By partnering with (paying) MCI, UUNET and others to shape the traffic and provide lower QOS to Google.
Saying they "paid for lower QOS for Google" is misleading; they would actually have paid for higher QOS for themselves, which is perfectly reasonable. They might also have "paid for" people to get free or low-cost Yahoo-branded Internet access, in return for ad placement, again something that benefits consumers.
No. I'm saying that Google was better than Yahoo. Because Google was better than Yahoo, they toppled them from their position as the go-to search engine
So, Google won because they were better, and they were better because they won? That's rather circular reasoning. In actual fact, Google's search engine business would never have been a viable business on its own; it simply didn't make enough revenue. Google's search engine only survived because it was cross-subsidized by Google's advertising revenue. Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't support the argument that it was "better".
Net neutrality, in the end, is an arrangement where companies like Google can push ads on you and monetize free content and have you pay for the privilege through your ISP fees. We ended up with that situation because it's all you could do with 2000's technology. A few big companies have come to completely dominate the market because of that particular arrangement. Now, if you want Google and Facebook to keep owning the Internet for decades to come, with no possibility of small startups challenging them, then you support net neutrality. Otherwise, it's far better to let this play out in the market for a while and then revisit it.
Even if the completely unrealistic worst-case scenario of ISPs all replacing Google and Facebook with their own private offerings were to come true, that would mean a huge increase in the diversity of alternatives to Google and Facebook. So it's not clear that even that scenario would be worse than the winner-takes-all situation we have right now.
Content providers on the Internet are effectively operating in a free market; there's millions of sites to choose from and they all get treated the same by our networks until the data reaches your ISP. ISPs are not operating in a free market due to all those government subsidies and regulations you're referring to
The regulations that are imposed on ISPs act like subsidies on some ISP customers and charges on others, hence their customers don't operate in a "free market" either. And net neutrality distorts the costs for ISP customers even further. So, you can't reason about markets by saying "well, this portion is free because it has lots of small independent providers, and this other portion is non-free because it has a few big companies."
Comcast and T-Mobile have already proven that they're not for free market content by favoring specific content provider's data over others, and Comcast went a step further by throttling traffic from content providers to extort money from them during contract negotiations. Comcast has also been caught blocking Internet ads they didn't like. How is deregulation going to change any of this?
I see no reason that it should. For example, why shouldn't Comcast or Facebook be allowed to offer a free service that lets you stream unlimited video from their own servers and otherwise gives you access to text and static images anywhere on the net in return for a few ads? Why shouldn't Comcast be able to charge more for traffic going to Netflix than for traffic that stays within their own network?
Creating markets with lots of choice and lots of small providers has been a favorite pastime of progressives and fascists: FDR was into that big time, as was Mussolini. They like it because it's popular with the middle class, not because it made economic sense. And to this day, progressives still have this visceral hatred for Walmart and MacDonalds, you know, all those companies that offer big, cheap, standardized products, and that people who actually are low income shop at. The kind of market you want to see is something favored by the middle class; it's an ideological ideal, not sound free market economics.
The economic goal of "artificial scarcity" could be served just as well by a regime of compulsory licensing with a reasonable royalty payable to the copyright owner, such as mechanical licensing of musical compositions used in sound recordings.
Ah, yes, brilliant idea! Create an organization that is subject to political lobbying, has a monopoly, can fix prices at whatever level it wants, and can redistribute the money to a well-connected subset of copyright owners! That is so much better than the occasional copyright owner choosing not to publish their work or limiting its distribution.
No, thanks.
What we need is orphan works reform and a shortening of copyright terms. Neither of them are likely to happen, however.
Second, trust busting happened under a different Roosevelt (hopefully you knew there were two). Teddy Roosevelt was president at the turn of the century, and was a Republican, so really has nothing to do with your screed on FDR.
They were both progressives and they both believed in massive interference in the economy. Their party affiliation is largely irrelevant: although progressives (and their bad ideas) were more common among Democrats, they existed in both parties. Next time, just be specific which Roosevelt you are referring to.
I'm fine with you having to negotiate with all your neighbors to be able to drive off your property, get electricity, and especially connect to the internet.
Oh, stop lying. What you are "fine with" is people being forced to pay taxes for municipal infrastructure and then not delivering on that infrastructure.
It has been my experience that municipalities generally try to incorporate neighboring unincorporated areas against their will, and then impose infrastructure and administrative costs on them.
Just remember: When you turn to the West, be specific enough so that 'capitalism' is not mentioned together with slavery and Manifest Destiny (for starters).
I have no problem with the Western record on slavery: we abolished it on our own. Asian and African cultures still practice it. I also don't have any big problem with "manifest destiny": the US took away that land from a totalitarian state and made the people in those territories citizens of a comparatively free country.
And anyway, you wouldn't want people to wrinkle their noses or roll their eyes at the term.
For socialists and fascists, wrinkling their noses and feeling smugly superior is a nearly permanent state, so I have learned not to worry about it.
Care to explain how a bunch of randoms on the internet downloading free shit is somehow the state managing the means of production? Or are you just misusing big words again?
Why do you ask me? Did you RTFA? Sunde declares himself to be a socialist and portrays his pirate activity as part of a bigger push for socialism. That is, Sunde is making that connection, not me.
So, you're absolutely right: when Sunde illegally downloads Pocahontas to masturbate to it, it has nothing to do with socialism. In addition, any sane person simply wouldn't want socialism anyway, so even if his piracy had something to do with advancing the cause of socialism, it still wouldn't matter.
How does giving them "the right to make that decision" "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", as the preamble to the copyright clause of the United States Constitution puts it? What benefit does the public derive from a dog in the manger?
The whole point of copyright is to create artificial scarcity so that authors are financially motivated. There may be many other mechanisms to encourage creativity in society, or maybe we should have none. All of that is fine. Let's have a debate about it.
What I object to is Sunde's hypocrisy in pretending that his actions are driven by principle. Personally, I object to sending large amounts of money to the US government every year in order to finance the war mongering and crony capitalism they engage in, but if I hid my money and didn't pay taxes, people would correctly read it as a selfish act, not as a principled act of resistance.
I don't see why dumb, uncreative socialist punks like Sunde should get a pass and have people assume that his greed and selfishness somehow represents principled political action.
What I do have a problem is that somehow it is magically illegal to decrypt and copy the bits so that my OTHER devices (Laptop, Phone, Tablet) can't play the bitstream due to some "Imaginary Property" DRM bullshit. Why is it illegal to download the bits when I _already_ own a physical copy???
Because that's the terms of your contract. Now, generally, I think copyrights are too long and should not be a criminal matter. However, I also believe that people should be required to stick to their contracts or face the consequences.
2. Secondly, you're assuming I can even BUY the movie in the first place.
So what? If the work is under copyright and the author has chosen not to distribute it to you in a form you like, what gives you the right to override his decision?
Because people paid verizon to give them access to the internet,
But without net neutrality, people might not have to pay at all; for example, Facebook could do what they tried to do, which is to give people free access to Facebook and reference sites.
Furthermore, why you apparently think of "the Internet" as just one big black box, but that isn't what it is. It makes a big difference whether your streaming video connection goes to a free ad-supported site like YouTube or to a for-pay subscription-based site. It makes a big difference whether your streaming video comes from a Verizon cache close to your home/tower, a Google site, or something overseas. It makes a difference in terms of the hardware and bandwidth a company like Verizon has to buy, maintain, and pay for. And those differences should be reflected in how much people pay for their network connections. And that is exactly what "net neutrality" is trying to prevent.
But if you are suggesting that Time Warner, Comcast, etc all run separate lines to my house to compete, then that makes as much sense as advocating for 'competing' roadways. It just won't work.
No, what I'm suggesting is that the lines running into my house should be privately owned and controlled, just like the roads running into my house (they are owned by an HOA that I'm a member of). The distinctions between an HOA and municipal ownership may seem small, but they are actually huge in practice.
What are you talking about? The market absolutely causes monopolies! Historically it has been the government who has had to come in to bust up the monopolies. Go look at what Roosevelt had to do in the early part of last century to prevent monopolies from screwing the country.
FDR and the progressives at the time were fascists-lite, with the same broken ideas about the economy as Mussolini and Hitler (for whom they expressed open admiration). FDR was probably a necessary evil at the time, but I hold no admiration for that man or his ideas.
Russia has spent money on education in sciences, to the extent that it has spent money on anything which benefits the public. This is often credited with the rise of the Russian hacker.
Spending money on education makes people educated; it doesn't make them innovative, entrepreneurial, or creative.
Copyright started as a temporary protection to promote science and the arts, not to ensure a permanent revenue stream for investors
I completely agree with that: copyright should be short term and limited if it should exist at all. But how does that view translate into a justification for net neutrality? How does it translate into a justification for violating contractual agreements?
If the corporations are upset about how consumers are using their product, they should quit making their product instead of making new laws.
I don't see corporations trying to "make new laws" when it comes to net neutrality. Net neutrality is activists like Sunde and lobbyists from companies like Google trying to impose new regulations on the Internet.
So why are you trying to unlevel the playing field?
The ISPs are all turning healthy profits. Ergo, the amount we're paying for access is sufficient.
ISPs always make a helathy profit, with or without net neutrality; that's a meaningless criterion. But with net neutrality, some customers are forced to pay more in order to subsidize the usage patterns of other customers.
I mean, on what planet does it make sense to force ISPs to give the same priority to ad-laden grumpy cat YouTube videos that Google makes revenue on as to MIT lectures on nuclear physics or video content that I actually pay for?
Socialism has left a bloody trail for more than 200 years and there are tens of thousands of books that are far more specific about the failures of socialism than I can be in a/. posting. Just pick up whichever books you find most relatable and read them.
They also know the other big incumbents, i.e. Verizon, Comcast etc will use their incumbent advantage to try to milk them for money. For those big players, the risk of losing tons to the big ISPs is more pressing than the risk of a small startup they can just buy out.
Yes... and that amounts to a compelling argument for net neutrality... how?
I'm going to call bullshit unless you can give a persuasive argument for the mechanism of how network neutrality hurts small companies.
You just made that argument: companies like Verizon, Comcast, etc. would "try to milk" the big companies for money. As a result, those big companies would be forced charge for many of their currently free services or shut them down entirely. That creates business opportunities for small companies.
Rubbish. I pay my ISP for internet access.
Yes, but what you should be paying for is the actual cost of the resources that you consume when you access the Internet. Net neutrality tries to shift those costs around to favor some users at the expense of others.
More than that, it makes it harder for access providers to leverage their position as access providers to make inroads as content providers.
Quite right.
If Net Neutrality truly dies, Verizon and Comcast will be able to prioritize the traffic from their own competing services to harm Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and Google.
Quite right. It means that Netflix, Google Video, and Amazon Video would be in deep trouble. Companies like Verizon and Comcast would take over those markets. Why would that be a bad thing?
Google beat Yahoo because Google was better at doing something. That wouldn't have happened if Yahoo had been able to make deals to slow Google's traffic to dial-up speeds.
That makes no sense. How could Yahoo have "slowed down Google's traffic"? They were both just search engines. And based on what criteria was Google "better"? Google made their money with ads, and then leveraged that revenue to dominate spaces that don't make profit per se, like YouTube and search. You're basically saying that you think Google is great and that hence the government should interfere in order to structure the market to make it advantageous for companies like Google. I'm sorry, but I don't consider that a good argument.
Getting rid of most the middlemen has been the greatest boon of the Internet.
So why are you arguing for a market structure that looks like "Google/Facebook regulated Comcast/Verizon consumer"? Seems to me that it is you who wants a permanent middle man to exist, a middleman whose job it is to redistribute costs among Internet users to meet your criteria of net neutrality.
What companies like Comcast/Verizon want is to be able cut out the middleman and deliver content directly. That is, for video, movies, etc., they want a network that looks like "Comcast/Verizon consumer", without being forced to act as a middleman for anybody else.
You sound way too smart to be this dumb, so I guess the question is: Comcast, Charter, AT&T or Verizon?
The people who argue for net neutrality are clearly the ones who benefit financially from it: geeks who use more bandwidth than average and upload a lot, and companies like YouTube, Google, Facebook, etc., whose business model depends on it. That sounds like you. It certainly isn't me.
Oh you want to use that blu ray on any video device you want? But you can't because HDMI specs abitrarily block your device for not being upgraded into a newer more restrictive form?
Well, then don't buy it. Simple as that.
It seems to me Sunde and you are saying: "We need to become more socialist so that everybody can freely enjoy the output from evil capitalist megacorps that produce commercial crap."
Which of these subscriptions includes access to... Or did you intend your "pretty much" hedge to cover such cases?
First, if the copyright holder doesn't want to distribute the film, they have the right to make that decision. In Europe, that's actually considered a fundamental moral right of artists and authors, not just a commercial incentive.
Second, for the specific content you mention, you can buy DVDs online.
You seem to be implying that you ought to have a right to circumvent copyright if you can't get content commercially, but such a right doesn't exist. It perhaps ought to exist for orphan works, but even there, it doesn't exist. It certainly doesn't exist for works where the copyright holder is known and simply chooses not to commercialize or publish their work in a form that's convenient for you.
That means everyone is going to be stuck in a low competition environment where the incumbents have a huge advantage.
To see who gets the advantage from net neutrality, look at who is sponsoring it: Google/YouTube, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix. Do you seriously want us to believe that on this one issue, these companies are putting aside their incumbent advantage and lobbying to make it easier and cheaper for small competitors to compete with them. Get real. These companies know that "net neutrality" is in their financial advantage and makes it harder for small companies to compete.
Once the big providers start to charge from both directions, only the big boys will be able to afford to play.
It's "the big boys" that have the most to fear from having to pay for traffic, because they have big businesses that depend on thin profit margins. Small startups probably wouldn't get charged at all, and if they did, the charges would be lost in the noise.
That means the next youtube or whatever won't happen.
Indeed, that's correct. Under net neutrality, people are effectively forced to subsidize big streaming services like YouTube, which translates into lower costs and higher profits for its owners. Without net neutrality, people would probably have to pay a small amount of money each month if they want to share and publish videos to cover the actual cost of distributing them. That's the kind of price signal that would encourage a much larger number of companies to enter the video sharing market, and it would encourage people to focus on sharing higher quality content. Both are probably good things.
I also understand the consumer fed up with being endlessly deceived and abused as the vendor tries to wring every last cent from them.
Oh, dear, "Star Wars Rogue One" is charging you $22.99 for the Blue Ray copy! What an abuse! The humanity of it! Poor, starving Swedish kids like Peter Sunde should be able got get Hollywood trash like that for free! Otherwise our society is just not doing its job for the children!
You're free to have unlimited services if you are willing to pay for them.
You can get pretty much all the videos/movies/music you want online with no hassles if you're willing to pay about $100-200 in monthly subscription fees. You're free to have unlimited, unfiltered access to the Internet if you're willing to pay about $200-$400 in monthly fees for a "professional" or "business" Internet connection, more if you're running big servers.
The rest of us, however, are happy with our $10/month unlimited music, $10/month movies, and our $25/month Internet connections with some limitations. Telling us that we should be forced to pay more so that we effectively subsidize services that you want to use isn't going to convince us.
Stop treating internet like it's a different thing and start focusing on what you actually want your society to look like.
We are. And we don't want it to look like an illegal file sharing website run by a privileged guy who spouts Marxist ideology.
The situation is not going to be any different, because apparently that is something people are not interested in fixing. Or we can't get people to care enough.
Not only are we "not interested", people actively reject Sunde's ideas about how the world should work. Many of us still remember how socialism actually works from first hand experience.
Slashdot Mirror
Saying they "paid for lower QOS for Google" is misleading; they would actually have paid for higher QOS for themselves, which is perfectly reasonable. They might also have "paid for" people to get free or low-cost Yahoo-branded Internet access, in return for ad placement, again something that benefits consumers.
So, Google won because they were better, and they were better because they won? That's rather circular reasoning. In actual fact, Google's search engine business would never have been a viable business on its own; it simply didn't make enough revenue. Google's search engine only survived because it was cross-subsidized by Google's advertising revenue. Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't support the argument that it was "better".
Net neutrality, in the end, is an arrangement where companies like Google can push ads on you and monetize free content and have you pay for the privilege through your ISP fees. We ended up with that situation because it's all you could do with 2000's technology. A few big companies have come to completely dominate the market because of that particular arrangement. Now, if you want Google and Facebook to keep owning the Internet for decades to come, with no possibility of small startups challenging them, then you support net neutrality. Otherwise, it's far better to let this play out in the market for a while and then revisit it.
Even if the completely unrealistic worst-case scenario of ISPs all replacing Google and Facebook with their own private offerings were to come true, that would mean a huge increase in the diversity of alternatives to Google and Facebook. So it's not clear that even that scenario would be worse than the winner-takes-all situation we have right now.
The regulations that are imposed on ISPs act like subsidies on some ISP customers and charges on others, hence their customers don't operate in a "free market" either. And net neutrality distorts the costs for ISP customers even further. So, you can't reason about markets by saying "well, this portion is free because it has lots of small independent providers, and this other portion is non-free because it has a few big companies."
I see no reason that it should. For example, why shouldn't Comcast or Facebook be allowed to offer a free service that lets you stream unlimited video from their own servers and otherwise gives you access to text and static images anywhere on the net in return for a few ads? Why shouldn't Comcast be able to charge more for traffic going to Netflix than for traffic that stays within their own network?
Creating markets with lots of choice and lots of small providers has been a favorite pastime of progressives and fascists: FDR was into that big time, as was Mussolini. They like it because it's popular with the middle class, not because it made economic sense. And to this day, progressives still have this visceral hatred for Walmart and MacDonalds, you know, all those companies that offer big, cheap, standardized products, and that people who actually are low income shop at. The kind of market you want to see is something favored by the middle class; it's an ideological ideal, not sound free market economics.
Ah, yes, brilliant idea! Create an organization that is subject to political lobbying, has a monopoly, can fix prices at whatever level it wants, and can redistribute the money to a well-connected subset of copyright owners! That is so much better than the occasional copyright owner choosing not to publish their work or limiting its distribution.
No, thanks.
What we need is orphan works reform and a shortening of copyright terms. Neither of them are likely to happen, however.
He most certainly did. There are plenty of other sources.
They were both progressives and they both believed in massive interference in the economy. Their party affiliation is largely irrelevant: although progressives (and their bad ideas) were more common among Democrats, they existed in both parties. Next time, just be specific which Roosevelt you are referring to.
Oh, stop lying. What you are "fine with" is people being forced to pay taxes for municipal infrastructure and then not delivering on that infrastructure.
It has been my experience that municipalities generally try to incorporate neighboring unincorporated areas against their will, and then impose infrastructure and administrative costs on them.
I have no problem with the Western record on slavery: we abolished it on our own. Asian and African cultures still practice it. I also don't have any big problem with "manifest destiny": the US took away that land from a totalitarian state and made the people in those territories citizens of a comparatively free country.
For socialists and fascists, wrinkling their noses and feeling smugly superior is a nearly permanent state, so I have learned not to worry about it.
Why do you ask me? Did you RTFA? Sunde declares himself to be a socialist and portrays his pirate activity as part of a bigger push for socialism. That is, Sunde is making that connection, not me.
So, you're absolutely right: when Sunde illegally downloads Pocahontas to masturbate to it, it has nothing to do with socialism. In addition, any sane person simply wouldn't want socialism anyway, so even if his piracy had something to do with advancing the cause of socialism, it still wouldn't matter.
The whole point of copyright is to create artificial scarcity so that authors are financially motivated. There may be many other mechanisms to encourage creativity in society, or maybe we should have none. All of that is fine. Let's have a debate about it.
What I object to is Sunde's hypocrisy in pretending that his actions are driven by principle. Personally, I object to sending large amounts of money to the US government every year in order to finance the war mongering and crony capitalism they engage in, but if I hid my money and didn't pay taxes, people would correctly read it as a selfish act, not as a principled act of resistance.
I don't see why dumb, uncreative socialist punks like Sunde should get a pass and have people assume that his greed and selfishness somehow represents principled political action.
Because that's the terms of your contract. Now, generally, I think copyrights are too long and should not be a criminal matter. However, I also believe that people should be required to stick to their contracts or face the consequences.
So what? If the work is under copyright and the author has chosen not to distribute it to you in a form you like, what gives you the right to override his decision?
But without net neutrality, people might not have to pay at all; for example, Facebook could do what they tried to do, which is to give people free access to Facebook and reference sites.
Furthermore, why you apparently think of "the Internet" as just one big black box, but that isn't what it is. It makes a big difference whether your streaming video connection goes to a free ad-supported site like YouTube or to a for-pay subscription-based site. It makes a big difference whether your streaming video comes from a Verizon cache close to your home/tower, a Google site, or something overseas. It makes a difference in terms of the hardware and bandwidth a company like Verizon has to buy, maintain, and pay for. And those differences should be reflected in how much people pay for their network connections. And that is exactly what "net neutrality" is trying to prevent.
No, what I'm suggesting is that the lines running into my house should be privately owned and controlled, just like the roads running into my house (they are owned by an HOA that I'm a member of). The distinctions between an HOA and municipal ownership may seem small, but they are actually huge in practice.
FDR and the progressives at the time were fascists-lite, with the same broken ideas about the economy as Mussolini and Hitler (for whom they expressed open admiration). FDR was probably a necessary evil at the time, but I hold no admiration for that man or his ideas.
Spending money on education makes people educated; it doesn't make them innovative, entrepreneurial, or creative.
I completely agree with that: copyright should be short term and limited if it should exist at all. But how does that view translate into a justification for net neutrality? How does it translate into a justification for violating contractual agreements?
I don't see corporations trying to "make new laws" when it comes to net neutrality. Net neutrality is activists like Sunde and lobbyists from companies like Google trying to impose new regulations on the Internet.
So why are you trying to unlevel the playing field?
ISPs always make a helathy profit, with or without net neutrality; that's a meaningless criterion. But with net neutrality, some customers are forced to pay more in order to subsidize the usage patterns of other customers.
I mean, on what planet does it make sense to force ISPs to give the same priority to ad-laden grumpy cat YouTube videos that Google makes revenue on as to MIT lectures on nuclear physics or video content that I actually pay for?
Socialism has left a bloody trail for more than 200 years and there are tens of thousands of books that are far more specific about the failures of socialism than I can be in a /. posting. Just pick up whichever books you find most relatable and read them.
Yes... and that amounts to a compelling argument for net neutrality... how?
You just made that argument: companies like Verizon, Comcast, etc. would "try to milk" the big companies for money. As a result, those big companies would be forced charge for many of their currently free services or shut them down entirely. That creates business opportunities for small companies.
Yes, but what you should be paying for is the actual cost of the resources that you consume when you access the Internet. Net neutrality tries to shift those costs around to favor some users at the expense of others.
Quite right.
Quite right. It means that Netflix, Google Video, and Amazon Video would be in deep trouble. Companies like Verizon and Comcast would take over those markets. Why would that be a bad thing?
That makes no sense. How could Yahoo have "slowed down Google's traffic"? They were both just search engines. And based on what criteria was Google "better"? Google made their money with ads, and then leveraged that revenue to dominate spaces that don't make profit per se, like YouTube and search. You're basically saying that you think Google is great and that hence the government should interfere in order to structure the market to make it advantageous for companies like Google. I'm sorry, but I don't consider that a good argument.
So why are you arguing for a market structure that looks like "Google/Facebook regulated Comcast/Verizon consumer"? Seems to me that it is you who wants a permanent middle man to exist, a middleman whose job it is to redistribute costs among Internet users to meet your criteria of net neutrality.
What companies like Comcast/Verizon want is to be able cut out the middleman and deliver content directly. That is, for video, movies, etc., they want a network that looks like "Comcast/Verizon consumer", without being forced to act as a middleman for anybody else.
The people who argue for net neutrality are clearly the ones who benefit financially from it: geeks who use more bandwidth than average and upload a lot, and companies like YouTube, Google, Facebook, etc., whose business model depends on it. That sounds like you. It certainly isn't me.
Well, then it's a lousy product and you have a simple choice: don't buy it.
Well, then don't buy it. Simple as that.
It seems to me Sunde and you are saying: "We need to become more socialist so that everybody can freely enjoy the output from evil capitalist megacorps that produce commercial crap."
First, if the copyright holder doesn't want to distribute the film, they have the right to make that decision. In Europe, that's actually considered a fundamental moral right of artists and authors, not just a commercial incentive.
Second, for the specific content you mention, you can buy DVDs online.
You seem to be implying that you ought to have a right to circumvent copyright if you can't get content commercially, but such a right doesn't exist. It perhaps ought to exist for orphan works, but even there, it doesn't exist. It certainly doesn't exist for works where the copyright holder is known and simply chooses not to commercialize or publish their work in a form that's convenient for you.
To see who gets the advantage from net neutrality, look at who is sponsoring it: Google/YouTube, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix. Do you seriously want us to believe that on this one issue, these companies are putting aside their incumbent advantage and lobbying to make it easier and cheaper for small competitors to compete with them. Get real. These companies know that "net neutrality" is in their financial advantage and makes it harder for small companies to compete.
It's "the big boys" that have the most to fear from having to pay for traffic, because they have big businesses that depend on thin profit margins. Small startups probably wouldn't get charged at all, and if they did, the charges would be lost in the noise.
Indeed, that's correct. Under net neutrality, people are effectively forced to subsidize big streaming services like YouTube, which translates into lower costs and higher profits for its owners. Without net neutrality, people would probably have to pay a small amount of money each month if they want to share and publish videos to cover the actual cost of distributing them. That's the kind of price signal that would encourage a much larger number of companies to enter the video sharing market, and it would encourage people to focus on sharing higher quality content. Both are probably good things.
Oh, dear, "Star Wars Rogue One" is charging you $22.99 for the Blue Ray copy! What an abuse! The humanity of it! Poor, starving Swedish kids like Peter Sunde should be able got get Hollywood trash like that for free! Otherwise our society is just not doing its job for the children!
Get real.
Oh, about the Subject:
You're free to have unlimited services if you are willing to pay for them.
You can get pretty much all the videos/movies/music you want online with no hassles if you're willing to pay about $100-200 in monthly subscription fees. You're free to have unlimited, unfiltered access to the Internet if you're willing to pay about $200-$400 in monthly fees for a "professional" or "business" Internet connection, more if you're running big servers.
The rest of us, however, are happy with our $10/month unlimited music, $10/month movies, and our $25/month Internet connections with some limitations. Telling us that we should be forced to pay more so that we effectively subsidize services that you want to use isn't going to convince us.
We are. And we don't want it to look like an illegal file sharing website run by a privileged guy who spouts Marxist ideology.
Not only are we "not interested", people actively reject Sunde's ideas about how the world should work. Many of us still remember how socialism actually works from first hand experience.