| > How we got to the point where utility-style regulation is seen as the key to ensuring a free and open internet is a true puzzle. We can break it down quite simply. - Being an ISP is not a high margin business. - ISPs, like any other business, are always seeking ways to make more money. - Charging sites for the privilege of traversing their infrastructure, or charging customers by the sites they load (the "cable TV" model, if you will) is a way to make more money, so ISPs want to do it. - Consumers don't want to be charged more money for the same bits, and neither do the owners of large sites. - Consumers have little to no choice of ISP, because being an ISP is very expensive, and as mentioned, it's pretty low profit (in the grand scheme of things.) Pretty simple, really. Sure, in an ideal world, we'd just be able to change to an ISP that fits our particular political bent (no traffic shaping/filtering/prioritizing for me, thanks!) but that world does not exist. The idea, in short, is that free speech (meaning, in this case, unprioritized w/r/t bits) is more important than ISPs ability to make money. That's not the perfect scenario but it is the most acceptable one, given the world in which we live. |