Sorry Gwen, I am not putting you down by any means.

But like it or not, tech rules the world.

People who do not spend time educating themselves about 'geek' matters will inevitably find themselves being the victims of corrupt money and politicians.

People make fun of geeks and nerds but the last laugh seems to be geeks who suck money and information out of users of their tech and they are laughing to the bank.

Dickens was right: 'Beware this boy!'

What the big ISPs want to do is charge the content provider (i.e. Facebook, Bigclosetr.us, etc) AND the subscriber for access to the content. They claim that this is because it costs too much to upgrade their networks to support all the new traffic, especially from Netflix, Amazon Prime Cideo, etc.

The reality is that the subscribers fee should be enough for access to the content in the first place, and the network upgrades. What they want to do is make it impossible for anyone to compete with them. If you are a Comcast or a Verizon you can go and demand big fees for content providers to get access to their customers, letting them charge a little less for the ISP service to customers. Smaller, competing local providers don't have the customer base to demand that, so their fees will be higher because they're not double dipping. Eventually the smaller ISPs will go under and the big boys (who are paying for this abuse of process) will be able to do and charge whatever they want.

A lot of people are worried about a tiered Internet where there will be packages to pay for faster access to some sites. I can see that maybe for high bandwidth sites like Netflix, etc, but in general I expect that won't happen. Mobile Internet (wireless, cell, etc) may be different and there may be tiers there, but there already are today with different packages for different bytes per month.

What will happen is that the ISPs will charge a lot to content providers for interconnection fees or transit fees or the like for access to their subscribers. Netflix,etc will have to charge more, and that will make the providers bundled TV packages seem more attractive.

It's all about control. The ISPs, most of whom also have bundled TV and landline options, want to make sure that the OTT (Over The Top, i.e. people who don't own the wire into the house, but provide competing service over it) providers (Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, etc) do not have a more attractive offering than the bundle, because the providers make a huge profit charging for the bundles that most people never watch. It's basically free money. The ISPs are also not as profitable as they used to be, although in general they still make huge profits, and they see Facebook and Google making huge profits from THEIR customers and they want to get a cut of that.

Also, don't believe the ISPs when they say that the FCC was wrong to do this and they want Congress to write the law, which will make it "valid". The reason they are saying this is to appear to be pro-net-neutrality. The reality is they pay so much to Congress any law produced won't be net neutrality at all, it'll be legalised profit generation for the ISPs. It will further entrench their rights to shred consumer rights and deter effective competition.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-net-neutralit...

How would this affect international traffic or is this just US traffic that would be affected?
If international traffic is allowed unimpeded, would the content providers just move their servers off-shore (like a digital tax haven)?
If not, would international providers also be expected to pay the ISPs? And as for multinationals, would their business data be affected? Could any of this contravene current agreements? There must be some agreements in place regarding the terminating links for data in and out of the country.
Interesting times indeed