Is Network Neutrality a Big Deal?

I think the other side of the sword is that spammers will lawfully be allowed equal bandwidth and ISPs can do nothing about it. That's one example.

The net result may be that internet service takes a speed hit for all of us.

As far as spam goes, the best defense is a coordinated ignore of all spam. If people stopped responding to the unsolicited junk email it would go away in a matter of days. Better than 50% of all email is spam.

Much better than 50%, more like 98%.

If you want to stop the email spam problem then simply charge $0.0001 per email sent. If you send out a hundred emails a day then it costs you or your company $0.01 per day, no big deal.

For the spammer who sends out 1,000,000 emails a day it costs them $1000 per day, very big deal for them.

The digital rights people want the ISPs to use deep packet inspection to block infringing data, as well as anything distributed by torrents is assumed to be infringing.

So you can encrypt the data, so all they can tell is that it sent around via torrent. The digital rights also want to block all torrents on the presumption it is infringing.

The problem is a real one, with too many people sending movies and other pirated files thay can use so much bandwidth thay slow us all down.

Of course, what if the movie makers want to distribute their legal content, well we must let them do that, and what's more, we must give them a royal road so their traffic has priority over yours. And if you want to use Skype or Vonage and your ISP also hooks up online phone services, well their phone services will have a priority over yours.

I have an idea, lets privatize the sidewalks, and let some company own them, and maintain them. Then when you want to walk across them = a fee. You want to drive across them in your car = a fee.

Now the ISPs deperately want this toll road for content, as do the digital rights people.

The problem is that, increasingly, the ISPs are owned by the content providers. Without net neutrality laws there is nothing to prevent them from throttling Hulu and bittorrent which offer for free what customers pay for with cable TV. They have the ability to squash competition in the name of 'network management', e.g. the latest Comcast smackdown by the FCC.

"Shouldn't ISPs have some latitude in how they serve customers?"

Yes, but when they are the only provider available, a defacto monopoly, they can do whatever they please to their customers.

"ISPs claim that net neutrality will limit their ability to charge for services that provide the incentive to enhance the infrastructure to accommodate rising bandwidth demand and increasing traffic"

Bullshit. The US lags far behind much of the developed world when it comes to internet connection speed. http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/Images/commentarynews/broadbandspeedchart.jpg

What is to prevent a group of consumers, disgruntled with their monopolistic ISP, from getting together and forming their own ISP in competition with the guys they don't like? This is called free market capitalism, and it's very effective.

Are you aware of the fact that a few huge telcos own the large fiber backbones, and they will sell you bandwidth, but they also throttle you with deep packet inspection to give their traffic a priority

So? There are other alternatives. Satellites for example. And I am pretty sure any one of us could think of other ways around this as well.

Have a look at what is going on in Venezuela regarding mass media. Chavez has driven a number of broadcasters (radio and TV) off the airwaves, so some of them turned to Cable. Now he has driven them off Cable (for not transmitting his speeches), and the information is migrating to the Internet and social media. He has not yet figured out how to block those media, but he will try. Essentially, anyone who disagrees with Chavez in Venezuela has no right to express an opinion...Which is where "net neutrality" could lead us, as soon as we let the government have a say in what or how information is exchanged...

My biggest concern is that most politicians have perfected George Orwell's "doublespeak"- that is, when the government talks of "net neutrality", you should interpret this as "government censorship", whether that is the original intent or something added as a result of the next "Patriot Act". Have a look at what Chavez is trying to do in Venezuela, or China, or any number of other countries where governments try to regulate content...

Here is a jaundiced view of the FCC's net neutrality:-

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/opinion/1589507/the-fcc-net-neutrality-rules-sham

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/net-neutrality-plan-would-permit-blocking-bittorrent

http://www.realnetneutrality.org/

Forgive my ignorance, but isn't the FCC a US organization? How can the US regulate something they don't own?

the USA is only going to regulate what its companies own, which is a lot

Probably the same way China can. You play by our rules, or we don't CARE if you take your football home. Our government has grown so big it thinks it can do ANYTHING that appeals to it. I am not one for Mr. Obama's habit of apologizing for everything America ever did, but there are some aspects of being a proud American that are hard to swallow. And the arrogance of our government (shoot, that IS Mr. Obama, to hear him tell it.) is one of the worst.

But, yep, that's how they can regulate it. Just like China does.