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vmarsy

That's a good question, the problem is what if your only available ISP makes you this hypothetical deal:

For $59.99 a month:

- Get Facebook, Google, Netflix at 100 Mbps max.

- Any other traffic is limited to 5 Mbps max.

Watching Hulu, or Amazon Video for instance would be limited at 5 Mbps max.

But in that case your own VPN would also fall in the second category, so even if you tried to watch Hulu via VPN, you'd still get only 5 Mbps max. (And you'd be then stupid to watch Netflix through your VPN since it would also be at 5 Mbps max instead of 100 Mbps max.)

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What you describe is already being done by the likes of T-Mobile and other wireless carriers such as their BingeOn program, to little fanfare.

The average consumer unfortunately has little to care about net neutrality. But in the long term it will hurt the tech economy as they have all risen from net neutrality.

T-Mobile's BingeOn is more of zero-rating than penalizing the speed/accessibility of non-approved "partners", but IMHO it's still a violation of the principle of Net Neutrality.

> T-Mobile's BingeOn is more of zero-rating than penalizing the speed/accessibility of non-approved "partners",

Erm ... so, if users want to access non-approved "partners", that's way more expensive ... but that does not affect accessibility? If you really think that, you simply fell for their psychological trick. It's simply irrelevant whether the accessibility is limited technically or economically, as one is always convertible into the other (if they limited access technically, you could still restore access by offering them enough money).

BingeOn is kind of a problem, but it's significantly better in a couple ways.

First, the free data is slower than what you get normally. Second, the program is supposedly open for anyone to join.

If BingeOn was the worst impingement on net neutrality, we'd be in a pretty good place.

> Second, the program is supposedly open for anyone to join.

Except it (a) isn't, and (b) even if it theoretically were, the model of having to follow the rules of every ISP on the planet to fall under their respective zero-rating plan, or even just the overhead of coordinating with them doesn't scale, and thus is inherently only an option for large companies. Being accessible globally via IP is a matter of renting a small virtual server for a few bucks a month. Being zero-rated by thousands of ISPs is a major undertaking.

Yeah, I know, but imagine if it was fully automated on both ends. The platonic ideal of letting all medium-bitrate video be cheaper is okay or at least not awful.

It would still be awful, because it would disadvantage other forms of content that have the same bandwidth needs but are not video, and also anything that doesn't have "both ends".

And also, obviously, that ideal is completely unrealistic: Either the ISP gets to look into the video stream to verify that it is indeed video, which would be awful, or what you in effect end up with is a flat rate for "medium bit rate connections", which would be fine, but absolutely not what any of those ISPs want.

> The average consumer unfortunately has little to care about net neutrality.

That's simply not true. BingeOn is hurting the consumer. T-Mobile could just as well simply add x GB of traffic per month to their plans that you could use with any services you want, that would result in the same costs for them, and avoid the discrimination. But instead they manipulate their customers into assuming incorrectly that BingeOn is somehow a free gift from T-Mobile, to get them to form an opinion that is against their own interest. It's nothing but deception.

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