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"Small entities are just in a bad leverage position, especially when their "product" depends heavily on someone else's very expensive and hard to reproduce infr

"Small entities are just in a bad leverage position, especially when their "product" depends heavily on someone else's very expensive and hard to reproduce infrastructure" Small entities already pay their fair share for access to that infrastructure. Have you forgotten that startups have to pay for their Internet service? The Internet is not a fancy cable TV system where service providers negotiate contracts with websites. Nobody needs "leverage" on the Internet; you are limited by your technical capabilities, not by your negotiating skills, and that is what makes the Internet a great step forward. Net neutrality is why we do not talk about "paying for Verizon access" or "paying for Comcast access," but rather, "Paying for Internet access."

rayiner 13y ago
What you're describing is a fiction, a fiction that only exists because of the status quo. At the end of the day, the internet is just very expensive physical infrastructure in the form of coaxial and fiber optic cables and wireless base stations all over the country. Right now, the companies that own the physical infrastructure are happy to sell bandwidth on a non-discriminatory basis, but there is nothing inherent in the technology that requires them to do this. There is nothing inherent in the technology that prevents them from giving better service to the big company that is willing to pay a lot of money than to the start-up that can't afford to pay a lot of money. Imagine an urban parking lot that's near a number of stores. For awhile, it operates on a non-discriminatory basis. Everyone pays to park, and then goes wherever they want. One day, Wal-Mart moves in and cuts a deal with the parking lot. In return for a giant check each month, the parking lot will let Wal-Mart customers park for free. Now, Wal-Mart has a huge edge over the neighboring mom and pop stores. Is this wrong? Or is this just how the world works? What you're doing is making a normative point: nobody should need leverage on the internet. That's a fine thing to believe, but it's just a belief. It's nothing inherent in the architecture of the internet.
- betterunix 13y ago
  "There is nothing inherent in the technology that prevents them from giving better service to the big company that is willing to pay a lot of money than to the start-up that can't afford to pay a lot of money." No, but the technology is also not designed to facilitate such discrimination, and everything about the design of the Internet assumes net neutrality. There is nothing in TCP/IP that uniquely identifies services, nor anything that facilitates a notion of classes of service. One service may have multiple hosts and multiple IP addresses. One IP address may be shared by multiple services. It may or may not be possible to inspect packets to determine which service they belong to; nowhere is any promise of "inspectability" made. So while nothing prevents it, imposing such fees does require substantial new infrastructure to be deployed and new protocols to be developed. In other words, the Internet itself has to change to accommodate such a system -- because as designed, the Internet assumes neutrality.

rayiner 13y ago

What you're describing is a fiction, a fiction that only exists because of the status quo. At the end of the day, the internet is just very expensive physical infrastructure in the form of coaxial and fiber optic cables and wireless base stations all over the country. Right now, the companies that own the physical infrastructure are happy to sell bandwidth on a non-discriminatory basis, but there is nothing inherent in the technology that requires them to do this. There is nothing inherent in the technology that prevents them from giving better service to the big company that is willing to pay a lot of money than to the start-up that can't afford to pay a lot of money. Imagine an urban parking lot that's near a number of stores. For awhile, it operates on a non-discriminatory basis. Everyone pays to park, and then goes wherever they want. One day, Wal-Mart moves in and cuts a deal with the parking lot. In return for a giant check each month, the parking lot will let Wal-Mart customers park for free. Now, Wal-Mart has a huge edge over the neighboring mom and pop stores. Is this wrong? Or is this just how the world works? What you're doing is making a normative point: nobody should need leverage on the internet. That's a fine thing to believe, but it's just a belief. It's nothing inherent in the architecture of the internet.

betterunix 13y ago
"There is nothing inherent in the technology that prevents them from giving better service to the big company that is willing to pay a lot of money than to the start-up that can't afford to pay a lot of money." No, but the technology is also not designed to facilitate such discrimination, and everything about the design of the Internet assumes net neutrality. There is nothing in TCP/IP that uniquely identifies services, nor anything that facilitates a notion of classes of service. One service may have multiple hosts and multiple IP addresses. One IP address may be shared by multiple services. It may or may not be possible to inspect packets to determine which service they belong to; nowhere is any promise of "inspectability" made. So while nothing prevents it, imposing such fees does require substantial new infrastructure to be deployed and new protocols to be developed. In other words, the Internet itself has to change to accommodate such a system -- because as designed, the Internet assumes neutrality.