Net Neutrality FAQ: What's in it for You

PC World ^ | October 2009 | Tim Greene

[MichiganMan]

The responses of my normally very intelligent fellow freepers has been so obtuse on this issue that its making me downright conspiratorial. I tell you what, if I was working for a major ISP and tasked with astroturfing a movement against net-neutrality, this is exactly how I would be doing it.

[WallStreetCapitalist]

Yes. Net neutrality existed for a long, long time before Obama was President. It basically says that the Internet must stay the way it is - you pay your ISP and they must allow you to load any Internet site you want. They can't control, slow down, or speed up any individual site.

If net neutrality is defeated, your ISP could start dividing up the Internet and deciding what sites you can see, charging you for certain sites, charging you based on the amount of data you download, etc. If Cablevision was run by Democrats, for instance, they could (in theory) "throttle" Free Republic and make it virtually impossible for you to access it.

The concept of net neutrality is that the people who provide the Internet *cannot* determine what is "good" or "bad". They must simply provide the road (the Internet connection) and you, the citizen, get to determine how to use it. Anyone who believes the government or corporations have ZERO business telling us what Internet sites we should watch MUST support net neutrality. Anyone who opposes it has a vested, financial interest in it.

If net neutrality is defeated, I could buy a small ISP and charge my customer $3 for every Gigabyte over 5 gigabytes per month, for instance. Then you would find yourself facing $300 bills, just like a cell phone.

In April, Time Warner and some other ISPs tried to introduce this (you can read about one attempt here: http://www.physorg.com/news159039174.html) They were going to charge customers by the total number of websites they loaded. What happens if Time Warner buys MSNBC? They could literally only let you access liberal sites. This isn't a joke.

Anyone who supports the rights of individual citizens to decide what they want to read, or publish, MUST (I repeat ***MUST***) support net neutrality. I can say, with an absolute clear conscious and total conviction after studying the issue that anyone who tells you net neutrality is a bad thing is either an idiot or they are flat out lying to you because they work for a major media company and will make a huge profit from determining which sites you can read or access.

[The_Media_never_lie]

Thanks for you detailed net neutrality reply.