[SilasX]

Sorry, I edited it to indicate that those were things that may or may not constitute an NN violation.

>all of those are things that are prevented by the presence of net neutrality.

How is 2)? If you're penalized by total usage [A], irrespective of source or type, that seems pretty neutral. Whether it's a good policy in general is debatable, of course.

(That's another problem with the debate: that "NN violation" is casually equated with "imprudent policy". If an ISP throttles everyone to 1 KB/s, then, yeah, that's a jerk move, but it's definitely content- and source-neutral.)

>If ISPs could prefer some traffic over others, they could let do any of the things that you suggest, enabling censorship.

That doesn't follow. Let's say they lay down some new expensive pipe for some link in their network, on top of what they already have, and then allow anyone to pay for access to the faster pipe. Data continues to get through at the pre-existing speed if you don't pay. How is anyone being censored?

ANd if you find that objectionable, how is that any worse than toll roads or even e.g. convenience stores, where you pay more in order to have a shorter checkout time.

[A] In this context, I have in mind something like "charging more for users who download more than X bytes, weighted by time of usage" or "slightly reallocating the pipe in favor of lighter users at times of peak usage".

[sythe2o0]

It absolutely follows.

> 1) Throttling sites the ISP doesn't like

Is the definition of censorship. ISPs could just choose to not let anybody access their competitors' websites, for example.

You're correct that data caps don't fall under this, however.

[SilasX]

>> 1) Throttling sites the ISP doesn't like

>Is the definition of censorship. ISPs could just choose to not let anybody access their competitors' websites, for example.

You're changing the example -- the scenario was allowing transmitters to opt to pay for the faster link. Packets would still get through at the same speed as e.g. today. It's not blocking them wholesale. At most, it's favoritism, and downloaders still get the data at a reasonable speed as under the pre-upgrade terms.

And the example involved a simple "did you pay?" structure, which is otherwise neutral. It would be a different story if favored sites got the fast pipe without paying, or if only some favored sites were allowed to buy the fast hop at all. But this example doesn't have that.

Prudent policy or not, I don't see how that comes close to censorship.

Do you say it's "censorship" when an activist wants to drive to other activists' houses to plan subversive activities, since it takes longer when you don't use the toll roads?

[sythe2o0]

I can't be changing the example if I'm quoting you.

I am not discussing the presence of fast lanes right now, which have their own problems. I'm talking about the literal prevention of accessing specific data because your ISP decides you aren't allowed to access it.

Without net neutrality, if my ISP sees I'm trying to access a political site that they don't like, they could just make half of all those requests fail. If they like a particular political candidate for office in my area, then they can prevent me from accessing all the other candidate's sites or reading a news story about a positive thing the other candidate did.

This is absolutely enabling censorship and yes we are discussing different examples but I do not need to demonstrate how your example is censorship when another example (that you said was a possibility!) does, if I am trying to demonstrate how this enables censorship. This is not a case of (All things prevented by net neutrality) but (There exists a thing prevented by net neutrality) that enables censorship.

[SilasX]

I'm sorry -- this no longer feels like a productive discussion. I described two scenarios: a) one where the ISP deliberately throttles sites with views it dislikes, and b) another where everyone gets the normal speed but some may pay more for faster.

You claimed that any non-neutrality would permit a). I disagreed and gave an example of someone violating neutrality by doing b), where all views are still transmitted, but some have the option to pay for faster transmission.

In every reply, you changed the example back to a) and insisted you were quoting me. That is not responsive, and I cannot justify further engagement unless your replies can more narrowly address the scenario that I was actually talking about.

[ryandrake]

a) is the only example anyone is seriously worried about. I don't think anyone in their right mind thinks that Comcast or Verizon will make special pipes that are faster than what we have today and keep the "slow" pipes to match the speed we have today. Obviously they will instead call what we have today the "fast" pipes and will throttle (or block) everything else. I would bet my life on it.