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Leadified on 15 December 2017
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VAMatt said:
fielding88 said:

How does the lack of NN help small businesses? And how do big businesses use NN to protect market positions?

Example 1 - I own a small business (I really do).  I'd like to pay for internet service that includes only basic email functionality, and access to a very small number of websites.  My company uses very little bandwidth.  However, under NN, it is illegal for an ISP to offer me service that fits my company's needs.  Instead, I have to get nearly the same service as the company next door that produces video content.  They are constantly uploading to Youtube, sending files to clients, and downloading all kinds of stuff for use in their work.  They need access to the entire WWW, and other stuff.  Unfortunately, I have to subsidize their use.  (This same example applies to my grandma's emailing and news reading subsidizing my heavy bandwidth video streaming and gaming).  

Example 2 - If you can sell me products on a website that consumes less data than Amazon.com, and either Amazon or I had to pay for bandwidth used, you'd have a competitive advantage.  But, with NN, you do not.  In that way, Amazon is protected from competition from fieldazon.com.   Same goes for more efficient search, better compression for video streaming, and a whole host of other things.  NN removes the incentive to innovate.  Innovation is what drives small business. 

In fact, even if Amazon didn't have to pay for bandwidth, but was scared of pissing off the ISPs because the ISPs could choose to charge them, you may be able to work from the other side (Amazon limits data to keep bandwidth use low, but you fly under the radar as a small company, and provide me larger, better quality images, or what have you).  

The underlying point is that government regulations always limit choice.  That's just what regulations do by definition.  I want more choice, and I want other people and businesses to be able to choose what they do, how they serve me, what internet service they want to offer me, etc.  Most people generally agree that consumer choice is good.  But, for some reason, a lot of people want to give the Trump administration sweeping power over the internet, and leave us without choices.  

I'm not sure how giving ISPs the right to control which websites you visit is any better than government regulation of the internet, both paths lead to censorship. Especially since the main actors against NN are large ISPs which should raise a bunch of red flags on what their intentions are. Imagine your ISP deciding that VGC takes up too much bandwidth or the users on this forum have been saying things they do not approve of, what do you do then? How will your ISP decide which websites you can visit and how does this not offer an unfair advantage to websites that send money to the ISPs to promote their content?

I don't quite understand your second example. You consume bandwidth when you enter a website and view the elements such as text, images, video, whatever. The website owner pays the host in order to keep their website up, how they design their website is up to them and what internet plan they have. If they want to design a 56K friendly Amazon competitor then they can already do that.

Edit: In response to my previous post.

I disagree. With or without NN, ISPs will continue to be in the pocket of the government because both parties have an interest on what is going on the internet (information economy), along with ISPs getting handouts. As ISPs will expand into other services such as streaming (especially to expand globally), they will have a tremendous advantage and use the government to stifle out competition. On the contrary, the boot will only press harder.

Last edited by Leadified - on 15 December 2017