Net Neutrality's Return Cracks The Internet In Half

[boztopia]

This was originally posted at Private Intelligence. You can comment here or there.

The news that net neutrality is tops on Congress' agenda was met with equal measures of support and disdain around the Internets.

Comments

[pyxiwulf]

I still don't get wat net nutrality is

That's the trouble

[boztopia]

It's such an arcane, wonky concept that people don't get it easily.

Here's the simplest way I define it: Net Neutrality means that you, Shelli, have the right to access any Web site or Web service through your Internet provider, and that it can't censor, block, or degrade that access in any way, unless you do something like send spam through the network or download illegal material.

So let's say you use Comcast. You want to look at Google's Web page for something. Comcast offers a similar service, and they don't want you using Google's, so suddenly Google's page takes forever to load and looks bad when it does. You get frustrated, and suddenly you get an e-mail from Comcast advertising the snazzy page they made up with the service you want.

With Net neutrality in place, you look at both pages equally, and you decide which one works best. It's a very market-based solution. ;)

Make sense?

Re: That's the trouble

[pyxiwulf]

it makes so much sense that I don't understand why it's even an issue. wouldn't that just be a "duh"?

As they say

[boztopia]

"From your mouth to God's ear," darlin'. ;)

Impassioned

[boztopia]

I can always tell when you're passionate about something, because the ALL CAPS come out. :)

You need to fix the HTML in this comment, but while I'm here, let me address this:

I don't understand the point you're trying to make here. You PAY to use the toll road, which is analogous to the faster service--so this is an argument AGAINST so-called "net neutrality", not FOR it.