Why Net Neutrality is bad for Internet users

This is a load of horse crap. Net neutrality is the only thing stopping networks and ISPs from throttling competitor's products, or strong arming successful services like Netflix into giving them a cut of their revenue, just because they're successful. Networks and ISPs are pipes. They deliver data. What those ones and zeros become when they are added together at the other end of the pipe makes absolutely no difference to them. They're only trying to muscle in on the businesses transporting their data on their pipes with arguments like these. All they want is control.

Our world has been shaped by a free and open Internet. It's the main reason behind the incredible innovation we see happening on the Internet. Putting that in control of corporations is a very bad idea.

Here's a very good explanation of why Net Neutrality and an Open Internet is essential : http://www.theopeninter.net/
 
I fully agree with this. Shaping is a good thing if implemented correctly. People using voip or streaming can be given guaranteed throughput to provide a good stutter free experience, gamers can be ensured low pings and small bits of data like email or web pages can be delivered more quickly. I've long proposed that people be given a set amount of priority traffic like 10GB a month. That way lite web users will have a good experience while heavy downloaders don't bog down the network for everyone else but are still happy.

This is not how ISPs have done it though. Instead of giving priority like it is meant for they have used it to deprioritise traffic like voip data, streaming or making gaming impossible. Then they demand a ransom for lifting these restrictions under the guise of giving priority to "normal" data like web browsing. Who decides what normal internet usage is? Is using voip or streaming or gaming not normal internet activities? Why should we pay more just to get these not prioritised but just treated normally?

ISPs have done this to themselves. They have shown that they can't be trusted so now they have to reap the fruit of their practices.
 
Net neutrality is crucial because you can't control a damn thing once you open the floodgates. Couldn't disagree more with the article.
 
No Net Neutrality would be the equivalent of Toll gates on the Net...those wanting to end Net Neutrality are only aiming at easy money ....pssst wanna go faster, show us your wallet!
 
Man I can't believe people are so short sighted that they are against net neutrality
 
Don't be fooled by the use of the term "neutrality". It's a clever bit of NewSpeak by government bureaucrats with socialist/collectivist views.

"Net neutrality" is an unjust, unwarranted and intolerable overthrow of the free market by government tyrants. It removes from the owners of telecommunications systems the freedom to use and sell their own property as they wish. That alone makes it unacceptable. Over the medium term this bit of socialist intrusion will end up hurting the costumers more.

Not everyone's needs and requirements are the same. One of the glorious benefits of the Free Market system is that it enables businesses to produce a rich variety of offerings tailored to a wide range of customer needs and budgets. It encourages innovation and the most optimal use of resource.

That's why we in the free market West have an abundance of goods and services, whereas the socialist/communist East bloc had drab one-size-fits-all "social equality" products with backward technology at four times the price.

Is why the free market countries have a choice of twenty brands and two hundred models of just about anything.

It's why we have a rich and diverse choice that suits our needs and budgets. It's why we rejoice in the choice of VWs, Fords, Chevs, Toyotas, Peugeots, Buicks, Volvos, Audis, BMWs and Mercs and all the rest, and why the socialist bloc had Trabants and Ladas at absurd prices with multi-year waiting lists.

"Net neutrality" is yet another example of how America is stepping away from the liberty that made it the greatest economy in earth. It is an evil and iniquitous fatwa by unelected bureaucrats appointed by an anti-freemarket politician who has never had a real job.

When governments interfere in free markets we all end up worse off. Always and without exception. And "net neutraluty" is in fact the very opposite of what it's marketed as. It imposes a uniformity where none is needed. It is evil.
 
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And yet free enterprise has brought us abysmal internet service. :rolleyes:
 
Arthur said:
Don't be fooled by the use of the term "neutrality". It's a clever bit of NewSpeak by government bureaucrats with socialist/collectivist views.

"Net neutrality" is an unjust, unwarranted and intolerable overthrow of the free market by government tyrants. It removes from the owners of telecommunications systems the freedom to use and sell their own property as they wish. That alone makes it unacceptable. Over the medium term this bit of socialist intrusion will end up hurting the costumers more.

Not everyone's needs and requirements are the same. One of the glorious benefits of the Free Market system is that it enables businesses to produce a rich variety of offerings tailored to a wide range of customer needs and budgets. It encourages innovation and the most optimal use of resource.

That's why we in the free market West have an abundance of goods and services, whereas the socialist/communist East bloc had drab one-size-fits-all "social equality" products with backward technology at four times the price.

Is why the free market countries have a choice of twenty brands and two hundred models of just about anything.

It's why we have a rich and diverse choice that suits our needs and budgets. It's why we rejoice in the choice of VWs, Fords, Chevs, Toyotas, Peugeots, Buicks, Volvos, Audis, BMWs and Mercs and all the rest, and why the socialist bloc had Trabants and Ladas at absurd prices with multi-year waiting lists.

"Net neutrality" is yet another example of how America is stepping away from the liberty that made it the greatest economy in earth. It is an evil and iniquitous fatwa by unelected bureaucrats appointed by an anti-freemarket politician who has never had a real job.

When governments interfere in free markets we all end up worse off. Always and without exception. And "net neutraluty" is in fact the very opposite of what it's marketed as. It imposes a uniformity where none is needed. It is evil.
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Correct, we want the ISP Telkom to be able to make Netflix and Showmax so slow it buffers a lot, to try to force us to rather sign up with TelkomLocalSABCShowsIsAllWeShow, amirite?

Internet provision is a utility...
 
Arthur said:
It's why we rejoice in the choice of VWs, Fords, Chevs, Toyotas, Peugeots, Buicks, Volvos, Audis, BMWs and Mercs and all the rest, and why the socialist bloc had Trabants and Ladas at absurd prices with multi-year waiting lists.
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this is a poor example by the way, when you go to the supermarket you have a choice of various brands of juices, coffees, milk, cereal etc

but if you want to buy a BMW you have to go to a BMW dealer, very little choice

there exists no new car supermarket where you have a choice between brands
 
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Swa said:
And yet free enterprise has brought us abysmal internet service. :rolleyes:
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Free enterprise? In South Africa??

You must be joking.

We don't have free enterprise in telecoms in South Africa. Our telecommunications infrastructure was a state-controlled monopoly for seventy years. Then the government corporatised the monopoly and allowed private businesses to operate in a few little corners while it retained control over the infrastructure and still heavily regulates private businesses.

To this very day, private businesses are heavily constrained, limited and restricted in what they can do. The heavy hand of government still operates through a vast and complex web of expensive and competition-limiting licences, regulations, rules, and restrictions. The state-owned former monopolist still enjoys protections, patronage and favours not available to its pseudo-competitors.

The whole telecommunications market in SA is so riddled with rules, limitations and restrictions - all the result of government interference - that private businesses have very little room on which to operate without government favour.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that privately-owned businesses are synonymous with the free market. Very far from it. When government decides who can compete and who cannot, we don't have a free market. Privately-owned business just gets is favours from government, and government-erected barriers to entry remain.

The last thing we have in SA telecoms is a free market.
 
Actually, let's be honest here... It's as if a butt wrote this. Yep.
 
I actually read this article as a complete mis-understanding of net neutrality (well, how I, and many others define it anyway)

Let me explain. If you have a network and you prioritise (using QoS or something), *ALL* voice traffic to ensure clear voice quality - that is not a violation of net neutrality. However, if you have a VOIP product of your own and you prioritise that to the detriment of other VOIP going over the network, that is a violation of net neutrality. The former I have no issue with, the latter is a major problem.

Similarly with video traffic. If a provider were to preference (just you as examples) netflix over showmax, because of some commercial reason, then there is a problem, if all video streaming services were equally treated however, and the shaping was done to protect all video streaming from getting hurt by other traffic, again, I have no issue with this.

We need to differentiate between quality of service applied to protocols, and used to enhance overall network performance vs deliberate degradation of specific content for commercial advantage, the former is not a bad thing, the latter is a terrible thing.

Fact is QoS and some form of traffic management is necessary in any world where there are contention ratios applied, and that would include almost any commodity provider in the world. It is simply not commercially viable to *NOT* apply any form of QoS in those environments without some form of network degradation. It is a very different story in places where everyone is buying dedicated CIR bandwidth, but that simply isn't the case in the home user segment - if it was the price of home user bandwidth would be through the roof, because the input cost of providing that much bandwidth is high. (Consider, an ISP that has 100 thousand 10meg users behind it, would need a terabit of bandwidth if they were not contending)

So yeah - QoS the traffic to protect latency sensitive, loss sensitive real time traffic, but do not protect individual applications / corporate products. The former in my view is still net neutral, the latter is not. If we view it in this context, then yes, net neutrality is important and isn't bad for anyone.
 
AndrewAlston said:
I actually read this article as a complete mis-understanding of net neutrality (well, how I, and many others define it anyway)

Let me explain. If you have a network and you prioritise (using QoS or something), *ALL* voice traffic to ensure clear voice quality - that is not a violation of net neutrality. However, if you have a VOIP product of your own and you prioritise that to the detriment of other VOIP going over the network, that is a violation of net neutrality. The former I have no issue with, the latter is a major problem.

Similarly with video traffic. If a provider were to preference (just you as examples) netflix over showmax, because of some commercial reason, then there is a problem, if all video streaming services were equally treated however, and the shaping was done to protect all video streaming from getting hurt by other traffic, again, I have no issue with this.

We need to differentiate between quality of service applied to protocols, and used to enhance overall network performance vs deliberate degradation of specific content for commercial advantage, the former is not a bad thing, the latter is a terrible thing.

Fact is QoS and some form of traffic management is necessary in any world where there are contention ratios applied, and that would include almost any commodity provider in the world. It is simply not commercially viable to *NOT* apply any form of QoS in those environments without some form of network degradation. It is a very different story in places where everyone is buying dedicated CIR bandwidth, but that simply isn't the case in the home user segment - if it was the price of home user bandwidth would be through the roof, because the input cost of providing that much bandwidth is high. (Consider, an ISP that has 100 thousand 10meg users behind it, would need a terabit of bandwidth if they were not contending)

So yeah - QoS the traffic to protect latency sensitive, loss sensitive real time traffic, but do not protect individual applications / corporate products. The former in my view is still net neutral, the latter is not. If we view it in this context, then yes, net neutrality is important and isn't bad for anyone.
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Good post.
 
a lot of misunderstanding and misinformation around this.

reminds me of vague information given so that it can be manipulated to suite various needs when needed.

lets break it down. like mc hammer.

net neutrality
noun
noun: net neutrality; noun: network neutrality
the principle that Internet service providers should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and without favouring or blocking particular products or websites.

That suggests that access to the source and the end points do not get restricted, websites, products, applications, not traffic flow or data type as so many explanations use.
related examples; email, porn sites, torrents sites(p2p), cloud storage(fancy for ftp*), geo-blocking media, region locking games, this would include child pornography and such bad things would it not.

lets break up the phrase and its meanings

neutrality
/njuËˈtralɪti/
noun
noun: neutrality
1. the state of not supporting or helping either side in a conflict, disagreement, etc.; impartiality.

Net, short for Internet, short for interconnected networks*
/ˈɪntənɛt/
noun
noun: Internet
a global computer network providing a variety of information and communication facilities, consisting of interconnected networks using standardized communication protocols.

nowhere in there does it point towards the actual network data, but only the idea as a whole or the application layer.

to me it seems like one of those ideas that don't really work or can work in practicality/reality. just this vague description of a marketing idea that can be manipulated to suite needs as they come along.

i would also argue that true net neutrality treats all data the same since that is true neutrality, not just sources or endpoints, aka websites, products, applications. this would point towards traffic management; QoS, shaping, throttling, routing, queuing.


as you can see, non of those explanations are truly in effect.

it is an unrealistic idea that gets sugar coated and appeals to those with the utopian idea of equality. it simply is unrealistic and does not benefit the users.

going against "net neutrality" as the idea is described, is what is happening in reality and it cannot work properly without it; applications and products do in fact need to be prioritized above each other, in other words help one above the other, simplest example is games and video/voice streaming, over emails, p2p and cloud services. else it would be an unbearable experience. note i stayed at application layer and did not go down to traffic or protocols.

but to implementing this, we accomplish it is by going down the OSI layer to manipulate the performance to the sources and end points by traffic management or protocol manipulation. this is the reality, it is needed.

you cannot point towards neutrality of an internet application or website and not point towards the data/traffic flow.


content, websites, applications, products, aka data, needs to be prioritised, one needs to be given favor over the other.

net neutrality is a farce.


and stop saying ISPs and evil corporations will use this to charge for stuff or data, that would shoot themselves in the foot, someone else will just not charge for it and users will use them instead, why do you somehow forget about competition when thinking net neutrality, or is that just it, no competition because its all neutral, sounds communist... lol

they actually use prioritizing as a marketing point, games and videos faster on xyz network, voip, emails faster on abc network. note; i used applications/products as my examples.

hope this makes sense, just woke up
 
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There should not be any shaping, even if a cost increase is necessary.

I would rather have 10Mbit unshaped vs 20Mbit shaped.

Shaping limits innovation and enforces monopolies.

That does not mean that they should take measures to ensure that all clients are treated equally. The client should be able to determine their own shaping. Don't decide that for the client.
 
access said:
a lot of misunderstanding and misinformation around this.

{snip}

net neutrality is a farce.


{snip}
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Agreed with acclaim.

Sapphiron said:
Don't decide that for the client.
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But what if the customer needs and wants to buy a prioritised service? Why use the government to prevent a customer from buying a prioritised service from an ISP?

It's like telling a courier or transport company they are not allowed to have different levels of service with different delivery times and different prices. That kind of regulation and intrusion into business is fundamentally unjust. It ends up making all services equally crappy and expensive for everyone. The equivalent of Trabbies for transport. It's irrational.
 
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Arthur said:
Agreed with acclaim.
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We are not even all talking about the same thing it seems.

Question (example):
Does MWEB allowing full speed ShowMax while throttling Netflix (if they were so inclined) fall under Net Neutrality or not? If not, what is that called then? Cause that is what I'm talking about with Net Neutrality.

Shaping and throttling of a whole "genre of packets"(for lack of a better term coming to mind) like streaming or e-mails or game packets or cloud backups is nothing to do with Net Neutrality.
 
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