That's a fair point: I didn't read the original suggestion to mean, "Your ISP acts as an agent to manage your paid site subscriptions" -- which, you're right, has nothing to do with net neutrality -- I just instantly jumped to the blocking/throttling conclusion.
The point remains that the OP mischaracterized net neutrality. What is important is that net neutrality only concerns transport of IP packets. Content providing companies and web site owners can moderate, block, or censor content as they like and as they deem fit. They have done so in the past under net neutrality, do so in countries with net neutrality laws, and are doing it now in the US without net neutrality.
The two issues are frequently mixed up, hence my comment.
On a side note, I've never heard anyone argue that ISPs should block content, that seems like a strawman to me, but I guess if you just search hard enough you can find someone on the Internet who argued for that nonsense.
> lawful content
Good point, that's compatible with restrictions of freedom of speech due to declaring certain kind of content illegal, and clearly illustrates that the two issues are different from each other. Yet people confuse them again and again, and additionally almost always base their arguments on a false dichotomy or on fallacious slippery slope arguments.
Ah, I see. In that case, yes - there's no connection to net neutrality as long as they don't penalize anyone in any way for buying those subscriptions directly from the sites themselves (EDIT: or other sources... if i buy a sub on my ISP it should still be valid when I visit my parents who have a different ISP, etc).
> Simply net neutrality is your ISP ignoring the contents of your packets and simply routing them to their intended destination.
That doesn't make sense. ISPs have long blocked "dangerous" or "premium" ports, like 445 (SMB) or 25 (SMTP). Those are parts of the contents of your internet packets and yet even the net neutrality regulation didn't prohibit doing that. And you can't argue those are "headers" rather than "contents" because then throttling packets based on IP addresses would not require looking at packet contents. So I think your definition is incorrect?
Again, net neutrality is about the network and not the policies of edge services that happen to use the network. Unless you are claiming that an ISP is blocking traffic to appease a payment processor you are talking about something that is completely irrelevant and serves only to distract from the actual issue here.
Since you need this explained: when I said that in a world of net neutrality you can set up your own edge service, I was talking about the technical ability to do so and not whether or not some other problem would stop you. Maybe no payment processors are willing to work with you and you cannot afford to pay for the kind of connection your service demands. Equally possible is that you simply lack the technical skills needed to set up an edge service and cannot find or afford to pay someone to do it for you. Maybe you are just too busy. None of the above is relevant to the debate over net neutrality because net neutrality only concerns the operation of the network itself and not the endless other factors that might impact your ability to run whatever applications you intend to run.
He was referring to the throttling of your connection because of what you're downloading. Net neutrality shouldn't allow ISP's to do that. Not to mention that this isn't a new law. It's "voluntary", which means it can't bypass net neutrality, yet that's what they might try to do.
Much easier to throttle traffic from a website when it's actually from a website. If many websites reference the same external resources, it's harder to throttle websites individually.
> Paying your ISP doesn't necessarily grant you unlimited access to every other network on the Internet.
That's actually the whole thrust of the argument, as I understand it. Net Neutrality says "If I buy internet I should get all internet at the flow rate I bought internet."
Content providers would buy a flow rate, consumers would buy a flow rate, and the people providing that flow rate (e.g. Level 3 for the CDNs, Comcast for the consumers) would deliver that flow rate, regardless of what or where it is going.
Well, then you are misinformed? Yes, net neutrality prevents your ISP from making one service artificially appear slower than another ... but "artificially" simply means "based on their own interests". They are not allowed to consider what traffic they prefer when prioritizing packets or when setting prices, that's it. Just as the postal service cannot refuse to deliver letters from a specific sender, say, but that doesn't mean they aren't allowed to reject letters to you on your explicit request.
Paying _ISPs_ for content is exactly what net neutrality is about. I already pay my ISP to deliver bits. I'm not giving them a microcent more for the privilege of having all content that isn't in some "package" blocked or throttled.
Okay, so you don't agree with it. And it may not be a facet of net neutrality, but it certainly is analogous. I've paid for a general purpose computing device, and I've paid for a connection to the Internet. Why should anyone besides me choose what I can run on that device? Blocking apps because they compete with services a provider sells translates pretty clearly across to blocking websites because they compete with services a provider sells.
No. Net Neutrality protects what we already have. We already pay for access to the entire internet. Customers pay ISPs for this access. When ISPs throttle (and effectively block) websites that don't pay for "priority" or inclusion, then they are lying to their customers (consumers) about the service they provide.
My impression is net neutrality is oriented for the end user to preserve fair content deliverability, not necessarily the content provider, with the primary goal to prevent throttling any or all content based on who is willing to pay for no or less throttling. This is not incompatible with cdn colo at an isp. Colo is not akin to providers paying to not be throttled, but more like having a data center very close to the isp, which like the colo would still be subject to physical rent costs.
Net neutrality is about treating some services (websites) different than others. If they throttle all traffic then that's still neutral. Do you see services they exclude (e.g. not count as traffic)?
These aren't analogous at all. The situation that Net Neutrality is about preventing involves four parties: a website, a comsumer, the website's ISP or datacenter, and the consumer's ISP. Call these W (website), C (consumer), D (the website's ISP), and I (the consumer's ISP). There are network connections between these parties, and the graph of who has a network connection to who looks like this:
W---D---I---C
The website and the consumer each pay their respective ISPs for connectivity. Those two ISPs typically have a connection between them, in an arrangement called "peering". If they don't, then instead they will both pay a third ISP (a backbone provider, B) to bridge the gap. So the graph of who pays who for network connectivity looks like one of these two arrangements:
W-->D I<--C
W-->D-->B<--I<--C
If the connection between W and D is too slow, then W pays for an upgrade. If the connection between C and I is too slow, then C pays for an upgrade. If the connection between D and I is too slow, then D and I haggle over who pays, under threat of losing business from W and C.
Now suppose a I, a consumer ISP, decides to block or slow down traffic coming from W. The key fact of this situation is that in the original state of affairs, there is no business relationship between W and I. The website only has business relationships with C and D. Basically, I is threatening to sabotage W's relationship with C, by degrading C's service, unless W pays up.
Net neutrality is about all net traffic being treated equally. It is not just about the ISPs throttling what they want. Ad blockers do not treat all network traffic equally, they will block it if they think it is anything to do with an advertising company.
reply