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The scary thing will be when internet providers use the same tactics as free to play click games where they will ramp up your speed to a certain site if you pay

The scary thing will be when internet providers use the same tactics as free to play click games where they will ramp up your speed to a certain site if you pay extra for a temporary speed boost. These sort of pay per view tactics and extortion over something that we all take for granted now is what I'm afraid of. If not outright blocking of traffic for certain protocols such as bit-torrent or VPN access. Not that this is simple from a network management standpoint but with no restrictions in place one can only imagine the sort of devious tactics ISPs will use to extract extra revenue from their vassals.

redler 9y ago
Given the freedom to do so, some ISP is almost certain to try something along these lines. This gutting of regulations will open up a vast world of new monetization strategies, from selling speed packs, to "earning" speed by watching certain TV channels or even shows, to DNS monkey business, to "shoshkeles", to video pre-rolls, to "quick start" that throttles after a few minutes of high speed for a service like Netflix or MLB -- then prompts for an upgrade...each approach to be precisely wrought in the forge of the outrage marketplace (such outrage itself often mitigated by these same measures, and by coordinated control of national and local broadcast news and newspapers). An actual market response to customer-hostile strategies is of lesser concern since churn is not a risk in many areas. I wrote the following comment on a net neutrality thread here about nine months ago, and some of the feedback was that it's unlikely, dystopian, a little hyperbolic: "The ISP then starts selling premium bundles on the customer side -- Platinum Service will include Youtube, Netflix, Amazon, Apple (and get our bonus in-house streaming service at no extra charge!). Platinum-Plus, for another $14.95 per month plus fees, adds priority streams from your choice of up to three major sports content sources. And Platinum-Pro adds non-degraded VPN so you can work from home. Choice!" This is going to happen.

redler 9y ago

Given the freedom to do so, some ISP is almost certain to try something along these lines. This gutting of regulations will open up a vast world of new monetization strategies, from selling speed packs, to "earning" speed by watching certain TV channels or even shows, to DNS monkey business, to "shoshkeles", to video pre-rolls, to "quick start" that throttles after a few minutes of high speed for a service like Netflix or MLB -- then prompts for an upgrade...each approach to be precisely wrought in the forge of the outrage marketplace (such outrage itself often mitigated by these same measures, and by coordinated control of national and local broadcast news and newspapers). An actual market response to customer-hostile strategies is of lesser concern since churn is not a risk in many areas. I wrote the following comment on a net neutrality thread here about nine months ago, and some of the feedback was that it's unlikely, dystopian, a little hyperbolic: "The ISP then starts selling premium bundles on the customer side -- Platinum Service will include Youtube, Netflix, Amazon, Apple (and get our bonus in-house streaming service at no extra charge!). Platinum-Plus, for another $14.95 per month plus fees, adds priority streams from your choice of up to three major sports content sources. And Platinum-Pro adds non-degraded VPN so you can work from home. Choice!" This is going to happen.