Why Net Neutrality is important.

Net Neutrality is the principle that ISPs should give all web sites and services equal use of the bandwidth consumers purchase from them. For example, Google should not get traffic priority over, say, TFS when it comes to sharing bandwidth to users.

Many ISPs, particularly cable companies, are lobbying hard for the ability to throttle bandwidth depending on who it's coming from and how much they're paying. For example, they want to be able to limit Hulu traffic severely so that they can sell their customers their own streaming TV services. They want to be able to threaten to cut off Google and Youtube bandwidth unless Google pays them big bucks.

What's the big danger, you say? Imagine this scenario, courtesy of Gizmodo.

I know my ISP server which is a cable company throttles many of the websites I visit and I've called them up on it. It got me nowhere.

I hope nothing changes. If I'm reading it correctly, we'll have to pay extra for our Internet service if we use certain sites?

That's what the ISPs want. There's big debate in government right now. Consumer groups and web sites are pushing hard for the government to pass Net Neutrality legislation, but the big ISPs are pushing hard against it.

I fear that the side with the most dollars to spend will win.

Just too many national carriers today for that to become a reality----every major phone co. providing net services now

Well I "don't pay" for my internet anyway. (It's part of a call package thing), but even if this does happen, wouldn't we be able to just use proxies, from countries with scary governments? Like China, or north Korea?

I use AT&T. Pretty big company. I'll be furious if they change my plan!

And the vast majority of people in the US have exactly one choice for phone service. In my area, it's Verizon or nothing. Time Warner Cable is the only other company offering broadband.

Have you ever used a proxy?

Slow slow slow. You'll never be watching Hulu over a proxy.

Plus, the companies can and will just limit your bandwidth anyway. No proxy can help with that.

And with the companies spending real money to find and block proxies, you'll not be finding many open proxies and they will probably get blocked quickly.

Bah, AT&T are already practicing internet censorship. Good luck.

Never heard of this before now. I suppose it'll come to the US before hitting anywhere else... And that's if it happens. But I don't understand... That internet isn't owned by anyone. It's public. So how can certain ISP's charge people for using certain websites on the internet?

I didn't know that. My service went up $5 last month. I was not happy.

Yes, certain areas limit the cable carrier, but locatl and Nation phone companies are not under area contracts. Probably in the near future Communication companies will provide Net services.

Very very few people in the US have any real choice beyond "DSL from the phone company" or "cable internet from the cable company." Many don't even have that much choice.

I'm not sure what you're saying here, but I'm confident you don't quite understand the situation.

It doesn't matter if the internet is owned by anybody or not because you still have to pay an ISP to access it and use their bandwidth. Right now they throttle the bandwidth of some sites to give more bandwidth to their sites. If a net neutrality law is passed in the US then US based carriers will no longer be allowed to do that.