So I'm not incredibly well informed on this topic, however I am aware that congress will be voting on July 17th to remove Net Neutrality. If you're in the USA, you may be seeing popups on the EMC Forums, and if you are, there are links to places where you can send a complaint to the FCC. It's definitely a good idea to do so, because if enough people will go and make complaints, the whole thing may be dropped, but once it goes to congress, there is no telling what will happen. Now you may be thinking, "oh what is net neutrality and why should I care about it?". Well Net Neutrality is essentially the "policy" stating that ISP's (Internet Service Providers, such as Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, etc.) can not interrupt your viewing abilities for websites online. They can't slow speeds down or block a website just because they'd like to. The reason this could become a problem is if Netflix decided to crack a deal with Verizon, they could pay Verizon to speed up the website Netflix, and slow down something like Hulu, which makes it so customers will either switch from Hulu to Netflix, so they can actually watch shows without immense lag, or they can suffer through the lag, and stay loyal to Hulu. That's going to be a problem, because in the world of business, profit is the main focus, so why would they not want to get payed to slow down websites? I'm not too sure what the outlook on this is for congress, but I'm hoping we can stop it from getting to congress. For more information, check out this link to see companies who are banding together to protect internet freedom and what you can do to protect it yourself ---> https://internetassociation.org/
I had to take the thing down because its buggy keeps showing on every page :/ I'll see if they fixed it after I sleep.
To put it in simple terms, Net Neutrality ensures that "all data is treated equally" by ISPs. They provide your access to the internet, but they are not allowed to dictate where you go or what you use it for. Without NN, the rules change - the internet becomes more like Cable TV, and providers can block access to specific sites, charge you extra for visiting them, or as EmpireMall said, throttle bandwidth for such things as streaming services or online gaming. This is what protects our 'right' to a free and open internet. It is absolutely vital we preserve it. Hope so. EDIT: If you like irony, the proposal for removing Net Neutrality is here - 'Restoring Internet Freedom' Hah. More like removing.
So I'm spending some time looking around online to try and find predicted numbers and other information regarding net neutrality's possible future. I was curious and checked to see if this was a more conservative supported or liberal supported concept. From what I'm seeing, it's liberal, which could mean bad things for us seeing as conservatives currently have house majority, but either way, if this thing get's removed then that means that larger companies will be able to monopolize. It's basically a loophole around the current regulations put into place to PREVENT monopolization. Now Amazon is a part of the Internet Association and is trying to defend net neutrality, but at the end of the day, if net neutrality is dropped Amazon is in it to survive, and they will likely pay most ISP's to receive better service and block others. That's basically blocking all of the smaller services out, meaning that Amazon would have a control over "the online shopping industry". This whole thing is one massive loophole, and I'm sure plenty of lobbyists are going to have fun handing out cash for this issue.
Net Neutrality puts limitations on corporations, disallowing them from doing consumer-unfriendly things. So the fact that it is regulation on businesses is why rich conservatives hate net neutrality. They don't like any form of regulation. Their argument is that "it was fine", but ISP's were already starting to go down the route (there was plans released about the idea of segmenting tiers of the internet), so the regulation was enacted to prevent them from even trying it.
According to what I've read, the 'replacement' plan the FCC has in mind is to shift responsibility to ISPs (codifying Net Neutrality agreements in their TOS) and placing violation enforcement in the lap of the Fed. Trade Commission. -Of course, as we all know, companies can change their TOS pretty much at whim. -The phrase "Better to seek forgiveness than ask permission" applies heavily - even if it meant a legal fight with the FTC, it would be much easier for providers to defend their actions after the fact than get around the rules as they exist now. To give you an idea of how desperate companies are to kill NN, spam-bot networks have been flooding the FCC with a fake cut/paste message in support of the proposal, using "leaked" user info from various ISPs. The story originally attributed the spam directly to Comcast, but I think has since been revised to say that the user information was from Comcast customers, obtained from one or more "data breaches" in the past. Considering the timing and use, it's unproven but extremely likely Comcast willingly provided the data to the bots.
It's a shame how little positive attention this is getting. I've encountered a lot of people who defend the repeal of Net Neutrality because they think the free market actually works without regulation.
It's also possible they don't understand what it actually is. I got into a discussion with one of my coworkers tonight and had to spell it out for him - he thought it was something entirely different.
