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Comcast Hints At Plan For Paid Fast Lanes After Net Neutrality Repeal (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For years, Comcast has been promising that it won't violate the principles of net neutrality, regardless of whether the government imposes any net neutrality rules. That meant that Comcast wouldn't block or throttle lawful Internet traffic and that it wouldn't create fast lanes in order to collect tolls from Web companies that want priority access over the Comcast network. This was one of the ways in which Comcast argued that the Federal Communications Commission should not reclassify broadband providers as common carriers, a designation that forces ISPs to treat customers fairly in other ways. The Title II common carrier classification that makes net neutrality rules enforceable isn't necessary because ISPs won't violate net neutrality principles anyway, Comcast and other ISPs have claimed.
But with Republican Ajit Pai now in charge at the Federal Communications Commission, Comcast's stance has changed. While the company still says it won't block or throttle Internet content, it has dropped its promise about not instituting paid prioritization. Instead, Comcast now vaguely says that it won't "discriminate against lawful content" or impose "anti-competitive paid prioritization." The change in wording suggests that Comcast may offer paid fast lanes to websites or other online services, such as video streaming providers, after Pai's FCC eliminates the net neutrality rules next month.
But with Republican Ajit Pai now in charge at the Federal Communications Commission, Comcast's stance has changed. While the company still says it won't block or throttle Internet content, it has dropped its promise about not instituting paid prioritization. Instead, Comcast now vaguely says that it won't "discriminate against lawful content" or impose "anti-competitive paid prioritization." The change in wording suggests that Comcast may offer paid fast lanes to websites or other online services, such as video streaming providers, after Pai's FCC eliminates the net neutrality rules next month.
In a relative way, sure, but it could be Faster Lanes and Same Speed As Always Lanes. It doesn't necessarily mean that the existing lanes will slow down, but there's also no reason to believe that they won't do exactly that to tout the fast lanes.
I've seen that in a private college. They blocked all Democratic sites, redirecting dailykos to rushlimbaugh.com.
This is trivial to do, and I can see an ISP injecting malware into a HTTPS stream, Phorm style, in order to discredit a candidate.
Interestingly, back in the old days the common carrier status was what the ISPs used to argue that they shouldn't be held responsible for material like child porn, regular porn, copyrighted material, hate speech, etc. that traversed their networks. Now they want to relinquish the common carrier status. How long do you think it's going to be before some attorney or DA figures this out and goes after them?
All the "What if" scenarios are simply what the ISPs have been stating they want to do. It's not crazy tin foil conspiracies. It's planned reality.
Why do you think fast lanes would be necessary? Because they will throttle you if you don't pay more!
This needs to be shared everywhere.
Nothing will clue people into what NN means faster than seeing that split pricing model for Social, Video, Email, etc.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Sample list of things ISP's have done and are not just "what if" scenarios:
Madison River blocking Vonage
Comcast blocking p2p
AT&T/Apple blocking Skype/Google Voice
Windstream Communications hijacking search queries
MetroPCS tried to block streaming video
Cavalier, Cogent, Frontier, Fuse, DirecPC, RCN, and Wide Open West hijacking search queries
AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon blocking Google Wallet
Verizon blocking tethered connections
AT&T blocking FaceTime