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Author Topic:   Net Neutrality --- For Once, Everyone Wins
Rrhain
Member
Posts: 6351
From: San Diego, CA, USA
Joined: 05-03-2003


Message 65 of 73 (825956)
12-19-2017 8:26 PM
Reply to: Message 61 by Percy
12-18-2017 3:36 PM


Percy writes:
quote:
But most articles you read about net neutrality stress that ISPs will now be able to charge companies like Netflix more for streaming movies. I don't see how that's possible, because ISPs aren't currently charging Netflix anything for streaming movies.
That's because we have some concept of net neutrality such that Comcast cannot stop traffic from Netflix going to a Comcast customer.
As we have seen, Comcast did throttle the speed of customers accessing Netflix over Comcast lines. They can make watching Netflix so crappy that you decide to switch over to Comcast's competing service, but they didn't stop you from reaching Netflix at all.
And as we saw when smartphones were first emerging on the scene and as we can see in Indonesia right now, your service provider can simply block your access to those sites. If I recall correctly, Verizon routinely disallowed the use of certain apps on their phones, regardless of provider, because they provided a similar app and thus you weren't allowed to use the competition's. In Indonesia, the ISP blocks access to Netflix specifically because they have their own streaming video service and you aren't allowed to use the competition.
So what Comcast can do is tell Netflix, "Pay us or you won't have these customers." And since broadband access is monopolized (thanks to conservative efforts and direct action by the cable companies to specifically carve up the nation into markets so that they won't compete against each other), those customers won't have any way to access Netflix unless and until Netflix coughs up the money.
Netflix may have sufficient resources to hook into the major backbones of the Internet more directly, but they still require the ISP to provide the last mile connection.
And then, while they're at it, they'll turn to the customer and say, "If you want to see Netflix, you'll have to pay us for faster access."

Rrhain

Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

Minds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can use mine.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 61 by Percy, posted 12-18-2017 3:36 PM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 69 by Percy, posted 12-20-2017 7:55 AM Rrhain has not replied

  
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