[spindritf]

Is it about net neutrality ("all packets were created equal") or is it about censorship (by which I mean government actions like court orders to block sites and filters)? Or is it somehow about both?

Why is it the DEATH OF THE INTERNET AS WE KNOW IT when it's a new regulation that doesn't go as far as they want in the net neutrality direction? And all they want are some adjustments?

The idea of banning specialised services functionally identical to those on the Internet means banning all specialised services because you can provide arbitrary services over the Internet. Including TV and telephone which is what cable providers here usually sell in addition to Internet access.

Honestly, I don't really understand the issue at hand. Is there a concise, less agitating explanation somewhere?

[kolme]

I think you're taking this too lightly, to be honest.

That's exactly the point of the Internet: it offers arbitrary services. Banning stuff because it could compete with other services you offer is opening the door to the internet being crippled on all ISPs.

That's seriously terrifying.

[spindritf]

That's my complaint about this site: who's banning what? I just checked, VoIP works on the same coax that my ISP uses to provide telephone services.

[pdpi]

It's increasingly the case that internet, tv and telephone services are provided by a single company over a single set of infrastructure. Because those service providers have a vested interest to protect the commercial viability of their own offerings (specifically, the TV and telephone packages), there is an incentive to limit the internet service's viability as a replacement for TV and telephone services. Such limitations allow ISPs to engage in text-book antic-competitive behaviour by directly hindering their competitors, and, arguably, the "specialised services" language would allow them to do just that by treating competitors as a specialised service, and differentiating the service conditions (e.g. by throttling the bandwidth offered).

Additionally, using the specialised service language, services like, say, Youtube, Facebook, Netflix or iTunes can pay ISPs to be treated as a a specialised service, offering a better-than-standard experience (lifted traffic limits, increased bandwidth). Such a treatment is sure to be pretty damn expensive, and raises a very tall hurdle that new entrants in those markets must jump if they want to compete with the incumbents on even ground. This is, once again, highly anti-competitive.

[icebraining]

There's also an incentive - competition - to provide services that people actually want over their own offerings. For example, here in Portugal, mobile provider(s?) are offering unlimited mobile data for services that compete with SMS, like WhatsApp, Viber, Facebook Messenger, Skype, etc.

Personally, I'm not ideologically opposed to net neutrality legislation, but I'd rather identify why is competition not preventing ISPs from violating it, and what can be done to strengthen it. I'm getting somewhat tired of laws that are just trying to fix the problems created by other laws, like those which grant privileges to certain economic groups (not that I'm saying this is the case).

[Sami_Lehtinen]

Yes, but if you make long distance calls using VoIP, and aren't paying premium rate, then they want to block those calls. Forcing you to make traditional calls which are of course lot more expensive. That is exactly what this is about.

[pasbesoin]

As a starting point, if and as these services are becoming as necessary as other "utilities", and inasmuch as providers are screaming about and claiming issues of "expense" and revenue and whatall...

Let's, as we do for other utilities (at least, in my country), make them lay it out on the table.

Open your books. What are the real revenues and expenses.

We've all (again, in my country) watched our bills rise and rise, while some of us at least read about consistent, continuing drops in the price of backhaul/trunk capacity, as just one example of what we perceive as a fairly apparent dichotomy.

The practice to this point, has been that the consumer pays for access to those trunks, and hosts pay for their access, and the companies involved live off of that. Now, they want to collect collect twice? They want to pick and choose and charge "premiums" to "prioritize"?

Where is the basis for any of this, in actual, cold, hard numbers? Until this is presented, I'm not even willing to have the conversation.

AND... for one, I don't believe it actually exists -- or need exist. It is varying shades of what I will qualify on the farther end as extortion. It is not of necessity, it is of convenience and greed on the part of those who increasingly seek to hold the reins ever more firmly and exclusively, now that "the Internet" is big business and not merely "some geeky corner".

Finally, as varying flavors of "expert" in this field and topic, we carry I think some societal obligation as well as personal and professional interest, in seeing that this doesn't happen.

Many of our own lives and careers have been substantially enriched and enhanced by the relatively open digital ecosphere we have experienced.

When the same old... "bullies", frankly, show up to try to dominate it for their own interest and gain. It's up to us to keep it out of their hands, and to ensure that the next generation of technology is yet more resistant to that "same old same old".

This is not about shirking responsibility -- and there are responsibilities involved, serious ones including legitimate needs and approaches to e.g. security.

It is about properly identifying it, amidst a clamour of often disingenuous self-interest. And identifying proper, effective, and practical approaches. About empowering, once again, the participants and community themselves. As I see it.

[TausAmmer]

Profit dictates what you can and can not do. And profit it nr.1 priority.

[ronaldx]

And therefore you should vote also with your money.

Avoid companies that threaten net neutrality.

[w-ll]

Kinda hard when you have 1 ISP in town.

[icebraining]

Where in the EU does that happen?