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Please, could someone more knowledgeable explain to me. I have used computers since mid 1980s. Started with Atari 800XL. I have used Internet since mid or late

Please, could someone more knowledgeable explain to me. I have used computers since mid 1980s. Started with Atari 800XL. I have used Internet since mid or late 1990s. So first thing: please forget what the name of the Act is. Forget it. Not Net Neutrality. Let's call it "Act ABC". I know, ridicilous, but I want you to look at the issue... hmmm... in neutral manner. I remember the Internet that the ABC Act is supposed to protect us from. Internet in which you pay for the data used. I used a modem and was paying for my time online. So websites that took forever to load or didn't employ caching (looking at you youtube without cashing just streaming, but wth). This was much much more diverse internet. That was the internet that forced p2p sharing and p2p platforms. Non-existent now because the current system where you don't pay for the data privilleges big oligopolies, big corporations that have the most data. Google (with its subsidaries), Facebook, Twitter are like what 70% of the internet now? Why? How is that good? I want my crazy websites back. I want diversity. I want copyrighted streaming to be kicked in the stomach. I want competition. I don't want Google, Facebook and Twitter monopolizing the internet. Look, ISPs have never censored the content. Google, Facebook, Twitter do it all the time. On the one hand they say, oh we're platform. On the other they edit content. So which one is it? Obviously you can't have both at the same time. Paying for data would disrupt Google, i.e. it would kill youtube (owned by google) overnight or at least far reaching changes in it. Facebook also, spending 3-4 hours a day on it, and paying ? Noow, wouldn't it be better to spend 20 minutes there and then browse for other locations? Just to spend your expensive online time more wisely. With free cost of bytes send developers, and I'm sorry to say it, I'm a developer too though, can be lazy. No optimization what-so-ever. Building websites to make sure they are small, load fast, put important content up-front, don't waste users time... now how this could be bad? Net Neutrality is the step in the future. Future of Googles, Twitters and Facebooks, Amazons, 3-4 oligopolies taking all traffic, killing all the innovation and competition in the process. This isn't the future I hoped for. I hoped for neevr ending 1990s internet. With dozens of websites I visited regularly. And these dozens changing every year too. Future of the internet looks so regulated now. The last step will be the Government taking over, or rather regulating, FANG. This is death of the innovation for this Industry. And make no mistake: if Republicans won't pass Net Neutrality then Democrats will surely do it. But still they seem to recognize the same problem, Ms. Elizabeth Warren wants to break-down Google, Twitter, Facebook into smaller competing companies -- employing anti-trust laws against them via Department of Justice action. So I think we see the problem on both sides of the aisle. The thing is that solving the problem of big corporations governing the Internet like their own turf might be better done via making time on the internet or data sent paid again. Just seems more natural than taking Judical action against the offenders.

wmf 7y ago
I agree that metering Internet access would cause far-reaching changes but I don't think we can predict what those would be. It could easily make the Internet much worse. And of course everyone hates it: http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/networks.html http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/networks.html We accept metering for electricity and water because human intuitions still apply; this isn't the case for data. Two Web pages that appear similar could have vastly different transfer sizes. I'm reminded of the criticism of Xanadu that said "imagine an odometer that's taking money out of your pocket; now imagine it turning really fast".
bo1024 7y ago
First, thanks for writing this post. I find it very hard to understand because you don't say what you think net neturality is. It sounds very different from mine. My definition is roughly "price you pay only depends on how much data you want and how fast you want it, not what that data is or who it comes from." So metering the internet is totally in line with net neutrality, as long as you don't discriminate and meter some websites at a higher price than others. In fact, this definition pretty much fits everything you say is good and avoids everything you say is bad. But you seem to say net neutrality does the opposite. Now I don't know the details of this exact bill but can you explain what you think it's doing and how that relates to your post.
- wmf 7y ago
  There's a significant group of people adjacent to and overlapping with net neutrality advocates who are opposed to any form of bandwidth metering. https://stopthecap.com/ https://stopthecap.com/
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    This is largely because metering is a precursor to network neutrality violations. The vast majority of an ISP's costs are independent of usage. The actual incremental bandwidth cost is below $1/TB of transfer and is constantly declining. And if that's what they were charging, probably nobody would care. But if that's what they were charging then they would probably make less doing the charging than it costs to do the accounting. Also, customers hate metering in general and will happily pay $5/month extra to not have to worry about it even when their actual metered bill would only have averaged $1/month extra, which across all customers more than pays for that one guy who pays the extra $5/month and then uses $100 worth. But that isn't why metering is imposed, and those aren't the prices charged. Because the point of metering is to exempt things from it, as a way to favor those things. If you have to pay $10/GB of transfer for Netflix but not for cable TV, advantage cable TV. If it wasn't for that, metering wouldn't be used on wired connections.

wmf 7y ago

I agree that metering Internet access would cause far-reaching changes but I don't think we can predict what those would be. It could easily make the Internet much worse. And of course everyone hates it: http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/networks.html http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/networks.html We accept metering for electricity and water because human intuitions still apply; this isn't the case for data. Two Web pages that appear similar could have vastly different transfer sizes. I'm reminded of the criticism of Xanadu that said "imagine an odometer that's taking money out of your pocket; now imagine it turning really fast".

bo1024 7y ago

First, thanks for writing this post. I find it very hard to understand because you don't say what you think net neturality is. It sounds very different from mine. My definition is roughly "price you pay only depends on how much data you want and how fast you want it, not what that data is or who it comes from." So metering the internet is totally in line with net neutrality, as long as you don't discriminate and meter some websites at a higher price than others. In fact, this definition pretty much fits everything you say is good and avoids everything you say is bad. But you seem to say net neutrality does the opposite. Now I don't know the details of this exact bill but can you explain what you think it's doing and how that relates to your post.

wmf 7y ago
There's a significant group of people adjacent to and overlapping with net neutrality advocates who are opposed to any form of bandwidth metering. https://stopthecap.com/ https://stopthecap.com/
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  This is largely because metering is a precursor to network neutrality violations. The vast majority of an ISP's costs are independent of usage. The actual incremental bandwidth cost is below $1/TB of transfer and is constantly declining. And if that's what they were charging, probably nobody would care. But if that's what they were charging then they would probably make less doing the charging than it costs to do the accounting. Also, customers hate metering in general and will happily pay $5/month extra to not have to worry about it even when their actual metered bill would only have averaged $1/month extra, which across all customers more than pays for that one guy who pays the extra $5/month and then uses $100 worth. But that isn't why metering is imposed, and those aren't the prices charged. Because the point of metering is to exempt things from it, as a way to favor those things. If you have to pay $10/GB of transfer for Netflix but not for cable TV, advantage cable TV. If it wasn't for that, metering wouldn't be used on wired connections.