
A Visual Guide to Net Neutrality and its Importance - halfwayglad
http://www.theopeninter.net
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dantheman
I find it remarkable that people want to involve the government in regulating
the internet when there isn't even a problem and yet can see the vast
wasteland that is government regulation in other industries. If there's a
problem, ok you might want to call for some regulation -- since there isn't
one, why waste your time... keep the arguments ready so that if there is one
then you can try to solve it.

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te_chris
Very, very nice. Though I still find it funny that you guys are balking at the
idea of datacaps. Unlimited data is something we in NZ can only dream of
(though obviously prioritised traffic hurts everyone)

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gojomo
_That means AT &T or Comcast could block a service like Google Maps and charge
for their own._

McDonald's could serve french fries that taste like gravel! Malls could charge
you $1 to go to the bathroom! Circuit City and others could sell DVDs that
self-destruct after 48 hours! Apple could offer singles only in an onerously-
DRM-protected format rather than MP3s!

There are plenty of awful products that are _possible_. What protects us from
their infinite variety is not the FCC/FTC/FBI/FHA/etc., but _competition_ and
_consumer sovereignty_.

The spook-scenarios of net-neut advocates, like the oft-repeated 'internet
sites charged like cable channel packages' (appearing again here), probably
wouldn't even be tried. But if they were tried, they'd fail in the
marketplace. Perhaps immediately to consumer ridicule, like the case of
disposable DVDs mentioned above; perhaps after a few years, like the case of
Apple and DRM'd music.

Further, it's important to let this battle be played out. The give and take
generates information about what people really want, at what prices.
Preempting it with regulation based on scary bedtime stories, such as this
page, means parts of the solution space that could be exciting for consumers
die in uncertainty over legality or as collateral damage of overbroad
rulemaking.

(My favorite hypothetical: why shouldn't an ISP be allowed to offer a free
service that's a measly 128Kbps to the 'whole internet', but 6Mbps+ to
preferred partners, as a way to extend basic connectivity to households that
can't pay otherwise? Is such cross-subsidized non-neutral service, which could
'bridge the digital divide' and 'serve underserved communities', so self-
evidently evil we need to ban it by law before it's even tried?)

All the long-term trends are for more access, cheaper. The internet already
defeated a slew of walled-gardens and then gardens-plus-internet (classic AOL,
CompuServe, others). Bandwidth to every point is increasing. The ability for
upstarts to launch giant challenges to incumbents – in bandwidth and services
– is increasing. The techniques for putting any traffic in any 'pipe' – bits
is bits – are growing.

Don't believe an infographic written at an elementary-school level that tells
you the internet is a delicate flower about to be trampled. The internet is a
rampaging monster. Its logic will crush the DRM, bit-discrimination, and pipe-
monopolization schemes of corporate dinosaurs – if we just let it. The worst
thing to do is move any discretion at all into the DC 'halls of power' where
AT&T, Comcast, and other big lobbies have disproportionate voice.

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kevinskii
If "Big ISP's" really wanted to do what this presentation suspects them of
wanting to do, they could have done it already.

There are much better arguments for net neutrality than this one.

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nuggien
> There are much better arguments for net neutrality than this one.

for example...?

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itistoday
Beautiful, simple, to the point.

The only thing missing is a "take action" section at the bottom.

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alexro
There is a 'tweet this website' action at the bottom

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quizbiz
A box to type in your zip code and get info about contacting local government
representatives might yield actual results.

