They are regulated always have been. Look up Sherman and clayton act. Look up what the FTC does. They regulate the ISPs. Net neutrality hasn't been enforced by the new FCC so it's really been gone for over a year. Let me know when the internet shuts down.
I didn't realize AOL and Compuserve ruled the interwebz up until the beginning of 2015. AOL and Compuserve had nothing to do with net neutrality. AOL and such services birthed the adoption of Web 1.0. There was very little content prior to the AOL days. When the telecoms developed the 'always online' ISDN lines, then later DSL coupled with the birth of Web 2.0 and the dot.com bubble did the internet truly blossom. Net Neutrality went into effect in early 2015. Quite frankly, the last 3 years have been the most boring when it comes to the internet. Additionally in the last year, both Spectrum and Comcast are rolling out gigabit internet services. ISP's continue to expand, with or w/out NN.
Hardly, I want to keep the playing field open so that the big ISP's don't run up the charge and kill innovation.
Incorrect. Microsoft was one of the biggest companies who tried the walled garden approach. Their dream was to control everything, basically a massive intranet. It never came close to taking off. Even AOL allowed anyone use the internet outside of their garden. The telecoms and cable companies only want to be a transport layer. Its extremely costly to implement any system that requires the ISP to maintenance individual customers on a 'tiered' plan. Every time I hear this argument, it reminds me how little people understand how the internet really works. NN didnt even enforce its own rules. Further, NN never attempted to resolve the bigger issues. Data caps is a much much bigger threat than throttling. Oh yes, and piss poor customer service.
You might be too young to know. Back in the day.... the internet services like AOL and Compuserve dominated "online". You had to use a modem and dial-in to their servers to access content. New legislation made military technology available for commercial use in the US and in the 90's you had protocols such as the world wide web developed by Europe who created HTML/URLs/WWW - the modern internet. The first browser mosaic was from a government funded project (championed by the right's favorite punching bag Al Gore), all of these forces came about to create the modern internet as you know it. As ISP's raced to provide access to this new entity, net neutrality was already the founding principle of the internet. No law as necessary as the technology didn't even exist to "throttle". That started to change, and when ISP's started to play games with throttling, net neutrality rules were put into affect to protect those founding principles. You are clearly in favor of corporations controlling the information we get. Given the right's hate of the media, why would you want ATT and VErizon and Time Warner controlling the content you get on the internet?
Our nation is based on the premise of using force to achieve freedom from those who would force us to pay extra unfairly. I suggest you read up on your American History. Start with the Boston Tea Party - the real Tea Party movement not some fake one led by Trump and Palin. Net Neutrality is the modern fight against those who want to create an unfair market place just as the British did with tea.
ISPs can't force you to do anything. Your analogy blows. The very fact that internet speeds have been increasing so quickly proves you are wrong.
The tea act wasn't a tax. It used force to stop anyone from selling tea besides the east India company. This is closer to title 2 than anything since title 2 is known for ensuring monopolies (ma bell). ISPs can't force me to do business with them...
lel breh. Are you really telling me that it was impossible to sign up for Clutch City BBS back in '97 because I was still subscribed to AOL dialup? They dominated 'online' because dialup was the only way for the average person to get on the internet. What you fail to understand was the big boys like Microsoft wanted to create their very own proprietary version of the internet. It was such a bad idea that it never took off. Im not sure what the history of DARPA and their development of the APRANET has to do with anything. Yes, Gore did have the foresight to help push the control of the internet from the military and universities into the mainstream. I have no real fear of big corporations controlling my content because I understand how difficult it is to regulate content for each user on an individual basis. Yes, throttling Netflix for your entire network is easy. Its also a good way to get anti-trust lawsuits thrown at you. As others have pointed out, we already have laws to prevent this. However setting up subscription based services is very difficult and very costly to maintain. This is why this model of business has never taken off. If China, with their mighty Great Firewall and authoritarian government struggle to censor, what makes you think private companies will even remotely come close to doing it? What bothers me is the consolidation of companies. NN is doing nothing to stop this. You should be concerned more about this and not at all of your ISP throttling clutchfans.
TBH I am not worried about throttling but rather the access fees that will be charged. I don't want to see Clutch have to pay an access fee to each provider that essentially shuts down the site. Anti-trust laws don't prohibit a company from charging a site each time it serves content to a person, and while that fee is affordable to say an ESPN, it won't be to Clutch. It will force sites and services to charge more - basically the cost is passed on to consumers. That's perfectly legal and there are no laws to protect against that. Start-ups will have a big disadvantage and big companies will be favored as they can bundle their services with the ISP's just as we see with cable today. There are no Laws that stop cable companies from controlling the channels you can watch today, and in fact disputes happen often where customers lose out on watching things like Rockets games because of fee disagreements. This is what the ISP's want.
Again, you're displaying your ignorance on the subject and do not understand the first thing about routing and networking. TV providers can manage a couple hundred channels. They can manage it due to the small number of channels and they control the gateway of the content. Now that you can buy these packages over the internet from Sling, DirecTV, Youtube and numerous of websites, consumers have been bailing on the providers in mass numbers. You can't micromanage millions of websites. You can't throttle and you can't disrupt when a website can just move their website hosting somewhere else. You really should think about the absurd amount of man power it will take to manage millions of websites instead of following mass hysteria. NN has its merits. As mentioned before, where these merits do come into play, they are not being enforced anyways.
I think you are being very naive. Millions of sites are already managed for various services and needs in mass - everything from hosting to advertising. The idea that you can't create a tiered system of access is nuts and shows how poor of a business man you are. In the modern digital age it requires very little man power and a lot of profit. You make a deal with the content kings for a rate and access, and then you charge everyone else a higher tiered rate. Because they are small you don't care if they go out of business, in fact, you are incentived to do exactly that. Even if you get hit with anti-trust lawsuits, the profits and damage will be done. Just ask Netscape.
What you are describing is nothing more than an online shopping cart and fulfillment of orders. For an ISP to implement such an idiotic system as you're suggesting requires the ISP to either go to these millions of sites (like you suggested) and extort fees from them (which is illegal already) or create basic packages and charge customers. Creating packages requires massive amounts of man power to monitor, enforce and deal with the customer and tech support. Again, never mind anti-trust cases and the customer backlash. Which makes more sense: Creating a package that looks like [$20.00 access fee, $10.00 multimedia, $10.00 social media, $15.00 basic websites, $15.00 for commerce] Or just charge $70.00 to everyone for unlimited access as a max download speed of 100mbps. For $100, you can get 1gbps speed. Which of these two is much more simplistic and requires less man power? When it comes to cell phone service, do you not remember the days when you paid $39.99 for 1000 day time minutes, Unlimited nights/weekends, $10.00 for text, $15.00 for mobile web, $2.95 for voicemail/3 way/Caller ID? Now you get unlimited everything starting at $45.00 from shitty carriers up to $70.00 from the best carriers. We did not need legislation for this to happen. Good old fashion free market. These price points are set by what these carriers can get away with through competition and regulations, not what they think is 'fair'. Thats why its completely idiotic to go with a tiered system with massive amounts of overhead instead of stream lining with an all you can consume set rate.
Again, this is not at all how it will work out in 10 years. The model has been well defined. Ultimately, you will pay in a cable model. Those millions of other sites will just be left out. Sure you might be able to opt for the "unlimited" option to gain access at first, but over time, traffic will decline to those sites already squeezed for ad dollars and they will die in a fit of consolidation. There will be certain entities that will develop that will buy access to all the ISP's and then package it together for a flat rate to give companies that need access to reach audiences - so for example app companies. You say why would this happen? Because companies are in the business of making money, not pleasing their customers and ISP's have a near monopoly on landline and there are only 4 options for mobile. So the real question is - why wouldn't this happen? And so far no one has given a credible answer.
