I'm baffled by some of the reactions in this thread. What we're seeing is the result of an attempted corporate regulation being thwarted by a massive flood of public reactions by companies like netflix, tumblr and mozilla, and of course their users. The result is pretty much a scholar example that democracy actually works (at least: it seems that way to me).
I get that "being against the government" is cool nowadays, but this is getting ridiculous. Did some of you guys actually read the article?
The F.C.C. plan would let the agency regulate Internet access as if it is a public good. It would follow the concept known as
net neutrality or an open Internet, banning so-called paid prioritization — or fast lanes — for willing Internet content providers.
In addition, it would ban the intentional slowing of the Internet for companies that refuse to pay broadband providers. The plan would also give the F.C.C. the power to step in if unforeseen impediments are thrown up by the handful of giant companies that run many of the country’s broadband and wireless networks.
Here's the story in a nutshell:
Up to a few years ago, all data on the internet was treated roughly equal. The ISP's role was limited to providing their users with an actual connection and perhaps blocking some known malware stuff.
Then they got creative. I'm not sure if it's the first case or just the one I first heard about, but netflix users noticed their connection being lower than normal. And that reason wasn't related to the physical connection or the netflix servers being shitty. It was the ISP (or multiple of them) intervening and assigning netflix fewer bandwith. I'm not sure how reliable the source was where I read it, but it may even have been that the ISP offered to fix the problem for netflix...an offer that backfired when it was discovered that they were the one who created the "problem" in the first place.
It wasn't that long before more of these stories started popping up. Torrent traffic, for example, were a target. There's even a Dutch word for it: 'knijpen', which translated to 'squeezing', though I'm not sure if that word is used in English in regards to limiting a connection based on the application.
All in all, you can see where this is going. Without regulation, ISP's can use their power to gain benefits from internet competition. They can decide to charge their users extra if they want to see youtube. They can ask fees of corporations if they want their content to be streamed (like in netflix's case). And since I understand that in the US, quite some ISP's have direct ties with large companies, they can decide to harass their competition by slowing their internet access.
It's free marketing at its finest, really. The more people value something, the more you can ask for it. The ISP's plan is to break up the internet into sellable parts to increase their profits. Of course their users are allowed to leave, but that only works well if there are many alternatives. Which often aren't there (and if this practice was to remain legal, new ones would be stupid NOT to set up similar rules, as it's far more profitable).
What ISP's didn't anticipate, though, was the size and speed of their adversaries. Web companies obviously don't like this scenario where the best they can hope is to stay out of sight of ISP's that may at will decide to threaten to slow or even block them as they become more popular (unless they pay fees). So they as well rallied for support and started informing their users of what may lie ahead.
...which leads us to this article. From the looks of it, that campaign is so successful that the government not only listened to them, but is about to pass a law that makes the abovementioned practice illegal. In other words: the internet should remains neutral when it comes to what data should get priority.
