The FCC might be about to allow Internet providers to charge more for higher data flow, therefore gutting net neutrality. Interestingly, the European Parliament has just voted to enforce net neutrality in the future, which shows that Europe is still more liberal than the United States, so Europe still protects citizens rather than corporations. The changes feared to be about to come from the FCC would end up increasing fees for customers by a large amount, so the American goverment is more conservative than the Europeans, so protects businesses when they gouge ordinary citizens. http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27141121
And it's all a load of BS. Companies have been forced to be net neutral for years in data transmissions, yet recently they've been allowed to put the squeeze on Netflix in particular by forcing them to pay providers like Verizon or Comcast for the privilege of their signals remaining at usable levels over those companies' networks to the customer. So they slow things down, force Netflix to pay them directly, then turn the juice back up. It's corporate thuggery and has been illegal until lately. Worse than that, nobody has mentioned GOOGLE!! Nobody is squeezing Google who has arguably the most intensive bandwidth-eating service on the planet via YouTube. Not one provider has threatened them with slowing down their service unless they pay up...probably because they can't get away with it against Google. This is just bad all around and we consumers will pick up the tab via increased operating costs these companies have to endure by being choked by the ISPs.
Yes, you are right. Since the Reagan changes, the wealthy have been able to increase their share of the aggregate income in the United States by 10 percentage points, from about 40% of aggregate income to about 50%. That is one of the reasons that we now have more than 500 billionaires. The money came out of the incomes of the poor and lower middle class. Now, I suppose the wealthy want another 10% so they would have 60% of the entire aggregate income in America, or more. They may not have formulated in their thinking an exact percentage, but the amount that they would like to increase their own incomes would lead to something like that or more. I don't know how far they can go before the average American becomes furious and violent. If the wealthy get themselves up to 70% of the total aggregate income, would that reach the violence point? Or would the wealthy have to get up to paying themselves 80% of the total aggregate income in the United States?
The merger of Comcast and TWC will reduce the need for peering agreements and should take out the choke-point as data moves across different networks. Gogglenet handles google traffic and I would assume has a lot of caching built into it to make it more difficult to throttle them even if they tried without simultaneously throttling the provider's entire network. That said, companies have been accused of trying to throttle youtube, but it is usually a technical issue that ends up being the cause of the impression that is what is happening.
I've always felt that there is a bit of unrealistic optimism in all of this net neutrality stuff. While the idea of all types of content is treated the same is perfectly valid, the idea that all volumes of content can be is naive. Transmitting 10GB is always going to cost more than transmitting 10MB, especially multiplied by hundreds of thousands of customers. Someone needs to pay for that and I see no reason why that shouldn't be the customer. Some people seem to be of the impression that they should be able to watch streaming movies and download massive files while paying the same kind of fees as someone else just checking emails occasionally. The ISPs recognised this attitude and tried to hide the costs from customers with these behind the scenes deals. The obvious alternative is paying for internet by the byte (much like other services like electricity or phones) but I suspect that if this started hitting the vocal proponents of net neutrality in the pocket, it would suddenly become not such a red-line issue.
It shouldn't cost all that much more, but I don't have actual figures. More to the point, should customers have pay more so that CEOs can have compensation packages of hundreds of millions of dollars per year, and so forth? How much of the national aggregate income should each social class be receiving if America is going to be fair? Or put another way, what should the poorest American receive? These are questions which have no easy answer, and there are wide areas which can be debated. I myself just can't decide for everyone. However, I think one thing is clear. In order for our future civilization to be optimal, every single person needs to have full access to all knowledge and all entertainment.Thus, it is important that fees for Internet and related access should be something the poorest person in the United States should be able to easily afford. Various arrangements are possible. For example, poor individuals might be given as much of a subsidy as needed to pay the fees. Or perhaps everyone might pay 1% of their income for full access. A family with an income of $500 per month would therefore pay $5 per month, while a family with an income of ten million dollars per month would pay $100,000 per month for access.
I don't have actual figures either but I do have first hand access of scaling IT systems. There are economies of scale but costs (and technical limitations) can still quickly add up. That's a general issue not limited to ISPs. It brings me back to my comparison with other service industries. I see no reason to limit your principles to internet provision, indeed, there are a whole load of much more important things that would come first. I'm not convinced by all entertainment and I'm not convinced access to unlimited (or near unlimited) data volumes is necessary to fulfil that requirement (certainly not in the foreseeable future). Why only the USA? What about the poorest in the UK, China or Nigeria? Even in the US and other Western countries, we need to focus on getting the poorest houses and food before we're thinking of getting them internet access.
Europeans are more wiser,making it more accessible and affordable. business dealings and tradings are more effective in the internet
Agree with honestjoe 100%. People and businesses who stream and dl massive amounts of data should pay more. Some of the naysayers are looking at this wrong, does it sound any different if businesses will end up paying even more (they already pay more) and individual consumers less or more stable amounts? Because that's what the real upshot will be IMO.
Entertainment imparts knowledge also, and often knowledge which supplements formal academic knowledge. Let us look at paintings, for example. Paintings show what human perceptual capacities are, and that is useful knowledge indeed. Remember that I said OPTIMAL civilization. If humanity just wants to get by and muddle through, then it's not necessary for everyone to have full access. However, with full access, everyone will be able to find things that make his or her contributions to civilization better. I always include the poor of other nations in what I would like to see. This particular discussion happens to be about American policy and the problems with it. If we can think up a solution for America, other nations will be able to use the solution also. We might also be able to expand a solution to include other economic sectors.
