Comments on: Making sense of the MPAA's latest retro take on tech

The group's Dan Glickman comes out with a blistering attack on Net neutrality, but does he really believe what his speech writers wrote for him? That would be the bigger shock.

[Dalkorian]

This is simple - the evil known as the RIAA/MPAA is against net neutrality. Therefore net neutrality is what is best for the consumer. Period.

Or we could allow ISP's like concast (misspelled in purpose) to dictate what we are and are not allowed to do with the connection we're paying them for. We could allow concast to decide that BitTorrent is not to be used ... we could allow concast to throttle YouTube as well (since that directly competes with their crappy TV lineup). We could be just like communist china, or nazi germany back in the 30's and 40's, where censorship is expected and the public has no rights whatsoever.

Is that what America really wants??

[Leria]

In some cases..... unfortunately that is what America wants. I have actually heard some normally smart people saying that should be the norm, that an ISP can filter if something competes with their offerings.... which is a crock, but some of these people are 'true believers' that it would cut down on piracy (which is not as big of a loss maker as software makers imply).

[t8]

Yes

[harscoet]

But yet it is true that the vast majority of the BitTorrent traffic is pirate content, noone can dispute that.
So though I see that it would be unfair for the tiny amount of P2P traffic that may be legal, why should ISPs pay the cost of the huge bandwith increase caused by this illegal traffic ?
When the same thing happened with spam, everybody agreed that ISP shouldn't pay for the bandwith and should block it, why not with pirated stuff I wonder. Oh I know, everybody hates spam but many like 'free' pirate content ...

Since when blocking illegal content has become a bad thing ?

[justdenny]

If you think that only BitTorrent, other P2P, or "illegal" content will be blocked, and that will be the only ramifications of this battle, you are in for a very, very big surprise when Net neutrality becomes a thing of the past.

[tallmanscomplex]

This whole "net neutrality" thing is a crock. Why shouldn't ISPs have the right to do what they want with the networks that they spend big money on to build and maintain. Just because somebody pays more for a "higher tier" of service doesn't mean that I will get terrible service. When UPS started offering overnight delivery, they did not degrade their ground shipping service. History tells us that generally speaking, the more the government regulation on something, the more expensive and less innovative it becomes. Read this:

http://capmag.com/article.asp?id=5125

[BCF1968]

You're crazy, these companies that get charged for "higher tier" of service WILL hurt you. Where do you think the money is going to come from to pay this extra expense? YOU the consumer. Do you think these companies are just going to eat the extra costs? HAHAHA! The fact is EVERY website already pays for bandwidth. Why people are still ignorant of this I'm not sure. Now you want them to pay TWICE?

[timothywmurray]

While I am totally for net neutrality legislation such as what is currently proposed... Well I'm just confused as to who could possibly be against it. The Studios will make more money because there will be less friction in the distribution content. The cable companies will make more money because they will develop service options to bill per amount of bandwidth used (which is totally different from selective filtering of content). The end users will be better off, The advertisers will have more and more targeted channels to use. Even the politicians will benefit because they will have more stakeholder giving them graft. The only losers are industries whose revenue streams depend on distributing drivel that not many people want (at least not many with he money advertisers are targeting) . That would include the RIAA and the MPAA

[JadedGamer]

Basically, not having Net Neutrality opens the floodgates for what is essentially a "protection money" racket, where an ISP can choose to effectively downgrade connections to content providers who do not pay them a fee. Is it really in MPAA's interest that e.g. (free) trailers for movies will not be available in full quality to customers unless movie companies pay a "badwidth fee" to a multitude of ISPs? And in the case of P2P there isn't one content provider but thousands...

Also, ISPs opposing Net Neutrality need to look at what makes their customers their customers: Yes, the transfer of (popular) content is expensive, but wiithout that content they would not have any customers in the first place because that's what people get internet access for.