Personally, I'm much more bothered by this than I am by the NSA. But that's just me I guess.

The problem with the argument that ISP's will favour some media venders over others is that its historically unfounded.

If you knew that your ISP was blocking lets say youtube, and you use youtube a lot, you would switch ISPs. ISPs have more to gain then lose be keeping neutral, thats why there has never been a case of ISPs picking favourites.

Meanwhile, by allowing the government to force neutrality, you add unneeded regulation, increasing the cost of internet service, decreasing competition and you allow the FCC to pick and chose winners,

Nt neutrality is dangerous and does more harm than good.

It isn't hyperbole to say that if Net Neutrality goes, it will be the end of the internet as we know it.

Fasces -- you don't think this will allow venders and ISP's to make deals and control access? If they're allowed to why wouldn't they? They are in the business to make money. That is their mission.

Not sure how you can reference what is historically founded if this is a new thing.

@Dirge: I question your logic. There is currently no law on the books that prevents ISPs and venders to make deals. The democratic party has proposed legislation that would add laws.

For the last 15 years the internet hasn't had these laws and ISPs and venders haven't made deals. So my question for you is what's changed?

For the last 15 years the ISPs have decided it is not in their best interest to make these deals, why do you think that has changed when there is no evidence that that has changed?

I can't claim to know that much about it. I was just wondering. News reports seem to imply this is a big change.

The ISPs have an agreed industry standard, to be part of the internet the all uphold net neutrality, it is and always was, a tacit agreement between service providers which make up the internet - mostly because it was not possible for any individual organisation or government to build the internet on their own.

Like telephone exchanges agreeing to allow communication from their competitors access their networks (so you can phone someone who is on a different network) and all for free, because your competitor companies are providing your customers with people to talk to - and so sharing helps every telephone network.

The internet is built on this freedom (and was originally built directly on the phone lines and the telecoms infrastructure which was already there, but i suspect that the amount of data from internet users is higher than the telephone users...)

The consequences for small websites which grow quickly and can't pay for ISPs to supply them with bandwidth might prevent a repeat of the kind of growth which created youtube, and might demolish wikipedia's current popularity. Making growth harder while large successful companies would merely pay to stay ahead of any competition. The end of the net as we know it.

@Fasces

How exactly am I supposed to switch ISP if only one services my location?

You could move...

The ironic thing is that ISP are not really likely to make all that much money out of this stuff.

If ISP start charging (say for example) youtube in order to transmit data, youtube will need to pass this cost onto somebody, probably consumers. Consumers will migrate to (smaller) free websites. Essentially, ISP charge as much as they believe people will pay.

In essence, you already see a similar form of this in England, where both the person placing and receiving mobile phone calls are charged for the call, as opposed to the US, where only the dialer pays for the call. As far as I know, British ISP are not fantastically more profitable than American ones.

I'm starting to suspect that it's the lobbyists who are putting everyone else over a barrel. For what it's worth, most of us already know that companies like Verizon and Comcast are morally bankrupt and that consumers are better off choosing a more ethically delivered service. As far as I know, satellite internet is available places where wired internet can't reach and may be an acceptable alternative.

Tiered internet (e.g. non-neutral) is about as ethical as making black people sit in the back of the bus.

Is that what you mean by "choice", Fasces? Is that how a free market is supposed to work?

+1 Al Swearengen.

@Abge: I was (partially) joking. When there is a local monopoly over the supply of a good, in a free market you have 4 options::
Option 1: use your local ISP.
Option 2: move.
Option 3: don't use the internet.
Option 4: start your own ISP.

How to start my own ISP. (my next google search)

"Option 1: use your local ISP.
Option 2: move.
Option 3: don't use the internet.
Option 4: start your own ISP."

These are all shitty options.

"How to start my own ISP. (my next google search)"
Are you sure your ISP will let you google that, I mean the net isn't neutral right now :P

"These are all shitty options."
Welcome to capitalism, lol

Yeah, but see that's exactly why we shouldn't have a free market. There need to be regulations so things like that don't happen.

Wait, what? Regulations so the only show in town behaves nicely. Ok, the powernof the free market is the it devolves power to individuals, or collection of individuals who incorporate - that means it is democratic rather than authoritarian-representative.

It is better to get your local customers to boycott and create an alternative rather than assume world governance can regulate - especially when that regulation often means only bigger companies can afford to get into an industry (look at the regulations over patent law, and patent trolling)

Net neutrality is an idea which should mean ISPs who don't play the game fairly get relegated to poorer connection rates - but once data leave an ISP it is no longer identified with that network, we don't want to waste time policing information in this way - though certain ISPs do want to police their data so they can sell preferential treatment... But you also don't want to exclude any nodes from your network; in theory that slows everyone down (except the ISPs of excluded nodes) and maybe even increases the internal performance of the node you've excluded (because you reduce their load by excluding) but i suspect that excluding certain practices may run up against neutrakity itself, though in a sligthly different sense.

I'm mostly confused at this point, all the google results i found suggested up/down stream traffic (and mostly stuff for modems dating back to ~2001) cross network traffic is something i'm interested in and seems like it is held on a different level - my confusion knows no bounds...

"It is better to get your local customers to boycott and create an alternative rather than assume world governance can regulate - "

generally speaking, boycotting is not a viable option to regulation in all instances. Especially so with utilities, and I would suspect ISP's.