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Help defend Net Neutrality!

Last posted Jan 31, 2014 at 08:52PM EST. Added Jan 30, 2014 at 12:57PM EST
5 posts from 5 users

We need 100,000 votes. And if you look at the vote count, we're nearly there!

Help here

Pretty please, it'll help the later years of the internet!

Sorry if this is spamming, mods. I just wanted to spread this around.

Last edited Jan 30, 2014 at 12:57PM EST

It is a bit spammy, but I think there's discussion to be had. I'm good with it. Since you're a Brand New Member, I'm guessing you were looking for places to post this and just joined KYM to those ends, but it would be better if you could stick around though :3

I don't really believe in most online petitions. Even though whitehouse.gov has something good going in "We the People," it doesn't mean too, too much.

If a petition gathers enough signatures, it will be reviewed by White House staff and receive an official response. We the People helps the White House understand the views of the American people and have a focused and civil conversation with them.

An official response could just mean that the organizer will receive an email from an intern saying Congress will take it into consideration. The fact that the petition received enough votes for an official response doesn't mean that any Congresspeople will do anything about it.

That said, if you're just promoting this as one of many ways to express the like or dislike of certain potential or present legislation, then I can certainly support that.

I just hope people aren't fighting so hard for this so they can get free entertainment media or use hate speech without threat of being held responsible for it.

The Internet and the World Wide Web is much greater than that. It's a medium to say what's on your mind without having everything monitored or informally moderated to just about anyone. It's something we could live without, but it would be a great loss to lose that sort of freedom (more than anyone would gain from having it restricted too harshly.)

Just in case people seeing this thread don't know what this is about, in a case between Verizon and the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) a judge ruled in favor of Verizon and struck down "Net Neutrality", a rule that prevents discrimination or favorable treatment to particular kinds of data, or data sent to or from particular destinations, sent across the networks of ISPs (Internet Service Providers) like Verizon. Without enforcement of net neutrality, ISPs have the legal right to throttle, block, or help along traffic passing through their infrastructure at their sole discretion. Meaning every node or path in the networks owned or operated by ISPs becomes a potential new chokepoint/toll gate for everything. If your ISP also offers a pay-per-view or some other on-demand video streaming service that is in competition with, say, Netflix? Your ISP can slow down or throttle your connection to that competitor's service because they want you to use theirs.

But the real damage that can come of this will be on the other side, between the ISPs and web companies. ISPs will be allowed to offer faster speeds to websites and services for a fee, meaning that websites and such will be able to pay to be given preferential treatment over other sites and services on an ISP's network. Any start-up would be under a huge disadvantage from already entrenched companies that can pay to stay on top.

>Start-up can't "start up" because no users
>no users because shit connection
>shit connection because start-up can't pay for competitive speed
>start-up can't pay for competitive speed because no users
>no users because--

see what's happening?

TL;DR: The Internet could turn into a non-competitive, Pay-to-Win hell any day now, and it would all be completely legal.

Free speech would also suffer, because your ISP could just throttle connections to any website that promotes views it doesn't agree with. Even if this is unlikely, it is still a possibility. An ISP could also be selective in terms of protocols (HTTP, P2P, etc.) it allows to pass through its networks.

Luckily, the solution to the problem is simply derived from the reasoning behind the ruling. The FCC would only need to reclassify the Internet as a communications service, and ISPs as "common carriers" of said service. But this hasn't been done yet, which is why it's so important to make a fuss over this until "shields are back up."