When Did This Become OK?

I can't say that I'm surprised by the recent Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger. But I am concerned by the implications.

Net neutrality has an air of EFF authority. But since we (and the EFF) have no control over, say, fiber optic lines that span continents, the concept really has just remained an optimistic goal.


I've often wondered why net neutrality is not invoked when cable companies offer tiers of service that are based on speed. Isn't this exactly what we're talking about when we talk about net neutrality? I understand that it is more systemic than that -- that companies could jump ahead of others were this concept not in place -- but really, isn't it happening already?

Throttling is a Joke
In some wonderful fantasy land, the internet exists in some space between ether and the atmosphere, untouched by human hands and pristine in its all-gloriousness. And then we wake up and realize that this shit is expensive. The internet is not, intrinsically, egalitarian. It is not free. It is not even democratic. It is a utility that for the better or worse has been regulated through multiple iterations. I can point to several business models which attempted to grasp this: Compuserve (founded by H&R Block, fyi) , Earthlink, AOL and have we forgotten DELPHI? Or Apple's horrible foray into that space?

Decades later, or eons for those that miss BBSs, we pay for exactly what we get. So what, exactly, is net neutrality? Let's see:

Net neutrality (also network neutrality or Internet neutrality) is the principle that Internet service providers and governments should treat all data on the Internet equally, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, and modes of communication. The term was coined by Columbia media law professor Tim Wu.^[1][2][3][4]

Exactly how is this different from my ISP or cell phone provider deciding that I only get so many megabytes at 4G speed? How does this differ from the very publicly embarrassing peer-to-peer case that still haunts Comcast?

Why? Because we have seemingly lost our collective minds and have given mega-oligarchical corporations the power to decide how we communicate. Precisely, how does internet bandwidth differ from FCC-licensed airwaves? Are cellular airwaves public or private?

I know this sounds a little quaint since we've exceeded the importance of these questions. We are now dealing with NSA-level questions of how much of our personal lives are now secretly available to anyone in the government so determined as to ask.

Perhaps we might rely upon drones to deliver our packets of information in the future. Or maybe not since the FAA is having a bit of a problem figuring that out, too.