6 ways the death of Net Neutrality will affect you

[CousinIT]

Last edited Tue Feb 21, 2017, 01:31 PM - Edit history (1)

Here's a look at what life is like when Net Neutrality's no longer the law of the land:

1. Good online content? Bye.
Broadband's filling up with companies that own both the pipes and the content that flows through them. Think back to the early days of cinema, when movie studios owned the theaters their movies played. It was an unhealthy alliance that shut out smaller studios who didn’t own theaters from distributing other films, and competing with, for instance, Paramount Studios on a level playing field. The U.S. government stepped in in 1948 and broke up this monopoly.

2. Cheap online content? Bye.
With that in mind, think of a company like Netflix, which, by some measures, accounts for more than a third of the internet’s bandwidth usage, could find that fewer people are tuning into the next season of Stranger Things because it’s costlier. And so on.

4. Your favorite websites? Tougher to find.
Amazon's the world’s most popular online shopping site. The New York Times is the preeminent news source. Netflix is your go-to-binge site. And so on. One day, long after Net Neutrality's dead and buried, you go online through your phone or desktop, and every time you type in “Amazon,” the web browser opens the Home Shopping Network (HSN). As a Charter Communications customer, you’re confused, until you realize that Liberty Media owns a minority stake in Charter, and owns 100% of the Home Shopping Network. HSN isn't Amazon, but surely, it’ll work for you.

. . .

http://mashable.com/2017/02/09/when-net-neutrality-dies/

[HAB911]

1. Taking sides

I have Frontier Fios(Verizon) and they have just added Netflix via their settop box. IMO this will add an additional layer of profit taking to the chain, and the cost will eventually hit us. Like the divorce court judge told me, "Son, somebody's got to pay, and that's you."

[eniwetok]

2. your link has an ID number at the end

Who knows what it's tracking...

this one works http://mashable.com/2017/02/09/when-net-neutrality-dies/

[CousinIT]

3. Fixed. I hate that tracking garbage. Tx. n/t

[hunter]

4. The giant corporations who profit from net neutrality...

... are now much, much larger than the telcoms who oppose it. The telcoms are further burdened by obsolete infrastructure they haven't yet paid for.

Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc., will crush the telcoms (and the politicians beholden to telcoms) if they press too hard.

I think all this talk about "net neutrality" is the telcoms negotiating a surrender that insures their continued existence.

Fun fact: Netflix, a competitor to Amazon's own television product, runs on Amazon's servers. The movie industry too is increasingly utilizing Amazon and Google "cloud" servers for their digital rendering.

Cable, satellite, and broadcast television as we knew them are obsolete. If telcoms refuse to provide unfettered internet access, then someone else will.

I'm connected to the world by a twisted pair of copper wires leading to a local Internet Service Provider. I had it years before either Pacific Bell or Comcast offered internet service, before most of my neighbors had computers.

I quit Comcast years ago. I used to say I kept cable television because our guests expected it, but I quit caring as the price of cable television continued to rise. $29 a month for a basket of crap commercial television was too much for me. If guests must have their TV fix they can rummage through our large DVD collection or use their own electronic devices.

Our television plays movies. That's all it does. Our internet service is just fast enough to play a single medium resolution video stream, somewhat approximating DVD quality, and I'm not looking for anything more. Hell, I'm happy with an internet connection if embedded YouTube videos on Democratic Underground play.

The telcoms and satellite services seem to have forgotten they are not a necessity. If they irritate their customers too much their customers will go away. I went away and I'm never going back.

[Initech]

5. Net Neutrality won't go away.

There's too many big names profiting off of it like you said - Apple, Google, Netflix, and Facebook - for the telecoms and networks who are pushing back from it, to even consider it being an option. This has been talked about since the early days of Google but now that there's way too many people profiting from it, as they say money talks and bullshit walks. The net neutrality opponents are bullshit.