Net neutrality is a hot topic in the news lately. Will there be slow lanes and fast lanes for content? Comcast (my cable supplier) recently said they might allow some companies to pay more for faster access. Would you as a player pay more for Pantheon to not be slowed down?
All i will say on the subject is this... the more i do research into net neutrality, the more i agree that it should go away. its so hard to find good information out there over this that isnt the usual "if it goes away, then ISP's will have separate plans for gaming, social, and video". i just have this one question, if that's true, how come they didnt do that before 2015 when net neutrality was voted in? If they did, then i retract this question, but i dont remember it.
Holywind said:The ONLY thing ending net neutrality will do is fatten the pockets of billionaires in the US.
Investors in these US companies are all over the world. The ending of net nutrality will fatten the pockets of billionaires around the world at the cost of the American people.
Furty said:All i will say on the subject is this... the more i do research into net neutrality, the more i agree that it should go away. its so hard to find good information out there over this that isnt the usual "if it goes away, then ISP's will have separate plans for gaming, social, and video". i just have this one question, if that's true, how come they didnt do that before 2015 when net neutrality was voted in? If they did, then i retract this question, but i dont remember it.
They did do it. In 2014 Comcast throttled Netflix (Comcast is a majority shareholder of Hulu) until they agreed to pay massive amounts. Here are some key parts of the wiki of Net Neutrality:
A widely cited example of a violation of net neutrality principles was the Internet service provider Comcast's secret slowing ("throttling") of uploads from peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P) applications by using forged packets.[7] Comcast did not stop blocking these protocols, like BitTorrent, until the FCC ordered them to stop.[8] In another minor example, The Madison River Communications company was fined US$15,000 by the FCC, in 2004, for restricting their customers' access to Vonage, which was rivaling their own services.[9] AT&T was also caught limiting access to FaceTime, so only those users who paid for AT&T's new shared data plans could access the application.[10] In July 2017, Verizon Wireless was accused of throttling after users noticed that videos played on Netflix and Youtube were slower than usual, though Verizon commented that it was conducting "network testing" and that net neutrality rules permit "reasonable network management practices".[11]
...Proponents of net neutrality argue that without new regulations, Internet service providers would be able to favor their own private protocols over others. ISPs are able to encourage the use of specific services by utilizing private networks to discriminate what data is counted against bandwidth caps. For example, Comcast struck a deal with Microsoft that allowed users to stream television through the Xfinity app on their Xbox 360s without it affecting their bandwidth limit. However, utilizing other television streaming apps, such as Netflix, HBO Go, and Hulu, counted towards the limit. Comcast denied that this infringed on net neutrality principles since "it runs its Xfinity for Xbox service on its own, private Internet protocol network".
...In the first quarter of 2014, streaming website Netflix reached an arrangement with ISP Comcast to improve the quality of its service to Netflix clients.[40] This arrangement was made in response to increasingly slow connection speeds through Comcast over the course of 2013, where average speeds dropped by over 25% of their values a year before to an all-time low. After the deal was struck in January 2014, the Netflix speed index recorded a 66% increase in connection. Netflix agreed to a similar deal with Verizon in 2014, after Verizon DSL customers' connection speed dropped to less than 1 Mbit/s early in the year. Netflix spoke out against this deal with a controversial statement delivered to all Verizon customers experiencing low connection speeds, using the Netflix client.[41] This sparked an internal debate between the two companies that led to Verizon's obtaining a cease and desist order on 5 June 2014 that forced Netflix to stop displaying this message.
Things never quite got to the point of stripping the pockets of the average consumer, but they were certainly heading that way. It's a slow transition to prepare/condition people psychologically to be exploited in that way, much like microtransactions in games slowly ramped up to where we are now with companies like EA just flagrantly abusing it and trying to rip off customers (Battlefront 2).
The only thing that would change is you have to pay extra to visit site like Netflix, Youtube, Twitch, Spotify, Facebook, Amazon, ETC.
They aren't going to micro-manage every single service and website.
This is absolutely rediculous. You're going to keep paying for internet and be able to play Pantheon for no extra fees. The only extra fees are to visit mega businesses that live on the net.
/rantover - not trying to start an argument. The last I will post in here.