So long, net neutrality? FCC to propose new pay-for-preferential treatment rules

[deckeda]

ISPs should be treated like the common carriers they are.

Barring that, there may be other, decentralized ways (p2p ...) of delivering content.

http://arstechnica.com/information-techn...r-to-peer/

This quote at the bottom of the story seems to be one no one at the FCC has read, or understands:

"[W]hen we ask [ISPs] if we too would qualify for no-fee interconnect if we changed our service to upload as much data as we download—thus filling their upstream networks and nearly doubling our total traffic—there is an uncomfortable silence," Netflix CEO Reed Hastings wrote last month. "That's because the ISP argument isn't sensible. Big ISPs aren't paying money to services like online backup that generate more upstream than downstream traffic. Data direction, in other words, has nothing to do with costs."

[what4]

Help me out with this. I can't see any alternative to paid channels.

As long as the Net stays open, won't it inevitably succumb to the tragedy of the commons? -- Where some people suck up so much bandwidth that everyone else suffers?

I'm thinking that, with a free Internet, people will be livecasting millions of aimless videocams (and other sorts of byte-eaters), eventually clotting the bandwidth so that, when you or I need to do something important, like make a bank deposit, we have to wait, and wait, and wait till there's an opening.

As the band-hogs suck up more and more bandwidth, can you see any way to avoid WANTING a paid channel you can always rely on to be available when you need bandwidth?

What's your thinking on this?

[deckeda]

The notion of a data hog is a sympathy artifice that has no reason to exist. Be careful when parroting what ISP public relations people or CEOs say.

Their limitations of service are self-imposed, because that's the nature of how monopolies, duopolies etc work ... there are no natural market forces nor sufficient governmental oversight to change that. As you say, real alternatives don't exist. It's textbook.

Pay-to-play means that there's no reason why your bank might someday enter into an agreement with the ISP so that you don't have to wait for info. Who do you think picks up the tab? Pay-to-play is a corruption because we already pay ISPs and cable companies for service poorly delivered. We don't need to pay them more, indirectly, by paying for the increased costs they push to content providers who will have to pass it on to us.

It's nutty for ISPs to charge us to deliver content and for ISPs to also charge content providers to deliver customers. They're double-dipping.

And if you're thinking your bank access is "more worthy" than my Netflix entertainment, that's a form of discrimination that pay-to-play favors.

[what4]

Suppose you run a business with a significant online component, and you want to ensure that you get to do business without being slowed down by 1,500 people in your neighborhood downloading Netflix or playing an online game or streaming webcams of their kittens.

Wouldn't you be willing to pay for that guarantee of access? Wouldn't you WANT some such guarantee of access, even at a cost?

How otherwise can you, the business person, succeed?

And yes, I do consider bank access and online business to be a higher priority than your Netflix entertainment. I'm willing to pay to have priority for my business. Won't you?

Of course it's discrimination. Just the way the fast-lane-for-car-poolers is discrimination.

[silvarios]

deckeda,
Yep. Cool with your whole post. As you state, everyone is already paying for pushing traffic up and down. The state of ISP choice in this country is pretty lousy and the sort of thing in the linked article shows why monopolies usually stink for consumers.