4 ms·

> the ability for users who need it to pay a premium for fast or reliable service, a la first class mail Net Neutrality does not prohibit an ISP from charging

by ejain 12y ago

> the ability for users who need it to pay a premium for fast or reliable service, a la first class mail Net Neutrality does not prohibit an ISP from charging their customers more for a faster or more reliable Internet connection; it simply prohibits the ISP from accepting money from Dominos to speed up access to their website (or slow down or even block access to Pizza Hut's website).

jessriedel 12y ago
But I only want to pay a premium for a fast connection to certain websites, and I don't want to have to renegotiate with Comcast every time I'd like to connect to a new website that is worth enhancing with a fast connection. Nor, in a perfect world, should it be illegal for a website to cover this fee if the website can derive unusual profits from it. If net neutrality applied to mail, then it would be illegal for Amazon to send me pre-paid first-class envelopes for returns. (This turns out not to be useful for mail, but the analogous case could be very useful for data.)
- pdonis 12y ago
  > But I only want to pay a premium for a fast connection to certain websites What the cable companies are trying to do isn't about you, the user, paying a premium for faster access; it's about you, the user, and the web service provider, both paying a premium to your ISP for faster access--even though the service provider is already paying a premium to their own ISP for faster access to the Internet as a whole. From the ISP's point of view, selling you faster access only to certain websites would probably be a lot harder, technically, than selling you faster access to the whole Internet, because the ISP would have to inspect every packet you send or receive to see whether it was part of a connection with a website you want faster access to. Plus, you would have to have the physical bandwidth present anyway, which means you could just as easily get faster access to the entire Internet. So I don't see how an ISP could sell you faster access to a limited set of sites any more cheaply than faster access to the Internet as a whole; in fact it seems to me that it would be more expensive to do the former. > Nor, in a perfect world, should it be illegal for a website to cover this fee if the website can derive unusual profits from it. Websites that can benefit from faster access already do this in the real world: they put their content on CDNs--or in extreme cases, like Google or Facebook, they build their own CDNs--and spend extra resources in other ways to give users faster access to their content. What I think you're missing in all this is that the cable ISPs do not (currently) own the entire Internet; they only own their own networks. That means they can only extract artificial scarcity rents from their own customers, not from the rest of the Internet. What they would like to do is to effectively own the entire Internet so they can extract artificial scarcity rents from everybody.
- perrylaj 12y ago
  I don't think your analogy really makes sense. Allowing companies to pick and choose which content to deliver to customers already paying for access to said content is more like the post office saying "I know you paid for this mail already, but since you are a popular source of mail we want you to pay more." I can't imagine Ebay or Stamps.com getting charged MORE from USPS because they have higher shipment volume. You're effectively arguing in favor of spending more money for the same service you are currently getting (as the service providers getting charged are going to transfer that burden to you the consumer and Comcast will not lower rates to you).

by ejain 12y ago

jessriedel 12y ago

But I only want to pay a premium for a fast connection to certain websites, and I don't want to have to renegotiate with Comcast every time I'd like to connect to a new website that is worth enhancing with a fast connection. Nor, in a perfect world, should it be illegal for a website to cover this fee if the website can derive unusual profits from it. If net neutrality applied to mail, then it would be illegal for Amazon to send me pre-paid first-class envelopes for returns. (This turns out not to be useful for mail, but the analogous case could be very useful for data.)

pdonis 12y ago
> But I only want to pay a premium for a fast connection to certain websites What the cable companies are trying to do isn't about you, the user, paying a premium for faster access; it's about you, the user, and the web service provider, both paying a premium to your ISP for faster access--even though the service provider is already paying a premium to their own ISP for faster access to the Internet as a whole. From the ISP's point of view, selling you faster access only to certain websites would probably be a lot harder, technically, than selling you faster access to the whole Internet, because the ISP would have to inspect every packet you send or receive to see whether it was part of a connection with a website you want faster access to. Plus, you would have to have the physical bandwidth present anyway, which means you could just as easily get faster access to the entire Internet. So I don't see how an ISP could sell you faster access to a limited set of sites any more cheaply than faster access to the Internet as a whole; in fact it seems to me that it would be more expensive to do the former. > Nor, in a perfect world, should it be illegal for a website to cover this fee if the website can derive unusual profits from it. Websites that can benefit from faster access already do this in the real world: they put their content on CDNs--or in extreme cases, like Google or Facebook, they build their own CDNs--and spend extra resources in other ways to give users faster access to their content. What I think you're missing in all this is that the cable ISPs do not (currently) own the entire Internet; they only own their own networks. That means they can only extract artificial scarcity rents from their own customers, not from the rest of the Internet. What they would like to do is to effectively own the entire Internet so they can extract artificial scarcity rents from everybody.
perrylaj 12y ago
I don't think your analogy really makes sense. Allowing companies to pick and choose which content to deliver to customers already paying for access to said content is more like the post office saying "I know you paid for this mail already, but since you are a popular source of mail we want you to pay more." I can't imagine Ebay or Stamps.com getting charged MORE from USPS because they have higher shipment volume. You're effectively arguing in favor of spending more money for the same service you are currently getting (as the service providers getting charged are going to transfer that burden to you the consumer and Comcast will not lower rates to you).