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> Doing this allows the government to ensure a level playing field In theory this is a good argument. In practice, my experience is that this argument causes p

> Doing this allows the government to ensure a level playing field In theory this is a good argument. In practice, my experience is that this argument causes people to write off net neutrality as just being something that's about letting tech bros make lots of money. I've even heard this from folks in the tech industry, who really should know better. An argument that may be more convincing is that the Internet is the only media channel where we don't get all of our information from the same three or four mega conglomerates. But if net neutrality is eliminated then ISPs are going to pull a Martin Shkreli, and overnight your cost of hosting a Wordpress blog is going to go from $5 a month to $25,000 per month or whatever. When this happens the only way to have a blog will be to host your content on Facebook, who will be able to decide which points of view are allowed and which are banned. If we lose the Internet, the last free media channel, then there is no going back. Not just on this issue, but on every issue.

pharrlax 10y ago
The best argument I've found for convincing conservatives is to stress that the internet is a platform for commerce, and healthy commerce requires equality of opportunity -- specifically, the opportunity for consumers to access your business. ISPs literally "own the road", to create an analogy for internet businesses. If the only road company in town installs a toll booth or a series of speed bumps in front of McDonald's because Burger King paid them to, it artificially distorts the market in a way that allows successful companies to pay to entrench themselves and fend off competition. Innovation and disruption inherently require free and fair access to the storefronts of upstarts, whether physical or digital. To slant the playing field with throttling or zero-rating is tantamount to a big box corp having the ability to pay someone to install a toll booth in front of my competing mom and pop business.
- NoPiece 10y ago
  Another net neutrality case for conservatives: you might never get a Breitbart or IJReview in a world where Comcast is selling preference to CNN/Newscorp/Disney-ABC.
- NoPiece 10y ago
  Another net neutrality case for conservatives: you might never get a Breitbart or IJReview in a world where Comcast is selling preference to CNN/Newscorp/Disney-ABC.
- crazy1van 10y ago
  > If the only road company in town installs a toll booth or a series of speed bumps in front of McDonald's because Burger King paid them to This kind of thinking will lead to a big debate about what exactly is a speed bump -- how high can they be? Do rumble-strips count? What about potholes? A better solution would be to just let more companies build roads in your town. Then all the people who want to go to McDonalds will take their business to the other road companies.
  - pharrlax 10y ago
    >A better solution would be to just let more companies build roads in your town. That sounds great, except the roads have all been built. It's prohibitively expensive and risky to try to build out your own parallel set of infrastructure, whether it's roads or cable. I mean, if Google tried and failed to do it, who else is going to be able to succeed?
bifrost 10y ago
"then ISPs are going to pull a Martin Shkreli" So why didn't that happen prior to now? The NN legislation as proposed is new and the internet existed just fine prior to it.
- Alex3917 10y ago
  > So why didn't that happen prior to now? That's a good question, and it's hard to say. Empirically we can see that it is starting to happen, e.g. with t-mobile not charging users when they consume video and audio data from certain sites. My guess is that the reason it didn't happen historically is because content was worth almost zero. E.g. Flickr was bought by Yahoo for almost nothing, and if I remember correctly YouTube was on track to go bankrupt until Google bought them to set the legal precedent they wanted. It's only in the last couple years that the costs of producing and distributing content have now also basically fallen to zero, so it's now possible to make a lot of money in the content business even if any individual item is still worth very little. There have obviously been companies who have made a lot of money on content previously, but mostly only when there was either some quirky situation affecting the price of display ads (e.g. Yahoo) or else when there was some quirky situation affecting the valuation of the company itself (e.g. YouTube).
erikpukinskis 10y ago
The internet is not free and open because some companies are complying with regulations. The internet is free and open because that's what the internet is. If ISP's, content providers, whoever else wants to provide services which aren't free and open then they're not part of the internet. It's sad if lots of people lose internet access because Comcast stops offering it, but the internet won't go away. Other companies will offer free and open access and the internet will live on with those folks. If it comes to it, you can come over to my house and plug into my ethernet and we'll grab a Slackware CD and start a new internet if we have to. Deal?
- spydertennis 10y ago
  In a thread littered with unpleasantness this comment gave me hope.
- NoGravitas 10y ago
  I kind of agree with you, but the free and open internet in your scenario would be a pretty niche thing, kind of like gopher or Usenet is today. I've been thinking about running a gopher server lately, but that doesn't mean that I want the free and open internet to be gopher-only.

pharrlax 10y ago

The best argument I've found for convincing conservatives is to stress that the internet is a platform for commerce, and healthy commerce requires equality of opportunity -- specifically, the opportunity for consumers to access your business. ISPs literally "own the road", to create an analogy for internet businesses. If the only road company in town installs a toll booth or a series of speed bumps in front of McDonald's because Burger King paid them to, it artificially distorts the market in a way that allows successful companies to pay to entrench themselves and fend off competition. Innovation and disruption inherently require free and fair access to the storefronts of upstarts, whether physical or digital. To slant the playing field with throttling or zero-rating is tantamount to a big box corp having the ability to pay someone to install a toll booth in front of my competing mom and pop business.

NoPiece 10y ago
Another net neutrality case for conservatives: you might never get a Breitbart or IJReview in a world where Comcast is selling preference to CNN/Newscorp/Disney-ABC.
NoPiece 10y ago
Another net neutrality case for conservatives: you might never get a Breitbart or IJReview in a world where Comcast is selling preference to CNN/Newscorp/Disney-ABC.
crazy1van 10y ago
> If the only road company in town installs a toll booth or a series of speed bumps in front of McDonald's because Burger King paid them to This kind of thinking will lead to a big debate about what exactly is a speed bump -- how high can they be? Do rumble-strips count? What about potholes? A better solution would be to just let more companies build roads in your town. Then all the people who want to go to McDonalds will take their business to the other road companies.
- pharrlax 10y ago
  >A better solution would be to just let more companies build roads in your town. That sounds great, except the roads have all been built. It's prohibitively expensive and risky to try to build out your own parallel set of infrastructure, whether it's roads or cable. I mean, if Google tried and failed to do it, who else is going to be able to succeed?

bifrost 10y ago

"then ISPs are going to pull a Martin Shkreli" So why didn't that happen prior to now? The NN legislation as proposed is new and the internet existed just fine prior to it.

Alex3917 10y ago
> So why didn't that happen prior to now? That's a good question, and it's hard to say. Empirically we can see that it is starting to happen, e.g. with t-mobile not charging users when they consume video and audio data from certain sites. My guess is that the reason it didn't happen historically is because content was worth almost zero. E.g. Flickr was bought by Yahoo for almost nothing, and if I remember correctly YouTube was on track to go bankrupt until Google bought them to set the legal precedent they wanted. It's only in the last couple years that the costs of producing and distributing content have now also basically fallen to zero, so it's now possible to make a lot of money in the content business even if any individual item is still worth very little. There have obviously been companies who have made a lot of money on content previously, but mostly only when there was either some quirky situation affecting the price of display ads (e.g. Yahoo) or else when there was some quirky situation affecting the valuation of the company itself (e.g. YouTube).

erikpukinskis 10y ago

The internet is not free and open because some companies are complying with regulations. The internet is free and open because that's what the internet is. If ISP's, content providers, whoever else wants to provide services which aren't free and open then they're not part of the internet. It's sad if lots of people lose internet access because Comcast stops offering it, but the internet won't go away. Other companies will offer free and open access and the internet will live on with those folks. If it comes to it, you can come over to my house and plug into my ethernet and we'll grab a Slackware CD and start a new internet if we have to. Deal?

spydertennis 10y ago
In a thread littered with unpleasantness this comment gave me hope.
NoGravitas 10y ago
I kind of agree with you, but the free and open internet in your scenario would be a pretty niche thing, kind of like gopher or Usenet is today. I've been thinking about running a gopher server lately, but that doesn't mean that I want the free and open internet to be gopher-only.