{"id":47,"date":"2014-01-16T21:27:38","date_gmt":"2014-01-16T21:27:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/?p=47"},"modified":"2020-08-07T03:20:33","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T03:20:33","slug":"neutral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/2014\/01\/16\/neutral\/","title":{"rendered":"The Net Neutrality Endgame"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The U.S. Court of Appeals made\u00a0a significant and troubling decision<\/a>\u00a0this week: it shut down a 2010 FCC decree that prevented internet service providers (\u201cISPs\u201d) from selectively enhancing or restricting traffic to certain destinations (websites, streaming services, etc.) The collective term for this idea has become known as\u00a0Net neutrality<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you need help understanding what\u2019s at stake, you must read\u00a0Nilay Patel\u2019s dissection<\/a>\u00a0on The Verge. While you\u2019re at it, see\u00a0Fred Wilson\u2019s brief but brutal take<\/a>\u00a0on what it means for entrepreneurs and investors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the very least, you should take a good look at\u00a0this mock-advertisement<\/a>\u00a0posted by \u2018quink\u2019 on Reddit. It\u2019s the most compelling and succinct illustration I\u2019ve seen. Even the fine print was written with care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Put simply: the Internet we know and depend on will become something very different. The business relationship with your provider will change its focus from consumption (how many ones and zeros came over the wire) to behavior (what kind of ones and zeros). The latter is much more discriminatory and insidious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quink\u2019s illustration is far from the worst-case scenario. Have a look at your cellular bill: most of us have minute allocations for specific times of the day and week. Now imagine a future where Netflix streaming is twice as expensive after 6PM. Where a single Skype call costs as much as a monthly landline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The privacy implications are just as chilling. A discriminatory model\u00a0bakes surveillance into the way ISPs do business<\/em>. Sure, your provider can snoop on your traffic right now, but nothing in the fundamental concept of delivery requires or justifies that they do. With this environment in place, the implications for privacy and anonymity tools like\u00a0Tor<\/a>\u00a0should be obvious: they would be banned in the provider\u2019s terms of service (how else can they know how much to charge and what to block?) and lobbyists would waste no time making them illegal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s sad that this has come to an issue of courts and regulatory bodies. The real problem is that there\u2019s nowhere else to turn. There is no tangible consumer choice. The infrastructure is effectively monopolized. It will not be possible to vote on this with your wallets: you can submit, or cancel your service. But nobody\u2019s going to stop using the Internet \u2014 certainly not in the kind of volume that would make a dent in policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The picture above resonates so well because we\u2019ve seen it before. We see these itemized, booby-trapped menus every time we buy television or phone service. So it\u2019s quite difficult to call this vision far-fetched when you consider the people who sell us Internet connectivity are the same people who sell us television and telephone connectivity. This is absolutely the future they want. And if nothing changes, they\u2019re going to get it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Update: This article originally attributed the ISP \u201cpricing menu\u201d image to a user on Twitter.\u00a0Iain Delaney<\/a>\u00a0pointed out\u00a0the correct source. Sadly, none of these outcomes will change the way work is stolen on the Internet.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The U.S. Court of Appeals made\u00a0a significant and troubling decision\u00a0this week: it shut down a 2010 FCC decree that prevented internet service providers (\u201cISPs\u201d) from selectively enhancing or restricting traffic to certain destinations (websites, streaming services, etc.) The collective term for this idea has become known as\u00a0Net neutrality. If you need help understanding what\u2019s at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}