You might remember a few months ago, when the current FCC chairman (who was, by the way, a former lobbyist for internet service providers) drafted some new rules governing the internet and posted them for review on the Agency's website.
Angry internet users crashed his server, and with good reason. The rules he was proposing would allow ISP's to create two tiers of service. A “fast lane” for priority companies, and a “slow lane” for everybody else. Of course, the ISP's themselves could determine who warranted being in the “priority” class.
Why This Matters
Let's say you're Netflix. You've got a vested interest in keeping your competition down, or preventing them from ever getting started. With nobody stealing market share from you, and no other competition in sight, you can do pretty well what you want. So you could maybe pay a hefty “extra fee” to the major ISP's in the US to ensure that you, and you alone among movie streaming services had “fast lane” access.
When some would-be competitor comes along to challenge you, they can't attract customers, because their videos choke on the slow lane bandwidth they've got available to them. In one stroke, this move ends 'Net Neutrality. It gives too much power to the ISP's and allows them to control and dictate who wins, and who loses on the internet.
That's bad. It's so painfully obviously bad that it's amazing we keep having to have this conversation. It was a terrible idea when it was first dreamed up, and it's a terrible idea today. The problem is, when you've got a former lobbyist for ISP's running the agency that writes the rules, regulations like that have a pretty good shot of being enacted anyway no matter who complains. That's why the angry 'netizens vented their frustration when the new proposals were put on the Agency's website for evaluation, and that's the reason we crashed their servers; it was a protest.
The proposed rules are little more than bribery. Even the guy who invented the internet says as much, and we should probably listen to a guy like Timothy Berners-Lee. If it wasn't for him, you wouldn't be here now, reading these words.
For as long as there has been a commercialized internet, one of the greatest features about it was the way that it leveled the playing field. Feisty little start up companies could go head to head with big, established companies because it was an inherently level playing field. That increased competition, and ensured that the best ideas rose to the top, and rose quickly.
If you start letting a small group of 'Godfathers' control who gets good access, and who gets mediocre access, you utterly destroy the level playing field. If you don't pay your protection money, you get burned to the ground. It's just impossible for you to compete. While that might be great for the handful of Godfathers (imagine the big piles of money they'll make in the course of running their protection racket!) it's awful for everybody except the few chosen winners that the Godfathers tap to succeed.
Worse, is the jobs-destroying effect it will have on the US economy. Think about it. If you're a start up, and you know before you even begin, that you can't afford the protection money to get good internet access here, what's your incentive to start your company here? Why not start your company somewhere, for example in Europe where the playing field is still level? Or Asia? Or basically anywhere with decent infrastructure besides the US? And you can bet that's exactly what will happen if we go down this road.
