E.g, will the repeal of NN only affect large media companies like Netflix / Youtube, or will it impact the web at large, and limit the distribution of smaller, non-media related startups?
It would be the death knell for internet innovation if ISPs stop providing customers with equal access to the entire internet. How can you create a startup competing with YouTube, if most people have a package that gives YouTube faster internet speeds?
You might also have deals where say, Disney has an agreement with Comcast to give it's streaming service(or Comcasts own streaming service) the highest speeds at low costs while not giving Netflix(or other streamings sites) the same priority. That would mean over time the largest corporation wins, competition is dead and progress is severely hampered.
(I'm still not in support of repealing net neutrality, obviously)
In this scenario, is it only competitors of Facebook/Youtube/Netflix that would be slowed down, or would all websites / blogs / other startup sites also slow down?
They'll also ask money from retail customers. You want Google fast? Buy the Search monthly package on top of the standard internet subscription. Etc.
No they don't. They could achieve much the same impact by slowing down only traffic that appears to be video or audio, e.g. by allowing everything through at full speed, until a customer has transferred more than, say 10MB, from a particular IP address over a one hour period.
This wouldn't impact blogs or most corporate brochure sites, but would still have negative effects for many startups.
What I'd like to understand, though, is: what if an ISP provides customers with more reliable connectivity to HBO (due to payment of a fee), than they provide to an equivalent Hindi-language broadcaster (because they can't afford or don't want to pay such a fee)?
Can the latter's customers claim that the ISP is discriminating against them?
By creating packaged services, internet access (though not "neutral" access to all parts of the internet equally) could become cheaper for a lot of people. FB could choose (they do this, notably in low income countries) to pay the ISP costs so their users can use the service for free. Google could do the same.
Access to the internet could use the same economic levers that exist widely on the internet, which have a tendency to free, and to expansive participation.
The likes of Google & FB stand to benefit most from (for example) connecting the last 50% in low income countries. They have the resources to pay for it. Letting them will (at the margin) mean more access for more people. It's hard to argue that for those people, theoretical net neutrality is worth more than net access.
^I'm on the other side of this position. But, I think it's hard to justify it on "normal" grounds, by analogy to other industries or abstract legal/legislative principles. Effectively, net neutrality means limiting the competitive scope of one part of the internet to enrich the comptetitive dynamics of another part. In practice, I think this is a really good thing. But it's hard to put that into legislatively acceptable terms, which are supposed to be based on general principles.
You need to accept a judgemnt call. The ISPs' job is less important, on the margin. The innovative potential of (for example) the web is enourmous in comparison. ISPs are infrastructure businesses, naturally oligopolistic and with a tendency towards corporate or state cronyism. The web is a platform where you can actually compete for a patch without a global-scale war chest. We have lots of examples of winners that won because they were good, even though they had few resources.
All that said, the internet itself is becoming so centralized that the argument is getting muddied.
If they stand to gain from more people getting on the internet, they can pay for it right now, without scrapping net neutrality.
The only reason to scrap net neutrality first is to make it possible for incumbents to lock people into their service so new disruptors can't challenge them.
People against net neutrality are either paid or have an extremely naive view of what a "free market" is.
In most countries, it wouldn't matter too much as the market forces could in effect nearly cause them to self-regulate.
That said the current state of the internet in the USA is a different story. Regions are locked in with legislation making micro monopolies, This is especially true with apartment complexes. There are laws that prevent competition. local governments have won and lost elections based around the issue of allowing for more competition with the current ISP's. Meanwhile, some of the smallest towns feel almost forced into needing to create their own, as they aren't receiving proper coverage from the larger companies, not in cell towers or landlines.
There have already been examples of sites being throttled to be nearly useless, and some sites blocked, other sites are intentionally sped up to be misleading(speedtest.net vs fast.com - they don't match up because speedtest is usually boosted to mislead how fast your internet is).
Cell providers have done things like block payment apps, instead only supporting a proprietary payment app which I believe is a great example of how competition can and would be stifled.
I believe I heard that for a time the ISP's slowed down Netflix until Netflix paid them off.
So to conclude, it would be the slow erosion of freedom of speech, a swift decline in innovation, prices for services like Netflix would rise, and if we are lucky they would only nickel and dime us more (think microtransactions) instead of blocking out entire chunks of the internet. The USA would lose its dominance technologically, investment in internet companies would slow, the best minds would hesitate to move here, ones we already have would think about leaving, Europe and Canada would have a chance to shine.
The only good that would come from it is large ISP's make more money, and Republicans would feel like they have a win.
Given that the US has never really had net neutrality, why hasn't this scenario already come to pass?
Most attempts at creating laws were overturned that's true, except most recently in 2016 the DC circuit court affirmed the open internet rules https://www.publicknowledge.org/documents/dc-circuit-open-in... which was upheld and as of now that's still on the books.
Why didn't it happen sooner though is a good question, I think competition factors in as the ISP's were never as consolidated as they are now. When we used 56k modems there were a lot of ISP's, with DSL less but still a lot, now with cable and fiber there is only a handful. Part of why it didn't happen when we used DSL and before was because DSL and before was treated with the same laws as phone lines, so it functioned rather similar to ISP's being title2 now. Most of these problems began with the decision in 2002 http://transition.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Cable/News_Releases/2002/n... where cable internet was regulated differently after that decision boundaries started being pushed, net neutrality laws were brought up and then struck down until finally ISP's were reclassified into title2.
It irks me whenever people say this, because technically net neutrality (As defined here [1]) has never fully existed in the US. In the US there is no law, and there never has been a law, mandating net neutrality. The government can't repeal net neutrality because there's no law to repeal in the first place. Using 'repeal' is the wrong word here, and really muddles the issue.
[0]: https://www.vodafone.de/privat/service/vodafone-pass.html
But then again: Does this kind of marketing touch the _core_ problem of net neutrality? You could argue that--as long as the user's high-speed data is intact--all of these services operate at the same speed.
Of course, this is an incentive to users to choose Spotify or WhatsApp over some competitor, but you could argue that _because_ they're giving you the same speed for everything as long as you still have data, it's not as bad as other approaches (not that I think it's a good thing).
Then again, it probably is a really slippery slope.
It will kill the startup, because you'll need the cash to take on the established players.
It will kill off blogging and independent publishing on the web because most sites will be inaccessible to most consumers.
In short, it will turn the Internet into a closed wall system controlled by those with the money, much like network television is.
And of course, Charter only takes product feeds in JSON, AT&T only tab-delimited, Comcast only XML, Verizon only CSV. It’ll be great for ChannelAdvisor and curtains for anyone who can’t afford their costly services.
You’ll still need that Shopify account to reach customers on smaller ISPs.
In many places, having a data plan is not affordable. It might cost $10 per month, but it's a lot since most people in the developing world make like $200 per month.
So, companies like Facebook, WhatsApp, etc, offer SIM cards that have free data for their services. Customers get a free service, and they get the customer.
The biggest issue I see there is, it helps big companies get bigger, and there's no real way to for small companies to get in on these kinds of deals.
I work for a non profit developing video communication solutions tailored to the specific needs of the Signed Language communities. For example, audio is not necessary, perhaps even detrimental because Deaf people don't realise problems with audio like feedback or embarassing noises during a call. Or degradation on bad connectivity. This is subtle. Signed Language communication needs a constant framerate to prevent jerkiness of the expressions. Just reduce image quality instead! Ugly block artifacts don't impede understandability.
In other words: ISPs zero rating WhatsApp is blatant discrimination of Signed Language communities. This also concerns phone relays and other services.
America without net neutrality is like AOL, and the rest of the world will be what the internet outside of AOL was.