Good point.

I consider the bill horrible. Netflix accounts for 25% of all internet usage in America. If you add in Facebook, Youtube, gaming online, streaming services and you realize that Netflix, Alphabet (parent company of Youtube) Facebook Amazon and Microsoft account for more than 60 percent of all data usage in the US.

So why should 4 massive companies, (other than Netflix, MS, FB, Amazon and AB are 4 of the 5 largest companies in the world) be allowed to pay the same price and get guaranteed same delivery of data as everybody else combined?

This is not true for anything else in the life. If you own 5 casinos you pay to run the electricity of 5 casinos, you don't get to pay the same price as a single-family home. You pay more for water if you water a golf course everyday, too.

If a delivery trucking company puts a fleet of 1,000 trucks on a toll highway everyday, each truck pays a toll for its usage. The truck company does not get to pay the same low fee as a single passenger car using the roadway once a day for all 1,000 trucks.

This is the same for consumers, if you want faster internet speeds and more data you pay for it.

The Net Neutrality bill was never intended to keep the internet open, it was designed explicitly for the government to take control of its distribution.

The truth is this (Alphabet, once known as Google) decided to get into the ISP game, but pulled out earlier this year when they realized how expensive it is and how much work it takes to build and maintain a network. So they came to the conclusion that instead of building their own, they would piggyback for free off the work of others by using government regulation to ensure they could use unlimited amounts of network data at the same price and delivery speed as a single grandma who sends 3 e-mails a week. Great deal for Google, lousy for everybody else.

As for companies like Google paying more, what if they Government decided that internet search should have search neutrality. That means Google could no longer display paid ads at the top of searches or alongside any searches because all search should be neutral and lead to the best searched results for the most free and open information flow. Oh look, with one regulation I just put Google out of business. I am fairly sure Google would fight search neutrality. Especially as they have also admitted they manually alter search results to fit their political agenda - maybe we should have a search neutrality act for that.

The gov decided to regulate landline phones and for 80 years everybody was stuck with crappy AT&T. But then cell phones and the internet moved faster than government could F-ck it up and now you have multiple cell/mobile carriers competing for business in almost every single market. The private sector has worked so well on this that more than half of all Americans under the age of 40 don't have a landline phone at all.

The internet went from ISPs like Compuserve, Prodigy and AOL offering 14.4 dial-up service paid by the minute to high-speed braodband, unlimited data plans in which consumers stream movies, shows, play games and download games and music in less than 20 years. With no Title II utility crap, you have Telcos and Cable companies competing in the same market and they are expanding into each others markets, too.

If the internet wasn't actually open and people weren't able to access the content they wanted cable companies and cable TV programmers would be ecstatic. Cable cutting is seriously taking it to companies because everybody is using the internet now. Brick and mortar stores have been kicked around by online shopping. You can get free Wi-Fi almost everywhere you go now. More people have access to the internet in this world than clean water, but we really needed a Net Neutrality act. More people in Flint, Michigan have access to the internet from private business than clean water from the gov.

Government is a necessary evil. But it should exceptionally limited.

After all, if the gov is so good at managing everything why doesn't everybody move into government housing instead of private home ownership (the projects are f-cking great!), how can companies like DHL, UPS and FedEx survive against the USPS if the gov was so amazingly well run? (Even though the post office is one of the best run divisions of the gov.) Why do so many people send their kids to private schools when we have public schools?

Edit: One final example, if the internet didn't have such free flow of information Newspapers would still be thriving instead of shuttering and dying. How many stories have been buried (Harvey Weinstein) that would never have come to light. It is a fact more information is being spread to more people than ever before, and the old gatekeepers have realized this, too and have done everything in their power to create gov regulations to reign it back in.

Take this forum as an example, now people like us can communicate with each other from all over the world. No Net Neutrality Act ever created this situation or defended it. Isn't amazing how often you come across people on the ground in a location from another part of the world thousands of miles away and the their accounts are so much different than the media propaganda. Isn't it amazing that a South Korean can go Gangnam Style and it be a hit in US and most watched YouTube video ever when the flow of information has been so restricted - sarcasm.

Sorry I have only a minute to reply now as they are going to show a movie on TV now I want to see (Stephen King's "The Dark Half"), but just a couple of comments/questions:

What is this "price" you are talking about? I wasn't aware the companies running services on the internet have to pay someone something.

Since we have been talking about internet operators throttling the speeds of competing internet services who don't pay up extra price to them, I presume you mean that those companies are paying, or should be paying, the internet operators (telecom companies etc.) something so that the customers of those telecom operators are able to receive the data.

If that is true, should those services then be paying up to all internet operators all over the world? Should GOG.com pay too to e.g. to the Finnish internet/telecom operator that provides me the internet connection?

And I thought it is us, the end users, who are paying for the internet connection, not the internet service companies like GOG.com or Netflix. If the telecom companies feel their expenses are becoming too high due to the increased traffic, then they either have to just charge us, the end users, more, or limit our internet usage (e.g. monthly caps). Luckily here in Finland the competition between telecom operators is so high that they don't have data caps even for mobile internet, let alone fixed. It is "all you can eat" for the same monthly price.

The point here was that these telecom operators are not allowed to favor e.g. their own competing services, to give them an advantage over e.g. GOG.com or Netflix, by either slowing down their competitors, or making them more expensive (than their own competing services) with the extra fees.

Anyway, now to see The Dark Half. Maybe I will reply to rest of your message later, or not.

The price I refer to is that an ISP is barred from charging a company like Netflix more money if they used more capacity or throttling them to increase speed for other customers using less data. Would this cost eventually be passed to consumers in an increase in Netflix price - yes. But if you stream a ton of content then you should pay for it. If more data is trying to be transmitted than can be handled you get buffering and a slow connection. But why should people only reading a web story or sending emails have to wait so long to open a simple web page so somebody can stream 2 HD movies at the same time?

As for your GoG question:

As it is right now in the US, Netflix charges more for UHD 4K programming than 1080p, yet NN means all the data is transmitted at the same price and same rate (in this case they don't pay anything). So Netflix is just ripping people off as the UHD 4K data is sent at the same speed and price across ISPs as their 1080p content. It is just pure profit for Netflix even though it puts more strain and uses more resources than 1080p. Now you see why Netflix likes NN so much. They advertise UHD 4K and sell it a higher price point, but their cost remains the same - a great deal for them.

IBD has a great piece going over all the reasons and facts why NN was BS from the start and can be read Here.

Edit: To be clear on price - A consumer pays X amount for Y speed/Data usage of internet and then uses the internet as they see fit. Netflix doesn't pay to have its content or services be used by the ISP. NN in fact bars it, But what if an ISP says, your product is using 25 percent of our available resources and that 25 percent is being used by only 5-10 percent of our customers, to keep the other 90-95 percent happy we have to scale back your priority during busy times or you have to pay a priority delivery fee to skip the traffic jam. Is this bad?

I gotta say it's really weird to hear companies like Google, Microsoft and Netflix being presented as the bad guy that the loss of Net Neutrality will help us treat more fairly.

and it's really weird that you think the Internet is the major factor in the sex scandal stuff. I mean, it probably has been an influence, informing and broadening the judgement of those involved. that's been a passive effect over time, and the open Internet's use as a universal tool is evident in this. but directly? the scandal has been far more influenced by social change involving acceptable standards, proliferation of equal rights, stability and security of station despite factors like gender. the Internet has definitely helped bring about these changes but it was not directly responsible for the sex scandal revelations.

I never understood this willingness to vilify government but give industry a pass. it's so strange.

I mean, in this perfect world you're presenting, there's nothing to stop my christmas packages arriving next september, beat to hell, because they shipped from Michigan and not California. nothing to stop my free wifi being unusable because it was discovered it's going over Jack-in-the-Box and not McDonald's. nothing to stop my gog games taking days to download because it was discovered they're not Steam.

Yes.
You, as the ISP, is offering 100 people 8MB/s lines. That means your infrastructure should support 800MB/s traffic consistently.
I, as a user, saturate said 8MB/s I pay for 24/7 (I'm downloading my games over and over again). The other 99 users only use 1MB/s for 2 hours every day (quick email check before leaving for work and when they get back home).
My weekly bandwidth usage is about 5TB while the other 99 users also use a total of ~5TB. So one single user is responsible for 50% of the ISP's traffic.
Do I negatively impact the other users? Not if the ISP is doing a proper job of not allocating more resources than they have. If the ISP then says "Hey, our customers only use 10 TB of data weekly and our infrastructure can support 480TB, let's get more customers", then the extra customers will not be getting what they should. Why? Because the ISP overbooks their lines, assuming people will not be using them.

If you are selling me internet access, I expect that I will be able to fully use my line all the time, no matter who else is using your lines. If you can't support every user fully using their line, you (the ISP) should either lose a few customers or improve your lines. Do not bank on people not using what they paid for unless you are willing to risk the fallout of people actually doing so and you having to drag them out.

I don't know if you are trying to muddle it on purpose or if you are just confused, but you seem a bit mixed up about who are the customers of the telecom companies providing Internet access to end-users. It is people like you and me using their internet connection to access different services on the internet, not the companies providing those services (other than the company who is providing Netflix etc. their internet connectivity).

If the telecom companies feel we customers are overusing their internet connections in order to watch Netflix 4K content and such, then they should charge us for that use, not Netflix. If the telecom companies feel that e.g. a flat monthly price doesn't cut it, then they should either use data caps or even "charge per megabyte" pricing. That would lead us to using Netflix 4K content and such less.

You also didn't answer me are these Internet service companies supposed to pay all telecom companies all around the world? Here in Finland I use two telecom companies to access internet services, DNA and Telia, so should all internet service companies around the world pay up also to them?

To use the road analogy, let's say someone builds a private motorway with tolls, so everyone who uses the road has to pay. Those who use it more often, need to pay more times, regardless of where they are going. Simple.

Your odd suggestion seems to be that on top of that, the road owner company should be allowed to charge all companies (pizza parlors, grocery stores etc.) who are not even on that road, but to which people are driving using that road. That's not how it works, people pay up the toll regardless of their destination beyond the road. You don't pay a higher toll, or get an artificial speed limit on your car, just because you are driving to the big grocery store and not the small pizza parlor.

In reality, it has nothing to do with "those services that are used the most paying the most", but it has everything to do with the telecom companies getting too much leverage to push their own competing internet services to their customers. It is only a positive thing that the powers that be fight it so that the telecom companies, who in many parts of the US are apparently in a monopoly situation, don't easily get a monopoly for their internet services as well.

It is only a healthy approach that the companies who are providing internet access to end-users are not allowed to favor some (their own) commercial services over other commercial services. This breeds innovation and competition, monopoly curbs it.

And that can be achieved already by the telecom company charging me for the over-usage of my internet connection, not the internet service companies around the world that I might or might not use.

I personally don't even have a Netflix subscription, but probably my biggest amount of data usage come from downloading (and updating) game installers from GOG.com, then playing Team Fortress 2 on Steam, and then watching Youtube videos, in that order.

For some reason I didn't see you answering my GOG question at all. I am accessing GOG.com servers from Finland using two different Finnish telecom operators, and I consider myself a heavy user (I have over 1400 games in GOG, and have downloaded all of them, plus from time to time download any updated installers which sometimes can be e.g. 30-50 gigabytes of data in one swoop).

So how much should GOG pay up to these two Finnish telecom operators that provide me the internet access, because of my heavy usage of GOG services? How about some other GOG user in Guatemala, and another in Cambodia, should GOG pay up also the their local telecom operators?

No, just no. End suggesting such overly silly "solutions" to problems that don't exist. If my telecom operators feel I am overusing my internet services (regardless of whether it is due to GOG, or Netflix, or whatever), then they should charge me more, put monthly data caps on me, or throttle my whole internet connection, not only towards GOG (or Netflix).

In order to provide services through the internet they do need a contract with an ISP, so of course they have to pay for that.

I am not an expert on this, but in general the home users are offered asynchronous connections where the download speeds are far greater than the upload speeds, while the companies need synchronous connection between their offices and that line may even be kept totally off the public internet. Then the companies providing streaming services will need far more upload bandwidth than other companies and unless I am totally mistaken, companies may need to pay for the amount of data being sent from them or a fixed price that depends on the selected bandwidth that they can't exceed unless they upgrade their plan with the ISP. As I understand it, the former option is how the ISPs themselves settle with each other how the costs of maintaining the infrastructure are divided.

So again, unless I am totally off here, Netflix already has to pay to it's ISP according to the amount of data that is being streamed, taking away net neutrality would only allow other ISPs to essentially turn a valve almost shut for various types of traffic unless Netflix or the home users pay them protection money to "ensure" that the valve stays open.

ISPs are free to increase their prices if they can't otherwise provide the services they are advertising, but they must allow their customers to practically do whatever they please within the bandwidth limits they payed for. Practically, as in breaking the law might allow some exceptions to limit harm, but in such cases the ISPs would be required to put a stop to the threat, not let it continue if the culprit agrees to pay them more money to turn a blind eye to their activities.

True, I covered that in the later message, the one just before your message.

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/net_neutrality_again/post52

The discussion here was that the telecom operators who provide internet access to the end users, should receive payments as well from internet service runners. Sorry I didn't point out that I am talking about them specifically.

Note: to my knowledge Netflix IS paying up to certain big operators, but they are (or at least were) doing so so that those operators would apparently cache their data, so that when you watch some popular Netflix video, it doesn't necessarily come all the way from Netflix servers, but from your ISP's cache. (Or that is how I understood it to work.) So in essence those ISPs would be helping Netflix, lowering their bandwidth requirements (and make sure those ISPs' customers get Netflix with good quality).

That, however, is a different thing to what we are talking about here, ie. ISPs specifically throttling down e.g. Netflix data either in order to push their own similar services, or to coerce money from big internet services.

Yes, Netflix has to pay to its own ISP of course, but not to the end-users' (Netflix' customers) ISPs. AFAIK the latter is what we have been talking about here, not what kind of plan Netflix has with some telecom company providing Netflix the internet connectivity.

It has nothing to do with net neutrality unless you are suggesting that ISP gives Netflix a worse connection than to Netflix' competitors. If that was the case, then Netflix could probably just change to another telecom company to handle its business.

I am unsure what you mean by that. Many internet operators around the world have e.g. monthly data caps in place, and I don't consider it unthinkable that some would even charge per megabyte. So in those cases you certainly can't download and upload as much as you want, what your internet speed makes possible.

As for operators with flat pricing, they just have to come up with a flat price that they still make profit. That is their problem.

I was trying to clarify how the claims of big content providers pushing all that data supposedly for free trough the poor ISPs were false and then continued to give my take on how taking away the net neutrality would essentially allow the ISPs to cripple content providers and it's own customers if they don't pay them protection money. Netflix may be able to change it's ISP, but many of it's potential subscribers may not be that lucky.