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Can someone point to the best ELI5 article, or tell me the best metaphor? I think I don't do a great job trying to explain net neutrality to family members.

jandrese 9y ago
Do you know how you have to pay extra to your ISP to watch Netflix or Youtube? You don't because of Net Neutrality. If they are old enough you can use this metaphor: Anti-Net Neutrality is for turning the Information Superhighway into toll roads. If they need further explanation, go with the highway analogy. Imagine if all of the roads in the country were privately owned, but still free to use. You pay your tax and the money is distributed among the companies. Now the company that services your neighborhood decides that they want more money, so they erect tollbooths at the entrance to the neighborhood but tell companies that they'll wave the toll if you're going to a certain company. So Wal*Mart might pay the fee and get you free access, while Mom&Pop shops can't afford it so you have to pay a toll to visit them. They claim it is necessary because the Mom&Pop shop gets too much traffic and they aren't helping to pay for the roads in your neighborhood, even though the shop is in the next town over and the extra traffic doesn't really cost the road company anything.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago
  For the first one, even before Net Neutrality, we didn't have to pay extra to watch Netflix or Youtube. And for the second. Imagine that your neighbors are ordering stuff from Amazon. Amazon is making lots of money delivering to the homes. However, they are overloading our neighborhood roads with their vehicles. Our neighborhood roads have become congested because of Amazon. Now Amazon is saying that this congestion is solely our problem. However, since they are the ones making money from our roads, we want them to pay their fair share for profiting from our roads. We are only doing this for big corporations like Amazon who are not paying their fair share and causing us congestion. We have never tried to make mom and pop stores pay this fee.
- WillPostForFood 9y ago
  Do you know how you have to pay extra to your ISP to watch Netflix or Youtube? You don't because of Net Neutrality. That's a good scare tactic, but isn't very informative (or necessarily true). Net Neutrality only came into effect on June 12, 2015. I don't think people will recall paying extra to watch Netflix or YouTube before that date (because they weren't). And paying extra probably won't be the effect if net neutrality is rolled back, so it will undermine the argument to reinstate it. The problem is that we need net neutrality to help balance the power against big vertically integrated Media/ISPs like Comcast and Time Warner. But it is more about the future potential abuse, so people won't care until there is some event that really affects a lot of people.
  - jandrese 9y ago
    Netflix did pay a ransom to Verizon and Comcast back in 2015. You didn't see it directly, but that money came out of the same pot that would have paid for more content on Netflix. http://time.com/80192/netflix-verizon-paid-peering-agreement/ http://time.com/80192/netflix-verizon-paid-peering-agreement...
    - cheald 9y ago
      No, that money came out of the pot of money that they were previously paying to Cogent for transit through to Verizon and Comcast. Describing an extremely-typical paid peering agreement as a "ransom" is massively intellectually dishonest.
      - jandrese 9y ago
        They still payed Cogent for the peering, but they had to also pay Comcast and Verizon for the same peering (just on the other side), because both companies were deliberately undersizing their connections to Cogent until Netflix paid up. It's not like Netflix moved their servers into Comcast or Verizon data centers and paid for the bandwidth (although they offered and the offer was rejected). How many other internet companies pay the end user ISPs for their peering bandwidth? Why should they? That's what the users are paying for.
stephengillie 9y ago
I also struggle with metaphors. - A company who owns roads, and charges you to drive on them, wants to charge more for highly-used routes. - A bus company is raising fees on routes with the most riders. - Cable companies charge more for high-demand "premium" channels. - Stores charge more for items that are higher in demand. - Electric utilities charge surge prices during high demand times. So do some ride share taxis. - Network companies charge more for high-demand connections? Preposterous! It's rare that businesses will "commute" a fee, like happened for"commuters" in the last century.
- nxsynonym 9y ago
  I think the high-demand "premium" channel is the best - simply because there is no limited supply. I used the bridge metaphor for a while, but unlike bridges there is no maintenance required from increased usage or traffic jam generated from high traffic to netflix or google.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Of course there is. Bandwidth isn't infinite, there's certainly congestion and maintenance required to upkeep and upgrade routers and cables.
    - nxsynonym 9y ago
      yes but that is from general use, not tied to specific websites. If total traffic increases those costs go up, not if a higher percentage of users access specific sites. That would be like charging trucks more to cross a certain bridge because there are more cars on the freeway two towns over.
0xfeba 9y ago
Think of it like your cable company, Mime Warmer, also happens to own a broadcasting company called DEF. You pay Mime Warmer $100/month to access every cable channel that exists. The DEF channels come in 4K. Now, because there's no cable company regulation, non-DEF channels only go up to 480p unless you pay an extra $10/month per channel you want in $4k. The problem with this analogy is that cable already comes in packages. The key here is that you already pay for the access to all channels. But all of the sudden they see a new revenue stream in restricting access to promote their own properties. So, it's not the internet that is being regulated: It's ISPs (Net Neutrality is the wrong word to use). You already pay for internet access, so does Netflix. Why all of the sudden would you want to let ISPs charge more for what you are already paying for? And opponents (Time Warner, Comcast, Verizon, et al.) all say they totally support NN, but oh, they don't want to be forced to obide by it for "reasons". And there are already examples of ISPs (Verizon, namely) throttling others or exempting their traffic (from data charges). Lawmaker opponents keep claiming it's "regulating the internet", but it's not -- it's regulating ISPs since they have mono/duo-polies.
dublinben 9y ago
This is a pretty good introduction article, written for a general audience: http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/Net-Neutrality-in-a-Nutshell-72425.html?wlc=1305574787 http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/Net-Neutrality-in-a-Nuts...
joezydeco 9y ago
Try this: http://imgur.com/qtENxAG http://imgur.com/qtENxAG
- icebraining 9y ago
  Except ISPs are planning to charge providers, not the users, so if NN falls and people don't see their bills increase as that suggests, good luck getting them to listen to you again.
AlwaysBCoding 9y ago
The internet isn't run by the government, it's mostly run by private companies. These private companies want to create and enforce a sort of tax policy around internet consumption. Companies can tax you in multiple ways (slowing page load speeds, censoring content, denying access to services etc...) and they can do it for multiple reasons (business interests, lobbying from their friends, censoring dissent etc...) Net Neutrality is the idea that private companies should not be able to create tax policy on core internet infrastructure, and instead it should remain tax-free for all users. The ultimate irony here, is that this battle is pitched as Silicon Valley vs. the U.S. government, with Silicon Valley fighting for a free and open internet and the government trying to pass legislation to pave the way for private companies to enforce tax policy. But in actuality the battle for a free and open internet has morphed into the people vs. Silicon Valley, with tech companies as the villains in the story. The arbitrary censorship on social media sites (such as Facebook, and Twitter) has gotten really bad. Platforms like Youtube for content-hosting and Patreon for fundraising have begun demonetizing and delisting their political opponents. Lower level infrastructure such as GoDaddy and Cloudflare have even now begun to enforce political delisting. Wake up. Private companies are already enforcing a tax on your internet consumption if you are guilty of wrongthink. Whether it's Verizon, Twitter, Patreon or Cloudflare, who cares, it's the same thing.
seabird 9y ago
This is so simple it doesn't need a metaphor; net neutrality means that ISPs would be obligated to treat all traffic equally. Throttling Netflix, Bittorrent, etc. under net neutrality would be illegal. What the comes down to is an argument on how much agency a company has to control their service if we've deemed their service "critical to the public good." This take is probably unpopular, but since I haven't seen many of these points and there are some very big players (IBM, Cisco, Juniper, Intel, Ercisson, etc.) that are against net neutrality with some of this reasoning, I'll fill you in some points that you probably won't hear: 1.) Routing traffic does not have equal cost. Peering, load balancing, and other aspects of routing are complex and carriers have people whose livelihoods revolve around handling these issues. A web request to a backwater site a couple hops away from you has nowhere near the load implications that streaming a 2 hour 4k movie has. 2.) Net neutrality is a bad fix for the underlying issue; local/state governments make it exceedingly easy to get a monopoly going with pole attach and franchising rules. Without this monopoly, neutral connections are a constant danger to the incumbent ISP. It is much easier to break into markets with lax regulation like Texas because of how their franchising permits work. 3.) Net neutrality is largely a power play by advertising/media companies that have no appreciable revenue other than pushing content. Facebook, Google, 4chan, etc. need advertising because they have very little value outside it. This obviously isn't an issue if you're Cisco, Intel, or the like, because they have a product other than you.

jandrese 9y ago

Do you know how you have to pay extra to your ISP to watch Netflix or Youtube? You don't because of Net Neutrality. If they are old enough you can use this metaphor: Anti-Net Neutrality is for turning the Information Superhighway into toll roads. If they need further explanation, go with the highway analogy. Imagine if all of the roads in the country were privately owned, but still free to use. You pay your tax and the money is distributed among the companies. Now the company that services your neighborhood decides that they want more money, so they erect tollbooths at the entrance to the neighborhood but tell companies that they'll wave the toll if you're going to a certain company. So Wal*Mart might pay the fee and get you free access, while Mom&Pop shops can't afford it so you have to pay a toll to visit them. They claim it is necessary because the Mom&Pop shop gets too much traffic and they aren't helping to pay for the roads in your neighborhood, even though the shop is in the next town over and the extra traffic doesn't really cost the road company anything.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago
For the first one, even before Net Neutrality, we didn't have to pay extra to watch Netflix or Youtube. And for the second. Imagine that your neighbors are ordering stuff from Amazon. Amazon is making lots of money delivering to the homes. However, they are overloading our neighborhood roads with their vehicles. Our neighborhood roads have become congested because of Amazon. Now Amazon is saying that this congestion is solely our problem. However, since they are the ones making money from our roads, we want them to pay their fair share for profiting from our roads. We are only doing this for big corporations like Amazon who are not paying their fair share and causing us congestion. We have never tried to make mom and pop stores pay this fee.
WillPostForFood 9y ago
Do you know how you have to pay extra to your ISP to watch Netflix or Youtube? You don't because of Net Neutrality. That's a good scare tactic, but isn't very informative (or necessarily true). Net Neutrality only came into effect on June 12, 2015. I don't think people will recall paying extra to watch Netflix or YouTube before that date (because they weren't). And paying extra probably won't be the effect if net neutrality is rolled back, so it will undermine the argument to reinstate it. The problem is that we need net neutrality to help balance the power against big vertically integrated Media/ISPs like Comcast and Time Warner. But it is more about the future potential abuse, so people won't care until there is some event that really affects a lot of people.
- jandrese 9y ago
  Netflix did pay a ransom to Verizon and Comcast back in 2015. You didn't see it directly, but that money came out of the same pot that would have paid for more content on Netflix. http://time.com/80192/netflix-verizon-paid-peering-agreement/ http://time.com/80192/netflix-verizon-paid-peering-agreement...
  - cheald 9y ago
    No, that money came out of the pot of money that they were previously paying to Cogent for transit through to Verizon and Comcast. Describing an extremely-typical paid peering agreement as a "ransom" is massively intellectually dishonest.
    - jandrese 9y ago
      They still payed Cogent for the peering, but they had to also pay Comcast and Verizon for the same peering (just on the other side), because both companies were deliberately undersizing their connections to Cogent until Netflix paid up. It's not like Netflix moved their servers into Comcast or Verizon data centers and paid for the bandwidth (although they offered and the offer was rejected). How many other internet companies pay the end user ISPs for their peering bandwidth? Why should they? That's what the users are paying for.

stephengillie 9y ago

I also struggle with metaphors. - A company who owns roads, and charges you to drive on them, wants to charge more for highly-used routes. - A bus company is raising fees on routes with the most riders. - Cable companies charge more for high-demand "premium" channels. - Stores charge more for items that are higher in demand. - Electric utilities charge surge prices during high demand times. So do some ride share taxis. - Network companies charge more for high-demand connections? Preposterous! It's rare that businesses will "commute" a fee, like happened for"commuters" in the last century.

nxsynonym 9y ago
I think the high-demand "premium" channel is the best - simply because there is no limited supply. I used the bridge metaphor for a while, but unlike bridges there is no maintenance required from increased usage or traffic jam generated from high traffic to netflix or google.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Of course there is. Bandwidth isn't infinite, there's certainly congestion and maintenance required to upkeep and upgrade routers and cables.
  - nxsynonym 9y ago
    yes but that is from general use, not tied to specific websites. If total traffic increases those costs go up, not if a higher percentage of users access specific sites. That would be like charging trucks more to cross a certain bridge because there are more cars on the freeway two towns over.

0xfeba 9y ago

Think of it like your cable company, Mime Warmer, also happens to own a broadcasting company called DEF. You pay Mime Warmer $100/month to access every cable channel that exists. The DEF channels come in 4K. Now, because there's no cable company regulation, non-DEF channels only go up to 480p unless you pay an extra $10/month per channel you want in $4k. The problem with this analogy is that cable already comes in packages. The key here is that you already pay for the access to all channels. But all of the sudden they see a new revenue stream in restricting access to promote their own properties. So, it's not the internet that is being regulated: It's ISPs (Net Neutrality is the wrong word to use). You already pay for internet access, so does Netflix. Why all of the sudden would you want to let ISPs charge more for what you are already paying for? And opponents (Time Warner, Comcast, Verizon, et al.) all say they totally support NN, but oh, they don't want to be forced to obide by it for "reasons". And there are already examples of ISPs (Verizon, namely) throttling others or exempting their traffic (from data charges). Lawmaker opponents keep claiming it's "regulating the internet", but it's not -- it's regulating ISPs since they have mono/duo-polies.

dublinben 9y ago

This is a pretty good introduction article, written for a general audience: http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/Net-Neutrality-in-a-Nutshell-72425.html?wlc=1305574787 http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/Net-Neutrality-in-a-Nuts...

joezydeco 9y ago

Try this: http://imgur.com/qtENxAG http://imgur.com/qtENxAG

icebraining 9y ago
Except ISPs are planning to charge providers, not the users, so if NN falls and people don't see their bills increase as that suggests, good luck getting them to listen to you again.

AlwaysBCoding 9y ago

The internet isn't run by the government, it's mostly run by private companies. These private companies want to create and enforce a sort of tax policy around internet consumption. Companies can tax you in multiple ways (slowing page load speeds, censoring content, denying access to services etc...) and they can do it for multiple reasons (business interests, lobbying from their friends, censoring dissent etc...) Net Neutrality is the idea that private companies should not be able to create tax policy on core internet infrastructure, and instead it should remain tax-free for all users. The ultimate irony here, is that this battle is pitched as Silicon Valley vs. the U.S. government, with Silicon Valley fighting for a free and open internet and the government trying to pass legislation to pave the way for private companies to enforce tax policy. But in actuality the battle for a free and open internet has morphed into the people vs. Silicon Valley, with tech companies as the villains in the story. The arbitrary censorship on social media sites (such as Facebook, and Twitter) has gotten really bad. Platforms like Youtube for content-hosting and Patreon for fundraising have begun demonetizing and delisting their political opponents. Lower level infrastructure such as GoDaddy and Cloudflare have even now begun to enforce political delisting. Wake up. Private companies are already enforcing a tax on your internet consumption if you are guilty of wrongthink. Whether it's Verizon, Twitter, Patreon or Cloudflare, who cares, it's the same thing.

seabird 9y ago

This is so simple it doesn't need a metaphor; net neutrality means that ISPs would be obligated to treat all traffic equally. Throttling Netflix, Bittorrent, etc. under net neutrality would be illegal. What the comes down to is an argument on how much agency a company has to control their service if we've deemed their service "critical to the public good." This take is probably unpopular, but since I haven't seen many of these points and there are some very big players (IBM, Cisco, Juniper, Intel, Ercisson, etc.) that are against net neutrality with some of this reasoning, I'll fill you in some points that you probably won't hear: 1.) Routing traffic does not have equal cost. Peering, load balancing, and other aspects of routing are complex and carriers have people whose livelihoods revolve around handling these issues. A web request to a backwater site a couple hops away from you has nowhere near the load implications that streaming a 2 hour 4k movie has. 2.) Net neutrality is a bad fix for the underlying issue; local/state governments make it exceedingly easy to get a monopoly going with pole attach and franchising rules. Without this monopoly, neutral connections are a constant danger to the incumbent ISP. It is much easier to break into markets with lax regulation like Texas because of how their franchising permits work. 3.) Net neutrality is largely a power play by advertising/media companies that have no appreciable revenue other than pushing content. Facebook, Google, 4chan, etc. need advertising because they have very little value outside it. This obviously isn't an issue if you're Cisco, Intel, or the like, because they have a product other than you.