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No Matter What Happens With Net Neutrality, an Open Internet Isn't Going Anywhere, Says Former FCC Chairman (recode.net)
Michael K. Powell, a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, writing for Recode: With an ounce of reflection, one knows that none of this will come to pass, and the imagined doom will join the failed catastrophic predictions of Y2K and massive snow storms that fizzle to mere dustings -- all too common in Washington, D.C. Sadly, rational debate, like Elvis, has left the building. The vibrant and open internet that Americans cherish isn't going anywhere. In the days, weeks and years following this vote, Americans will be merrily shopping online for the holidays, posting pictures on Instagram, vigorously voicing political views on Facebook and asking Alexa the score of the game. Startups and small business will continue to hatch and flourish, and students will be online, studiously taking courses. Time will prove that the FCC did not destroy the internet, and our digital lives will go on just as they have for years. This confidence rests on the fact that ISPs highly value the open internet and the principles of net neutrality, much more than some animated activists would have you think. Why? For one, because it's a better way of making money than a closed internet.
Yes, I do. We had court rulings that permitted ISPs to block BitTorrent (see the results of Comcast v. FCC), ISPs extorting the companies I do business with to deliver the packets their customers had already paid their ISP to deliver to them (which then affects me, since the companies I do business with have to raise their rates to makes up the difference, which ends up impacting me), and ISPs interfering with SSL handshakes to prevent secure connections while simultaneously injecting advertising identifiers (i.e. supercookies) into all of their customer’s traffic.
Ah, the good old times, right? How quickly you forget.
The only good thing back then for me was that the local cable ISP hadn’t yet managed to consolidate their complete control of my region, so their prices were about 40% lower, but that’s a separate issue, sadly, and one that won’t be affected by these changes. Even so, if they decide to misbehave like other ISPs were in 2015, the only choice I’ll have for broadband this time around is “take it or leave it” with the local cable monopoly.