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Comment by tn13 | Hacker News Reader

I have never be convinced why net neutrality is a consumer-protection agenda. Always looked like a "elite protection" agenda to me. My parents would only benefit if they get a restricted internet at lower prices. Dont think they ar being protected by net neutrality.

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I'm not trying to be rude, but I don't think you understand what net neutrality is. Also, there is no legitimate reason an internet connection would have to be 'restricted' as a cost saving measure, that's just silly. Who are these 'elites' you refer to with their gluttonous 4Mb down/1Mb up connection speeds? (These are the speeds Ajit wants to revert the 'broadband' standard to, which is insane.)

Let him reduce it to 64Kbps what difference does it make ? Call an elephant a horse will not make it a horse. As users we constantly want more bandwidth and ISP that fails to provide it will go out of business nevertheless.

ooooooh you are one of those "FREE MARKET WILL FIX IT" people.

Well, ignoring that the whole idea just makes me suspect you live in a fantasy world, ISPs frequently have regional monopolies. They aren't going out of business because thye provide shitty service because the internet has become something people rely on. Losing it would be a big blow.

Comcast thrives despite being absolutely despised by a large percentage of their customer base.

Well, I think that we would all benefit from a level playing field. I think that the end-state of a non-neutral network is that ISPs can demand payment from startups that rely on bandwidth.

I personally really enjoy Netflix. If they were launching today, they would have to pay off a lot of ISPs so that their videos aren't throttled into skipping and stuttering. Let's say that they get enough venture capital to cover these costs, and they pay the ISPs. If this happens then the ISPs are double-dipping -- they're getting paid by the users to access netflix, and then they are getting paid by netflix to access the users. Does that seem fair to you?

What you think others will benefit from should have not bearing on regulation in my opinion. I am prefectly happy paying $10 a month for an internet connection that plays just netflix and nothing else to give you an example.

> What you think others will benefit from should have not bearing on regulation in my opinion

That is literally why every regulation gets passed. Because someone thinks someone will benefit.

Let's say you want to start a new service called flerptube. You can do that today -- write the code, get the content, and put it up on AWS. Then it's up to the market to try out your product and make you king of streaming. You can do that because of net neutrality.

Without net neutrality you would have to ask permission from the cable companies, who see you as a threat to their own cable television offerings. They'll either refuse to work with you, or cut you a terrible deal.

I'm not saying that others benefit from net neutrality -- I'm saying that you do as a customer, and you do as a business owner.

There was no net neutrality into Feb 2015, and it didn't stop the creation of YouTube, Netflix, Vimeo, DailyMotion, etc.. They didn't have to ask ISP permission. We are just going to the state of existence that has been the norm for most of existence of internet.

I would say there was de facto net neutrality because ISPs acted neutrally even though it wasn't mandated by law. Around ten years ago ISPs started being evil and the FCC's regulations are a response to that. I still wonder what caused ISPs to abandon ~20 years of neutrality.

Perhaps streaming became good enough and cheap enough to offer viable competition to cable such that cord cutting became a thing.

Of course it should. Opinion -> voting -> regulation is basically democracy in a nutshell.

All the restricted internet plans introduced so far have had unreasonably low datacaps with punitive overages, just for a $5/month discount. If the kids came over and streamed a movie or downloaded the latest game, the bill would be $15+ more instead.

Is it no wonder why those don't exist anymore?

> My parents would only benefit if they get a restricted internet at lower prices

Then they can get lower speed internet and/or lower caps to lower their rates.

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