As you know, I'm technologically illiterate on all things computer-and/or-internet.
This is the first thing I've read on this "net neutrality" issue that gave me a glimmer of understanding as to what the entire thing is about. A light bulb, albeit a dim one, went off in my tech-challenged brain, and I actually learned something! Thanks for this post.
Here's the unfortunate issue, and for sake of ease we're going to ignore the primary backbone and providers such as L3 and focus on the "last mile".
Due to a mess of reasons, broadband companies in many places within the nation exist as a monopoly, or at best a monopoly for their specific type of broadband and only one or at most two other competitors. And the latter situation is largely not applicable in most rural areas. One of the big reasons that this mess exists is because of issues relating to localities and these big telecoms as it relates to infrastructure. The reality is that it costs significant money to lay new infrastructure down if you're an telecommunication company looking to "break in" to the market. Part of the reason for this is exorbitant fees and regulations put forward by local and state governments, in large part due to kickbacks and lobby on the part of the telecom industry. Its for this reason that even a "tiny" company like Googe [/sarcasm] has had issues creating startup internet providers and has flat out abandoned attempts to do it except in areas with the smallest amount of regulations possible.
Reasons like this helps create a situation where the "market" for broadband is anything BUT free, but is rather is this corporation/government crafted localized monopolies with an extremely high cost of entry for any "competitors".
An alternative would be to essentially work with an ISP who already exists to try and piggy back off "their lines" in some kind of common use agreement, but this is problematic and is not something most would actually open to. Which also touches on another big issue. While people will go "woe is the telecoms" about the fact they had to "pay for their infrastructure", much of that infrastructure (for example the copper wiring the cable companies use) was actually subsidized BY tax payers. So yes, while it's the companies lines, it's hardly something they placed down just on their own.
So we have a situation with companies taking advantage of subsidized infrastructure, working in conjunction with local governments to regulate away likely competition, and creating this ridiculous segment "market" that exists for broadband. Which creates a situation where strong arming tactics are more feasible, where they're emboldened to do things like cutting off types of downloads they don't like on their network (as Comcast did with Bit Torrent in 2008), and where the fear of further wrong doing on their part will continue as usage of the internet becomes more ubiquitous and the data that's available more closely threatens the other business lines of the telecoms.
Thus you have a push for Net Neutrality as a form of government regulation. And in a lot of ways, it's like attempting to cure poison by giving yourself more poison; which is why, in general, I can understand some of the reticence for it. However, the fact that so few of the loudest critics of net neutrality ever say two ****s about the poison that exists CURRENTLY makes me sincerely question their motives and how much this is less about ideals and principles of small government, and more just being slaves to big business and/or just pushing a party line without any thought beyond that.
The issue right now, ultimately, isn't "net neutrality" or not. The issue is that there's a market that is NOT free, that is NOT healthy for competition, and thus is NOT a benefit to the consumer in any real fashion for a service that is quickly becoming a necessity in the modern world. The question
SHOULD be how do we deal with
that problem. The problem is, the entire discussion has turned into one about net neutrality...a potential cure, rather than the problem itself...and thus battle lines are drawn there, which frankly is the wrong location for this battle to be waged imho.
