“You need to know this. We are now seeing the second attack on net neutrality from the same company - Comcast. Level 3 Communications - an Internet company that carries Netflix’s streaming movie service - was hit with what it called an unfair fee by Comcast for sending data across the Internet. Thomas Stortz - Level 3’s chief legal officer said - “Comcast is effectively putting up a toll booth at the borders of its broadband Internet access network.” If so - this would go directly against the FCC’s rule preventing Internet Service Providers from deciding on which type of web traffic they want to administer. It would also prove the lie of those who say the Internet is still free and wide-open and therefore legislation and government oversight is not needed. With Comcast on the verge of receiving federal approval to buyout NBC - we could see an avalanche of restrictions placed on Internet data by Comcast. If Comcast isn’t stopped soon and suddenly by Congress or the Obama Administration, free and open Internet may be a thing of the past.”
—Thom Hartmann
Not really. Netflix could offer a VPN service to bypass comcasts filtering or utilize a tor like system… and really in the end netflix, google etc will just play hardball with comcast.
Their customers will be pretty fucking pissed when they cant access netflix, google etc simply because comcast is being an asshole company. Who are the customers more loyal to comcast or google, netflix, facebook etc? My bet is its not comcast. Granted some customers have no choice but I’m sure after a few hundred thousand rage filled phone calls they might change their policy on net neutrality.
Besides the US government is already doing far worse things to the internet in the name of ‘combating piracy’. They essentially have control over all the domain names on the internet and are now choosing to exercise that control by deleting domain names they do not approve of.
So far its domains loosely affiliated with piracy but for how long who knows?
If we dont remove control of the root name servers from the US government then we can say goodbye to the internet as we know it. I’m sure mig and a few others still in the IT trade are more knowledgeable on this issue than I am but IMO its a far worse evil than net neutrality.