be treated equally. Service providers cannot black out or throttle data from certain sources while giving preferential treatment to other sources. Comcast would not be able to block google search results for news content that comes from places other than NBC (which Comcast owns). Proponents have many concerns. There are worries that requiring companies to pay to simply be visible would be particularly harmful to small businesses who use the internet as their primary avenue for operations. Everyone from small online retailers to local services who rely on their websites as their key form of advertising and marketing would be substantially effected if they had to pay hefty prices (seen as mafia style bribes) for "protection" against their sites being blacked out to consumers. There are also consumer advocates who find it objectionable that a consumer pays for X speed, but does not actually receive X speed. There are then others who believe that it is a conflict of interest for service providers who nowadays are also content providers to block content in order to pressure consumers to consume their own.
Opponents to net neutrality fall into four categories:
The Uninformed - These people tend to mistake net neutrality for government screening of internet content. Net neutrality involves no government screening of content. "Net neutrality" is itself just a concept. It is an internet where information flows freely and without discrimination; i.e. where information is treated with neutrality. It is what has happened for the vast majority of the time the internet has existed, and only recently has it been infringed upon. Some have proposed legislation as a means to protect it. Obama has proposed that the FCC take regulatory power to classify the internet as a utility, which would liken internet data to water; nobody knows the origins of one drop of water from the next, it just comes out of our faucets without discrimination.
The Obama Deranged - These people dislike net neutrality because Obama supports it. If not for their ODS some of them would be members of The Uninformed. But more often than not, these people are outright lying. They often make up the lies that The Uninformed have fallen for. They invent their fictions because they do not want something Obama has supported to take place. They will not address facts. If asked to provide facts to support their fairy tales they will most likely resort to name calling, with references to government censorship in China and to Nazi Germany. They will often make the ass backwards claim that net neutrality is an attack on free speech. But they will offer no facts to support their claims because they have none and don't care about them anyway.
The Libertarian - These people have a sincere support for service providers, such as Comcast, charging content providers, such as Netflix and Fox News, additional money. The Libertarian sees it as a simple business transaction and typically believes that the market can and will handle it well enough. The Libertarian does not find any problem with alleged conflicts of interest in the fact that large service providers are also content providers. If a service provider like Comcast chooses to throttle or block content that it does not own, then that is Comcast's right as a business and nobody should interfere. The Libertarian is generally unshaken by concerns about large corporations exerting power or control over the people, because The Libertarian believes that amassing and exerting power over the people is only evil when done by the government. The same power wielded by corporate interests not only lacks evil, it often is deemed righteous.
The Cable Company - The Cable Company provides media, in the form of cable, and they provide access to other media, in the form of internet. The Cable Company wants you to buy both things so they can make money from you, but they don't want to deal with competition. In recent years internet has led to competition for The Cable Company, because through the internet alternative forms of media can now be delivered to consumers. For The Cable Company, this is the business equivalent of lupus; their right hand is killing their left hand. Contrary to popular misconception about corporate ventures being decidedly conservative in mentality, The Cable Company is typically a liberal entity who feels entitled to other people's money whenever it wants it and seeks greater and greater power to force itself upon you and your wallet. Hence, the two predominant cable companies in the country (Time Warner and Comcast) own the two most liberal news outlets in the media, CNN and NBC respectively. So naturally, they object to you using the internet to consume media that they're not producing (and thus, not making a profit from). But the overall effect on them was not so substantial (or immediately quantifiable) as recent trends whereby people have resorted to the internet to consume video media that was previously consumed through cable service. After a mad scramble, The Cable Company decided to start throttling content coming from competition for their own content. This event marks the death of the old free market net neutrality and has given rise to calls for legally enforceable net neutrality.
I have satellite internet which the only hi-speed available to me and I pay a flat fee but with a bandwidth limit that I can only add to by paying more. You do not want that...
fortunately I get unlimited bandwidth in the wee hours which is good except for the part where I now have the biological clock of a hoot owl.
