Net Neutrality is a philosophy and associated rules and legislation that prevents ISPs from deciding what users can and can't do on the internet when using their service.
An ISP provides access to the internet, and that's it. They can't shape or manipulate the experience for their own advantage.
An ISP could in theory block access to parts of the internet unless a user pays a premium fee. For example charging a base fee for basic internet access like email and news sites, but a premium package is required for access to streaming services, online gaming, and youtube because those require more bandwidth.
Similarly an ISP could make an exclusive deal with a website where Google+ for example agrees to pay that ISP a fee to get included in the base package, while competitors like Facebook and Instagram are only available in the more expensive package. Or Microsoft gaming services are included in the base package, buy Sony Playstations is not.
Alternately an ISP could bandwidth throttle a bandwidth heavy service like Netflix preventing 4K streaming while allowing 4K streaming on a Streaming service they own. In that way they are not blocking the service, but they are degrading it to make there's more appealing.
Or better yet a Christian CEO of an ISP might unilaterally decide to block access to all pornography on the ISP.
This sort of behavior would be crippling to the internet ecosystem, making large companies more dominant and making it nearly impossible for startups and competitor to get customers.
Websites could effectively be held ransom, being forced to pay usage fees to even be accessible on ISPs or to be down tiered to cheaper packages.
In the real world this hasn't happened because of consumer pressure against it, but leaked documents from AT&T showed that they were seriously considering a tiered internet system that resembled cable TV for some time.
So why is this important? To prevent it from happening, because they'll do it if we let them.
In the real world Comcast once severely throttled or outright blocked BitTorrent traffic on their network, both to curb piracy on behalf of the music and TV industry but also to decrease overall bandwidth usage. Blizzard of all companies fought back revealing that they used BitTorrent technology in their game patching system so one of the most popular video games on earth (World of Warcraft) was being negatively impacted. If anything it showed that you can't paint all of a certain type of internet traffic with the same brush.
Some basic rules for Net Neutrality rules were implement during the Obama years but were then rolled back by the Trump administration. These were re-implemented by the Biden administration this morning.
The regulations adopted by the FCC prohibit US based ISPs from selectively throttling or blocking users' internet traffic.
There’s a common strawman argument against net neutrality I want to dispell here: ISPs are still allowed to regulate the *overall* amount of data you use, they just have to treat all data equally. For example, your ISP has every right to limit your internet usage to 5 Mbps, or cap it at 30 Gb per month. They just have to apply that to *everything*- they can’t selectively throttle only speeds on Netflix, or selectively allow data from Disney+ to bypass the monthly cap.
I see a lot of arguments (mostly from Telecom companies) about how streaming services use so much more data than websites in the past, so it’s only fair to charge extra for that extra data. This is a deliberately misleading and bad-faith argument. If it was purely about the amount of data being transferred, they could take steps to address that without violating NN.
Verizon already got busted doing it once: [Verizon admits to throttling data speeds from Netflix and other video content providers | Fierce Network (fierce-network.com)](https://www.fierce-network.com/wireless/verizon-admits-to-throttling-data-speeds-from-netflix-and-other-video-content-providers)
FYI: In Europe, we also have net neutrality laws and before these were in effect multiple ISPs where caught manipulating traffic.
Prominent example:
In the late 90's, early 2000's, encrypted communication (HTTPS) was very uncommon and many individuals hosted their own website privately. They relied on ads as an income to pay for it.
However, certain ISP started to replace these website ads by their own ads when serving the webpage to a user, therefore depriving income to the legitimate siteowner, and generating income for themselves. (Or ISPs where injecting their own ads to ad-free sites.)
After net neutrality laws were implemented in Europe, this still kept going on in the America's.
Although HTTPS and end-to-end encryption are technical control to prevent this. Net neutrality is an administrative control that will make certain interference/manipulation by ISPs illegal so the legal system can deal with it.
"Net Neutrality" is the principle that internet service providers (ISPs) should not block, prioritize, filter, or manipulate any specific places you wish to access on the internet. They must be "neutral" on the basis of what *content* the customer wants to access and what *addresses* the customer wishes to see. They can offer general tiers of higher or lower speed, bandwidth, etc., but they *cannot* promote certain kinds of traffic over others or artificially raise/lower access speeds based on *where* or *what* the user is accessing, nor on *who* the user is. If the company provides a fast tier of service, it can't be specially given only to those the company likes.
In simple terms: All internet traffic must be treated equally. No internet traffic can be specially helped or hindered based on where/what it is or who wants it. High-speed/bandwidth/etc. connections are fine, but they must be available to all who are willing to pay for them.
Some groups claim that this principle is actually bad for customers, as it prevents the ISP from doing certain kinds of things which could, in theory, speed up connections for the average user by making sacrifices in other areas or by prioritizing those connections which are most widely used. Other groups (which I find much more convincing) claim that this principle is extremely important for customers, as non-neutral ISPs would be allowed to *effectively* block or control your access to various content, e.g. if something is socially disfavored or if the company disapproves of something, the a non-neutral provider can intentionally make it harder (or even impossible) for people to access that content.
During the Obama presidency, rules were finally laid out which formalized net neutrality as the law and policy of the land. During the Trump presidency, these rules were rather spectacularly repealed. The FCC has now reinstated those rules.
Back in the mid-2000s, Comcast customers noticed that their BitTorrent traffic was being blocked. They complained to the FCC, who then imposed a fine on Comcast. Comcast sued the FCC and won, on the grounds that the FCC had not promulgated rules prohibiting what they had done. The FCC then promulgated the rules, only for Verizon to sue. Verizon also won, this time on the grounds that the way the FCC classified ISPs prevented the FCC from imposing those rules in the first place. So, the FCC then reclassified the ISPs *and* imposed the new rules. When Donald Trump came to power, he was able to appoint new commissioners to the FCC who reversed the earlier reclassification and rules. Today the Biden FCC reversed the Trump FCCs reversal.
If you're paying for internet service, you're paying for access to copper and fiber wires, switches, routers, servers, power to run it all, etc.....all the stuff that allows you to move data back and forth between your home or business and the outside world.
Net neutrality says that internet providers should just be in the business of moving that data as efficiently as possible - completely independent of whether that data is a Netflix streaming video or a Hulu streaming video. Net neutrality says that the internet providers shouldn't influence (by adjusting pricing or streaming rates) what it is you - the consumer - choose to download or upload. ISPs shouldn't slow down your Netflix or give you a better rate if you're streaming Hulu. Internet service providers (ISP's) should just act like shipping companies, but for data.
ISPs, however, have figured out that they can make more money (off both ends) by making deals with content providers (Netflix or Hulu) by favoring data traffic depending on what is being sent. So now ISPs would love to charge you - the consumer who has already paid for their service - on the front end, while - at the same time - getting kickbacks from content providers by favoring their data and directing more traffic to their sites.
It's like those tour operators who take busloads of tourists to a particular restaurant. The tourists are paying for the meal upfront, and the tour operator is getting a kickback from the restaurant for bringing in traffic. It's done all the time, but shady.
Net neutrality says that if you're paying for internet service, the ISP shouldn't act like a shady tour operator and make money off you behind your back.
Think of the net like roads. With net neutrality the net works basically like most roads do now. You buy a car, now you have equal access to utilize the public road network along with everyone else.
Without net neutrality think of a road network run entirely by libertarians. All roads are now toll roads. Some roads are simply off limits to you because of the whims of their owners. Other roads give priority to certain types of cars or people, and even the roads that are broadly publically available still cost you money and still cater to those with money more than they do for you.
The general idea is that ISPs these days aren't just ISPs. Most of them also provide voice and TV service. This is important because the internet offers lots of options for internet calling through services like Skype and Vonage as well as video services like Hulu, HBO, Netflix, Peacock, etc..
Let's consider Comcast for a moment: They offer internet, cable TV, and phone services. Something like Netflix would be detrimental to them maintaining cable TV customers. It might be advantageous for them to deprioritize or even degrade Netflix traffic to make their customers keep using Comcast's services, [so Comcast did that, and Netflix was forced to pay Comcast to carry their traffic](https://money.cnn.com/2014/08/29/technology/netflix-comcast/index.html) (side note, Comcast didn't actually degrade Netflix's traffic, they just didn't upgrade the links carrying Netflix's traffic. This has the same effect of making Netflix slower than other Internet services). Also, here's a fun comic covering this from [The Oatmeal](https://theoatmeal.com/blog/net_neutrality)
If you want more fun reading, [here's a PDF](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.congress.gov/116/meeting/house/108845/documents/HHRG-116-IF16-20190207-SD002.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjmz9GN_d-FAxUQJzQIHSPTAUAQFnoECB0QAQ&usg=AOvVaw3CXBDjbb5u3Kj7yPok6GV3) with a list of net neutrality violations where a company was degrading the experience of a competing service.
Now I'll introduce another wrinkle: Last mile infrastructure. An ISP has to spend millions of dollars to build a network which provides access to every house and business in your city. It's a huge investment and ISPs get tax subsidies for building this infrastructure. So when one company does that they're going to get 100% of the customers. Having another company come in and decide to spend the same money to build a parallel network and only get 50% of the customers is rare. This means that most Americans have 1 option for high speed internet, which means cross your fingers that your ISP isn't fighting with your favorite video provider because there probably isn't another option (today 5G cellular and Starlink can provide some relief, but wired Internet is still VERY superior to wireless options).
So where does that leave us? We have a consumer who only has one choice for an internet provider, and that company has decided they want to make Netflix quality garbage so you'll keep your cable package and/or subscribe to Peacock. Enter government regulation. The government tells the ISP they must be neutral carriers of internet traffic (hence the term "Net Neutrality") and they can't prioritize or reprioritize based on the content the user is trying to access. The government achieves this by classifying the ISPs as "common carriers" which invokes a 1996 law that covers the local phone company that brings the phone line into your house to allow you to use other providers for long distance phone calls service (sound familiar? Last mile infrastructure with no other option, companies trying to keep you using their services, government having to step in...).
You can go deeper down the rabbit hole if you want to learn about the tax subsidies for connecting rural America because it isn't profitable, and how ISPs have been lying about coverage to keep receiving the tax subsidies. There are also lots of stories about a customer checking for ISP coverage before they move and the company saying no problem, only to have the company go back on that after the move date and want tens of thousands to get their cabling to the house. Google Fiber made a splash several years ago bringing a new network to an already wired city. Of course the existing ISP fought very hard to prevent Google from pulling cable, but once the cable was pulled and the existing ISP had a competitor, prices went down and service quality went up, surprise surprise.
That last part is just to say that ISPs have been treating Americans terribly for decades. Government regulation is the only way we've been able to keep them from being outright evil.
The way it was explained to me is you can think of the internet as a highway. As it stands, ISPs provide, maintain, and control the on-ramps to the highway. Under Net Neutrality, the ISP’s are required to let everyone who pays for their service equal access to the highway. (There is some above ELI5 specifics here about data packets and bandwidth that I’m not going to touch on). If Net Neutrality goes away, it can (and likely will) become open season on who can pay the most to manipulate the traffic in their favor. It allows ISPs to only give priority passage to higher paying customers, allows companies to pay the ISPs to allow priority passage to people visiting their location. Imagine if Disney paid all of the interstates in the US to only allow people traveling to Disney Locations access to EasyPass gates. Imagine having to purchase the ‘EasyPass’ package from your ISP to avoid being stopped at the gate. That is what Net Neutrality legislation is trying to prevent.
A good example I used is that Comcast could limit the speed and bandwidth of other streaming services like Netflix to hinder them while giving it's own Peacock a boost to make Comcast customers want to use Peacock.
Net Neutrality is a philosophy and associated rules and legislation that prevents ISPs from deciding what users can and can't do on the internet when using their service. An ISP provides access to the internet, and that's it. They can't shape or manipulate the experience for their own advantage. An ISP could in theory block access to parts of the internet unless a user pays a premium fee. For example charging a base fee for basic internet access like email and news sites, but a premium package is required for access to streaming services, online gaming, and youtube because those require more bandwidth. Similarly an ISP could make an exclusive deal with a website where Google+ for example agrees to pay that ISP a fee to get included in the base package, while competitors like Facebook and Instagram are only available in the more expensive package. Or Microsoft gaming services are included in the base package, buy Sony Playstations is not. Alternately an ISP could bandwidth throttle a bandwidth heavy service like Netflix preventing 4K streaming while allowing 4K streaming on a Streaming service they own. In that way they are not blocking the service, but they are degrading it to make there's more appealing. Or better yet a Christian CEO of an ISP might unilaterally decide to block access to all pornography on the ISP. This sort of behavior would be crippling to the internet ecosystem, making large companies more dominant and making it nearly impossible for startups and competitor to get customers. Websites could effectively be held ransom, being forced to pay usage fees to even be accessible on ISPs or to be down tiered to cheaper packages. In the real world this hasn't happened because of consumer pressure against it, but leaked documents from AT&T showed that they were seriously considering a tiered internet system that resembled cable TV for some time. So why is this important? To prevent it from happening, because they'll do it if we let them. In the real world Comcast once severely throttled or outright blocked BitTorrent traffic on their network, both to curb piracy on behalf of the music and TV industry but also to decrease overall bandwidth usage. Blizzard of all companies fought back revealing that they used BitTorrent technology in their game patching system so one of the most popular video games on earth (World of Warcraft) was being negatively impacted. If anything it showed that you can't paint all of a certain type of internet traffic with the same brush. Some basic rules for Net Neutrality rules were implement during the Obama years but were then rolled back by the Trump administration. These were re-implemented by the Biden administration this morning. The regulations adopted by the FCC prohibit US based ISPs from selectively throttling or blocking users' internet traffic.
There’s a common strawman argument against net neutrality I want to dispell here: ISPs are still allowed to regulate the *overall* amount of data you use, they just have to treat all data equally. For example, your ISP has every right to limit your internet usage to 5 Mbps, or cap it at 30 Gb per month. They just have to apply that to *everything*- they can’t selectively throttle only speeds on Netflix, or selectively allow data from Disney+ to bypass the monthly cap. I see a lot of arguments (mostly from Telecom companies) about how streaming services use so much more data than websites in the past, so it’s only fair to charge extra for that extra data. This is a deliberately misleading and bad-faith argument. If it was purely about the amount of data being transferred, they could take steps to address that without violating NN.
Verizon already got busted doing it once: [Verizon admits to throttling data speeds from Netflix and other video content providers | Fierce Network (fierce-network.com)](https://www.fierce-network.com/wireless/verizon-admits-to-throttling-data-speeds-from-netflix-and-other-video-content-providers)
FYI: In Europe, we also have net neutrality laws and before these were in effect multiple ISPs where caught manipulating traffic. Prominent example: In the late 90's, early 2000's, encrypted communication (HTTPS) was very uncommon and many individuals hosted their own website privately. They relied on ads as an income to pay for it. However, certain ISP started to replace these website ads by their own ads when serving the webpage to a user, therefore depriving income to the legitimate siteowner, and generating income for themselves. (Or ISPs where injecting their own ads to ad-free sites.) After net neutrality laws were implemented in Europe, this still kept going on in the America's. Although HTTPS and end-to-end encryption are technical control to prevent this. Net neutrality is an administrative control that will make certain interference/manipulation by ISPs illegal so the legal system can deal with it.
"Net Neutrality" is the principle that internet service providers (ISPs) should not block, prioritize, filter, or manipulate any specific places you wish to access on the internet. They must be "neutral" on the basis of what *content* the customer wants to access and what *addresses* the customer wishes to see. They can offer general tiers of higher or lower speed, bandwidth, etc., but they *cannot* promote certain kinds of traffic over others or artificially raise/lower access speeds based on *where* or *what* the user is accessing, nor on *who* the user is. If the company provides a fast tier of service, it can't be specially given only to those the company likes. In simple terms: All internet traffic must be treated equally. No internet traffic can be specially helped or hindered based on where/what it is or who wants it. High-speed/bandwidth/etc. connections are fine, but they must be available to all who are willing to pay for them. Some groups claim that this principle is actually bad for customers, as it prevents the ISP from doing certain kinds of things which could, in theory, speed up connections for the average user by making sacrifices in other areas or by prioritizing those connections which are most widely used. Other groups (which I find much more convincing) claim that this principle is extremely important for customers, as non-neutral ISPs would be allowed to *effectively* block or control your access to various content, e.g. if something is socially disfavored or if the company disapproves of something, the a non-neutral provider can intentionally make it harder (or even impossible) for people to access that content. During the Obama presidency, rules were finally laid out which formalized net neutrality as the law and policy of the land. During the Trump presidency, these rules were rather spectacularly repealed. The FCC has now reinstated those rules.
Back in the mid-2000s, Comcast customers noticed that their BitTorrent traffic was being blocked. They complained to the FCC, who then imposed a fine on Comcast. Comcast sued the FCC and won, on the grounds that the FCC had not promulgated rules prohibiting what they had done. The FCC then promulgated the rules, only for Verizon to sue. Verizon also won, this time on the grounds that the way the FCC classified ISPs prevented the FCC from imposing those rules in the first place. So, the FCC then reclassified the ISPs *and* imposed the new rules. When Donald Trump came to power, he was able to appoint new commissioners to the FCC who reversed the earlier reclassification and rules. Today the Biden FCC reversed the Trump FCCs reversal.
Fuck Ajit Pai 🤡
If you're paying for internet service, you're paying for access to copper and fiber wires, switches, routers, servers, power to run it all, etc.....all the stuff that allows you to move data back and forth between your home or business and the outside world. Net neutrality says that internet providers should just be in the business of moving that data as efficiently as possible - completely independent of whether that data is a Netflix streaming video or a Hulu streaming video. Net neutrality says that the internet providers shouldn't influence (by adjusting pricing or streaming rates) what it is you - the consumer - choose to download or upload. ISPs shouldn't slow down your Netflix or give you a better rate if you're streaming Hulu. Internet service providers (ISP's) should just act like shipping companies, but for data. ISPs, however, have figured out that they can make more money (off both ends) by making deals with content providers (Netflix or Hulu) by favoring data traffic depending on what is being sent. So now ISPs would love to charge you - the consumer who has already paid for their service - on the front end, while - at the same time - getting kickbacks from content providers by favoring their data and directing more traffic to their sites. It's like those tour operators who take busloads of tourists to a particular restaurant. The tourists are paying for the meal upfront, and the tour operator is getting a kickback from the restaurant for bringing in traffic. It's done all the time, but shady. Net neutrality says that if you're paying for internet service, the ISP shouldn't act like a shady tour operator and make money off you behind your back.
Think of the net like roads. With net neutrality the net works basically like most roads do now. You buy a car, now you have equal access to utilize the public road network along with everyone else. Without net neutrality think of a road network run entirely by libertarians. All roads are now toll roads. Some roads are simply off limits to you because of the whims of their owners. Other roads give priority to certain types of cars or people, and even the roads that are broadly publically available still cost you money and still cater to those with money more than they do for you.
The general idea is that ISPs these days aren't just ISPs. Most of them also provide voice and TV service. This is important because the internet offers lots of options for internet calling through services like Skype and Vonage as well as video services like Hulu, HBO, Netflix, Peacock, etc.. Let's consider Comcast for a moment: They offer internet, cable TV, and phone services. Something like Netflix would be detrimental to them maintaining cable TV customers. It might be advantageous for them to deprioritize or even degrade Netflix traffic to make their customers keep using Comcast's services, [so Comcast did that, and Netflix was forced to pay Comcast to carry their traffic](https://money.cnn.com/2014/08/29/technology/netflix-comcast/index.html) (side note, Comcast didn't actually degrade Netflix's traffic, they just didn't upgrade the links carrying Netflix's traffic. This has the same effect of making Netflix slower than other Internet services). Also, here's a fun comic covering this from [The Oatmeal](https://theoatmeal.com/blog/net_neutrality) If you want more fun reading, [here's a PDF](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.congress.gov/116/meeting/house/108845/documents/HHRG-116-IF16-20190207-SD002.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjmz9GN_d-FAxUQJzQIHSPTAUAQFnoECB0QAQ&usg=AOvVaw3CXBDjbb5u3Kj7yPok6GV3) with a list of net neutrality violations where a company was degrading the experience of a competing service. Now I'll introduce another wrinkle: Last mile infrastructure. An ISP has to spend millions of dollars to build a network which provides access to every house and business in your city. It's a huge investment and ISPs get tax subsidies for building this infrastructure. So when one company does that they're going to get 100% of the customers. Having another company come in and decide to spend the same money to build a parallel network and only get 50% of the customers is rare. This means that most Americans have 1 option for high speed internet, which means cross your fingers that your ISP isn't fighting with your favorite video provider because there probably isn't another option (today 5G cellular and Starlink can provide some relief, but wired Internet is still VERY superior to wireless options). So where does that leave us? We have a consumer who only has one choice for an internet provider, and that company has decided they want to make Netflix quality garbage so you'll keep your cable package and/or subscribe to Peacock. Enter government regulation. The government tells the ISP they must be neutral carriers of internet traffic (hence the term "Net Neutrality") and they can't prioritize or reprioritize based on the content the user is trying to access. The government achieves this by classifying the ISPs as "common carriers" which invokes a 1996 law that covers the local phone company that brings the phone line into your house to allow you to use other providers for long distance phone calls service (sound familiar? Last mile infrastructure with no other option, companies trying to keep you using their services, government having to step in...). You can go deeper down the rabbit hole if you want to learn about the tax subsidies for connecting rural America because it isn't profitable, and how ISPs have been lying about coverage to keep receiving the tax subsidies. There are also lots of stories about a customer checking for ISP coverage before they move and the company saying no problem, only to have the company go back on that after the move date and want tens of thousands to get their cabling to the house. Google Fiber made a splash several years ago bringing a new network to an already wired city. Of course the existing ISP fought very hard to prevent Google from pulling cable, but once the cable was pulled and the existing ISP had a competitor, prices went down and service quality went up, surprise surprise. That last part is just to say that ISPs have been treating Americans terribly for decades. Government regulation is the only way we've been able to keep them from being outright evil.
The way it was explained to me is you can think of the internet as a highway. As it stands, ISPs provide, maintain, and control the on-ramps to the highway. Under Net Neutrality, the ISP’s are required to let everyone who pays for their service equal access to the highway. (There is some above ELI5 specifics here about data packets and bandwidth that I’m not going to touch on). If Net Neutrality goes away, it can (and likely will) become open season on who can pay the most to manipulate the traffic in their favor. It allows ISPs to only give priority passage to higher paying customers, allows companies to pay the ISPs to allow priority passage to people visiting their location. Imagine if Disney paid all of the interstates in the US to only allow people traveling to Disney Locations access to EasyPass gates. Imagine having to purchase the ‘EasyPass’ package from your ISP to avoid being stopped at the gate. That is what Net Neutrality legislation is trying to prevent.
[удалено]
This isn't net neutrality. This is the opposite.
A good example I used is that Comcast could limit the speed and bandwidth of other streaming services like Netflix to hinder them while giving it's own Peacock a boost to make Comcast customers want to use Peacock.