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This is so simple it doesn't need a metaphor; net neutrality means that ISPs would be obligated to treat all traffic equally. Throttling Netflix, Bittorrent, etc. under net neutrality would be illegal. What the comes down to is an argument on how much agency a company has to control their service if we've deemed their service "critical to the public good." This take is probably unpopular, but since I haven't seen many of these points and there are some very big players (IBM, Cisco, Juniper, Intel, Ercisson, etc.) that are against net neutrality with some of this reasoning, I'll fill you in some points that you probably won't hear: 1.) Routing traffic does not have equal cost. Peering, load balancing, and other aspects of routing are complex and carriers have people whose livelihoods revolve around handling these issues. A web request to a backwater site a couple hops away from you has nowhere near the load implications that streaming a 2 hour 4k movie has. 2.) Net neutrality is a bad fix for the underlying issue; local/state governments make it exceedingly easy to get a monopoly going with pole attach and franchising rules. Without this monopoly, neutral connections are a constant danger to the incumbent ISP. It is much easier to break into markets with lax regulation like Texas because of how their franchising permits work. 3.) Net neutrality is largely a power play by advertising/media companies that have no appreciable revenue other than pushing content. Facebook, Google, 4chan, etc. need advertising because they have very little value outside it. This obviously isn't an issue if you're Cisco, Intel, or the like, because they have a product other than you. |