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 Ustrello wrote:
Just wait til the restrict access or slow down porn. They will be burning a effigy of ajit pai every day

There is a political agenda first and a corporate second with this change. It may be the best way for the poltical establishment to curb the rise of the alt right and of progressives.
However bread and circuses, so most mainstream porn sites will not get pinched, entertainment won't either nor will gaming. If those are hit people will complain, but they will overlook lack of access to poltical content if distracted properly.

I thought I should reopen this thread one year later. To ask a question of US members.

There was a lot of noise twelve months ago about how if Net Neutrality was repealed internet service providers would be able to throttle site they did not like, or force people to pay more not to be shunted into a slowlane.

It is now time to ask if any of these predictions have come true, are due to be implemented at any particular date, or are being kept back for some third party reason.

Or was it all scaremongering?

 whembly wrote:
It would actually be pretty hard to maliciously block a public IP address by the ISP as hypothesized and get away with it...

DNS servers are the address name-to-IP translators that is ubiquitous across the internent, owned by many many entities. DNS servers "talk" to each other to maintain valid changes to IP address and to optimize the database list to reduce "hops" between networks.

Just about the only entity who can block (or redirect) IP addresses are Countries. (looking at you China/Cuba/Iran/etc...)

Unless you think its possible for the US (or other western nations) to do this...this hypothetical is nothing more than a Chicken Little exercise that NN wouldn't address anyways.

China has tried to ban VPNs with only limited effect. Even a nation with overt and heavy handed net policing can only go so far. It requires actual police footwork to close the door properly, which China is only beginning to do on a larger scale. That of itself cant happen in the US.

The major issue facing those whose content is 'shutdown' is that opposed content might still be readily available. If say YouTube/Patreon/Facebook blocks content for being infringing, those who dislike it can continue to call the work infringing without the original content creator being able to defend themselves. This is where group advocacy comes into play. Net neutrality is relevant as its a broader scale problem. Content bans are a scalpel, bandwidth throttling is a hammer. It would be possible to use a large scale approach do deal with a social/political problem.
However doing so would be evident and obvious and thus counter productive because it would trigger a larger backlash.

Personally I am concerned about corporations doing social engineering and selectively empowering and disempowering messages according to their own political agendas or dogmas. But such actions also come at a price. When a content provider bans a content maker there is a backlash from their fans and also from those who might not agree with the content but will defend the right to do so. This is also always a problem for corporations and a price to pay. The backlash on Patreon is a current topical example. Throttling would be the same but cruder more indiscriminate and muted in its effect. i.e not an effective tool of social control.

Consequently while I am seeing a theoretical political free speech threat from net neutrality repeal, but I am not seeing or any longer expecting to see an actual one.

The real issue to me has always been about monopolization and carteling of internet services. That to me is a much bigger problem, companies not in 'the club' could face real restrictions or even be forced out of business is needs be. There is no open evidence of this, but if major corporations do cartel, there won't be, so the lack is not indicative, and the window of opportunity may be tempting.

 whembly wrote:
Can we agree with the following principles?

1) ISPs should not purposely slow or block data on a discriminatory basis. I am not necessarily opposed to the concept of “fast lanes”, as I believe that offers significant potential for innovative services (ie, remote medical services), although I recognize the arguments against them... I just don't think the public has really weighed in that concept. HOwever it should be non-negotiable, that ISPs cannot purposely disfavor certain types of content.

I have a big problem with this, even though I would like to agree with the principle.
Corporations are past masters of using marketing to reverse the meaning of a price differential. It is common to synchronise a discount offer with a general price rise so a product is temporarily cheaper, or even the same price yet 'reverting' to a higher price later.
in context here a company can generate slow lanes while claiming to generate fast lanes, its just a matter of labelling. "Fast lanes" become (what was) standard service at premium price, normal service become throttled service at regular price. Thus technically there are no "slow lanes".


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 Peregrine wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
China has tried to ban VPNs with only limited effect. Even a nation with overt and heavy handed net policing can only go so far. It requires actual police footwork to close the door properly, which China is only beginning to do on a larger scale. That of itself cant happen in the US.

But the goal of ending net neutrality isn't China-style censorship of dissent, it's profit. Most people don't know how to set up a VPN and aren't going to learn, so who cares if it is technically possible? The goal, which can easily be successful, is to make accessing the content inconvenient enough that people get out their wallets and pay for premium service and/or just go to the preferred content provider (depending on the particular business model). It's purely a gift to large corporations at the expense of the rest of us, who pay more without getting an improved product in return.

This wasn't the point I was making. Many advocates of Net Neutrality used censorship as an argument. I made the point that repealing net neutrality doesn't lead to censorship because it doesn't have the tooling of censorship. Though it can make fringe websites harder to reach and is detrimental to them, but it would be difficult to shut down a message this way. As China has vested interests and internal control structures for shutting down the internet, and has yet to successfully do so, it is hard to fathom circumstances where a successful shutdown can occur in the US on a large scale.
This is not to say that intelligence agencies cannot interfere, but this doesn't require or rely on net neutrality laws or their repeal.

Beyond this i agree with you. The benefits are for corporate gain at public expense, and while free speech can suffer to some extent that is simply in a form of corporate 'pollution' of the internet caused by movement on the road to quicker profits.