[loup-vaillant]

OK, I think see your point. Your scheme could be compatible with net neutrality with a few tweaks. The ISP could offer a separate channel for its special YouTube access the same way it offers separate channels for TV right now. Net neutrality is saved as long as the actual internet connection doesn't discriminate —being universally slow is perfectly allowed.

But here's the thing: it's not transparent. The customer has to explicitly subscribe to those high speed channels, just like they do TV right now.

Back to your scheme, the customer would not pay less. Costs have to be recouped somehow. If YouTube pays for the privilege of using the ISP's fast channels, they're likely to multiply ads, or even ask users to pay to use YouTube at all. Either way, the customer will pay eventually.

Generalise this, and you get nearly free internet access that's now useless, and various paid subscriptions to a number of walled gardens (think porn networks). The walled gardens will then pay the various ISPs back for the privilege of accessing their users.

One won't simply set up a web site. It will need to be part of a network, which may charge for the privilege, or police the content to protect their reputation (just like YouTube). One won't simply host a server of any kind at home: it will get crappy communication, if at all (with everything moved to the walled gardens, there is little point in supporting anything else).

I don't like that one bit.

[lilei2]

I don't like it either. What I'm saying is that this is something people who support net neutrality has to be able to refute.

Most consumers only want slow traffic to many websites and fast access to a few websites, but the are paying for a lot more. The example of "sites" might be a bit convoluted. We could as well make the differentiation based on geography, which is sort of already the case. Get 1 gigabit domestically and 10 mbit internationally. Now it up to people who want to host something to buy transit into the country. (This is sort of how it works in China, where a lot of people don't speak English anyway).

> Back to your scheme, the customer would not pay less. Costs have to be recouped somehow.

People who use the Internet less would presumably pay less and people who used the Internet more, including setting up servers, accessing services far away or anything else that require more infrastructure, would pay more. Which is sort of the case today with upstream bandwidth.

My overall point would be that the open Internet costs money and I'm not sure people can be convinced to keep it ones there's an alternative.

[loup-vaillant]

The open Internet doesn't cost that much. The US happens to have monopoly prices, but here in France, a decent broadband (and even Fibre!) connection can be had for as little as 30€ per month, and the ISPs still make a profit as far as I know.

Few people can't afford that much. The real reason behind the net neutrality attacks (we have those in the EU all right) is profit maximization —which tends to be incompatible with any kind of common good in the first place.

> My overall point would be that the open Internet costs money and I'm not sure people can be convinced to keep it ones there's an alternative.

How about asking around? Especially to non-technical people, with and without an explanation about the implication of such a choice. They may surprise us.