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Tech Giants Rally Today in Support of Net Neutrality (theverge.com)
From a report: Technology giants like Amazon, Spotify, Reddit, Facebook, Google, Twitter and many others are rallying today in a so-called "day of action" in support of net neutrality, five days ahead of the first deadline for comments on the US Federal Communications Commission's planned rollback of the rules. In a move that's equal parts infuriating and exasperating, Ajit Pai, the FCC's new chairman appointed by President Trump, wants to scrap the open internet protections installed in 2015 under the Obama administration. Those consumer protections mean providers such as AT&T, Charter, Comcast, and Verizon are prevented from blocking or slowing down access to the web. Sites across the web will display alerts on their homepages showing "blocked," "upgrade," and "spinning wheel of death" pop-ups to demonstrate what the internet would look like without net neutrality, according to advocacy group Battle for the Net. But most of the pop-ups The Verge has seen have been simple banners or static text with links offering more information.
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20 years ago major ISPs were not directly competing with content providers, so there was no financial incentive to fuck with traffic.
It wasn't until data services started to compete with traditional telecom services that this became a problem. For example, VoIP, which used an internet connection instead of POTS lines, could make long distance calls for basically the same price as local calls (or even less if both parties had VoIP service). This became a direct competitor to the phone companies which, at the time, were also internet service providers. The result? VoIP traffic became snarled, making it less useful, less desirable, than traditional phone services.
Now, all the major ISPs are also content providers; they have their own streaming services, their own search engines, sometimes their own shopping networks. They have every incentive to leverage their control over the access to the internet to hinder their competition.
Network Neutrality is about ensuring fair access. It's about preventing service providers from abusing their position as gatekeeper to stifle competition, whether by traffic tampering or charging fees to make them less competitive.
=Smidge=
We are repeatedly told , "net neutrality protects the little guy" â" a notion made rather suspect by the concern of the giants like Amazon.
I don't see a conflict here.
Amazon offers an on-demand video streaming service. Verizon offers an on-demand video streaming service. Verizon ALSO controls access to these services for its customers. Without Network Neutrality there is nothing to prevent Verizon from either snarling Amazon's traffic (making their service lower quality), and/or charging Amazon more for the speed/bandwidth everyone else is getting by default (making them less competitive on price).
So of course Amazon and others have a financial stake in this. The "little guy" does, too, since they're the ones who will end up paying more for inferior service at the end of the day.
The other side is new companies (aka the "little guys") that may be able to bring something innovative and new to the market, but would be hindered by anti-competitive practices by ISPs. Imagine, for example, if the major ISPs were all already offering video hosting and streaming services before YouTube was a thing... and decided that the fledgling YouTube would have to pay extra for the speed and bandwidth they needed to operate...
And if you want proof-in-the-pudding that Network Neutrality is a good thing, just look back to the bad old days before POTS providers were classified as common carrier. Once the Telecommunications Act of 1996 kicked in, competition increased and telephone service prices (especially long distance) dropped significantly, because the owners of the copper now had to treat all traffic - including the traffic of their competitors - equally.
=Smidge=
Forced "neutrality" hurts them none. To cause them actual pain, promote competition. Government regulations help incumbents — be they cabbies under threat of Uber, hoteliers hurting from AirBnB, or the etablished ISPs facing off would-be competition.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
And I don't mean this story.