That JPG is one of the worst arguments on the Internet. It's popular because it works up the rage of "this might happen" netizens, but "might" has been reduced to "doesn't violate the laws of physics."
Even right now, with whatever asshattery Verizon is doing, they haven't even peeped one single word about making the customers of theirs that use Netflix pay more money to Verizon.
"These people do bad things, so you should believe these other bad things I say they might someday do." Lots of people have made very good careers out of enraging the rabble that way.
[1] Your first link uses a bunch of Google searches as evidence, so I can't be 100% sure what it's talking about. But there's a decent chance it's this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709910 forex
[2] The second article is about AT&T wanting to get the hell out of the wired communication business. Investors hate the wired business. One way or another you have to pay for that infrastructure, and talking about applying utility-level regulation to the companies eager to leave is not going to draw in new dollars.
To use Comcast as an example, now Netflix is paying Comcast for a connection to their customers as opposed to Cogent (which should have had good bandwidth between them and Comcast). As a result, Netflix will have to charge their customers more. So, don't think that just because the ISPs won't be charging doesn't mean that the customers won't have to pay more.
Now, you could make an argument that it's good that Netflix customers will have to pay more for their service because they were clogging the pipes for everyone else. The problem is that this is a very slippery slope and could lead to a balkanization of the Internet, very similar to the tiered access presented in the JPG you so adamantly disagreed with. What happens when your ISP (because you only have one choice) doesn't have a peering agreement with the network hosting Service X? Sure, you could use Service X, but your experience wouldn't be very good. But good news for you! They do have an agreement with Service Y that will provide you with almost the same data as Service X, but it costs a little more. Did I mention that Service Y kicks back 20% of your monthly service fee back to your ISP for "hosting"? There are plenty of ways that the ISPs can get more of your money. Not all of it involves getting it from you directly.
Hey, Netflix could charge more to customers of certain ISPs, too. What a nightmare! If I make a JPEG showing that will everyone go nuts and share it on the Facebook and demand Netflix stop fucking with net neutrality? I mean, Netflix might do it.
I've experienced this with other MSO engineers. Some MSO engineers even argue that charging a content provider to access their mutual customers is not a rent seeking behavior.
I have no idea how this isn't an antitrust case yet. Also, considering that most cable packages cost $80+, and Netflix costs $7, what makes you think that the ISPs will stop at charging Netfix just a few dollars extra per customer. Don't you get it, they don't want to get Netflix to pay them more money, they want to drive Netflix out of business.
I think more so than Netflix, Google has a stake in this. Block youtube and gmail for one month on any ISP that does not sign a Net Neutrality pledge, and see what happens. If black mail is good for the goose, it's good for the gander.
Not directly, but if the ISPs charge Netflix a fee that forces Netflix to raise prices for its customers to re-coup those costs (or hypothetically pass it as a surcharge on to its customers on a given ISP) they've essentially taken that money from their customers who also use Netflix. That the money went through an extra set of hands first is a mis-direct. That non-Verizon Netflix customers might be impacted ends up getting cancelled out if most of the major ISPs do the same thing. If Netflix doesn't charge a fee to re-coup those costs, then Netflix has less money to make rights agreements with, and I've got less content to watch. No matter what, I as a Verizon/Netflix customer lose.
I understand that it's easy for you to believe that people who have done things you don't like in the past might do entirely different things you don't like in the future, because they do things you don't like.
But for all the ISPs sins, they have never taken even one step down this particular road.
Because they've been stopped from doing so? Isn't that what this whole fight over Net Neutrality is about?
because they do things you don't like
It's not just a random pattern of dislike. It's a specific monopolistic pattern of market control that content distributors have demonstrated over and over. How stupid would we have to be to not see where they would like to take this?
I'm normally arguing with folks on HN from my pro-capitalist perspective, but treating monopolies like the major ISPs as players in a free market is a huge mistake.
This is straight out of the rabble-rousers' playbook when questioned "hey, before you get us worked up about the next disaster our enemies will bring out, why don't you tell us why the disaster you predicted last year didn't happen?"
"Well, it's because we fought so hard against it!! Come on, how stupid do you have to be to not see this? Look at this next tragedy they are going to do, of course it was only because of our brave work stopping them that they couldn't continue." Then link to a cable comedy host agreeing with them as proof they were right.
That's not what the fast lane/slow lane is. Fast lane/slow lane is you pay for 50/5 BUT there is an extra charge (on Netflix for example) for you to get Netflix at full speed. Otherwise it's throttled all to hell.
Basically all that image missed was the ISP's going after the content providers instead of adding fees to their existing users.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/04/the-fccs-fast-lan...
Nothing about this is having the ISP's customer pay more to the ISP based on which websites they want to go to.
Akamai doesn't pay for faster connections to ISPs. They pay for more servers located at more places in the network, so that the average network distance from an Akamai server to a user is smaller, using the connections that already exist.
> Nothing about this is having the ISP's customer pay more to the ISP based on which websites they want to go to
No, it's about websites or web services paying more to ISPs so that customers can get to them at full speed instead of being throttled back, even though the website or web service is already paying to have their content on servers spread around the world so it is closer to customers.
> Akamai's entire business
Akamai's business is not charging company Y extra to not get throttled by Comcast and you know it.
> Nothing about this is having the ISP's customer pay more to the ISP based on which websites they want to go to.
And now you continue to harp on this specific angle. As I said, all that graphic missed was individual ISP's going after content providers specifically instead of (further) screwing their customers. But it is still creating a tiered experience.
This kind of baseless insinuation is not welcome on hn.
Given the ugliness of what they are doing, the only reason I agree they probably wouldn't charge for tiered service is because they probably don't yet have the balls to take that to the court of public opinion, but in their heart of hearts I'm sure they'd love to triple dip by trolling (in the under-the-bridge sense) Netflix and also charging extra to consumers. If they don't get smacked down now I fully believe they'll take it there.
The disgusting thing is they pretend like they own the Internet rather than acknowledging that Internet only works, exists, and has created their market because of peering agreements. The minute networks start trying to nickel and dime each other the whole thing unravels. God we need to get more lobbyists on the right side of this issue into Washington, and hopefully a fewer congresspeople who were born after the invention of color television.
This is pretty much what Netflix is faced with at the moment. They pay $X for basic internet access, and then pay an additional $Y to access Comcast, $Z to access Verizon, etc.
The ISPs are just making the service slow rather than blocking it, but it doesn't change the fundamentals.
Surely the ISPs have done enough actual bad things that we don't have to imagine bad things they might someday do.
That fact is even splashing over into popular culture, so I'm not sure which set of facts you're dealing with:
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/0...
Seriously, though, when has Comcast indicated it wants to charge its ISP customers per-website? When has any ISP ever put a surcharge on someone connecting to certain websites?
Fact is that Comcast is lobbying big time to allow multi-tiered Internet access. That's public, easily-googleable information, so I don't understand why you're arguing otherwise.
The argument provided is an illustration to demonstrate who is paying in the end.