I was thinking a possible conspiracy theory behind the whole Net Neutrality thing. For those who don’t know what Net Neutrality is (quoted from wikipedia)
It identifies network bias toward or against particular classes of application or providers of content or services.
The general principle that network providers should not discriminate between people or organizations that provide services over a network. Companies selling broadband Internet access to consumers should not make contracts with service providers (such as websites) to provide better Internet access than is available for service providers who don’t have such agreements.
In the Philippines it really doesn’t matter because we’ve already lost the battle. Our telcos pretty much have a monopoly over the communication resources – so we are all already living in a world where “Net Neutrality” is already a lost cause.
In the Philippines
Case in point: I’m sure the telcos (or at least some organization in the country) already have the means and infrastructure to offer similar speeds to what the other countries can provide to their residents. You’d be surprised that even business connections here can be slower than residential lines in the US. And the prices of those residential lines, when converted to Philippine currency, are roughly the same (20-40USD a month). The difference though, is that in the US, your throughput is easily doubled at the same price.
Now where does the futility of the Net Neutrality argument come into play here? Simple: even if the country and our corporations have the means and infrastructure, since there’s a monopoly on it, they can dictate the price/performance offerings. The “strategy” I notice is that they merely up the ante just enough to give them an edge over their competitors.
So applying that to real life it’s simple as an ISP having a really fat pipe. Let’s say they could offer a 5Mbps (5120kbps / 640KBps) connection for 2k (roughly 30 dollars which I think is close to the going rate in the US). For as long as they beat the competition, they will go as low as they possibly can. So your 2k only gets you like .75Mbps (768kbps / 96KBps). While they’re perfectly capable of giving you 5Mbps for 2k, why should they – when all the other “competitors” are offering their services at a higher price? And again, since they’re monopolizing the industry, we have no choice but to take in the ass all the time.
When you see people happy that their connections have been bumped up for the same price, you assume those rewards for loyalty are worth getting you tied to the ISP. Bullshit! It’s simply because they throttled down what everyone should really be getting in the first place – so it’s easy for them to give you the illusion that you’re being “taken care of.” Also notice that their packages in general speed up whenever there’s an offering by a competitor that beats them in value. Go figure.
In the USA
Anyways, that’s in the Philippine context. The point of my post was actually the whole Net Neutrality issue in the USA.
It’s the same principle basically, but this is has more impact on the services available to the consumer within the net. While I’m sure speed will still be affected by the tiered system, the bigger issue of not having Net Neutrality for Americans is the selective prioritization of certain services that can afford to buy influence into the user’s web-experience.
A rough example could be theorized in the search engine business. If by any chance you’re locked into an ISP that has been bought into by search engine A, then the ISP has the ability to throttle down connections (or maybe even block) to other search engines (should their contract stipulate that)… if you happen to like a search engine other than A then you’re out of luck.
Of course this is an unlikely possibility… but a theoretical possibility nonetheless. I’m sure public opinion will still limit as to what extent the corporations can apply their “evil schemes.”
What if…
Now comes my conspiracy theory. I would think the losing battle for Net Neutrality has something to do with the fact of controlling piracy. Because let’s face it. Even if an ISP is bought into by a corporation, if there are other ISPs that offer a better “setup” then to some extent, that lack of Net Neutrality is tolerable – because people can easily shift ISPs. This inevitable competition will still ultimately drive the ISPs to leverage their services to be palatable to the general public.
But a for piracy – you have organizations such as the MPAA, with really deep pockets which will go to ridiculous lengths to stop piracy. They’ll now have a convenient avenue to achieve their goals. The whole PirateBay ordeal proves that they already tried influencing other sovereign states to take action – even if it meant going against the other state’s constitution. That ultimately didn’t work, and it should now be clear to them that they can’t bully other countries to adopt their policies… so what’s the next best thing they can possibly do? How about start influencing the ISPs with their agenda. If the can’t get ISPs to cooperate because of their legal concerns, then they can just buy into the stakes like any other premium client of the ISP and demand such blocks as part of the client contract.
If Net Neutrality is thrown out the window (which as of now, is probably what will be happening), and if ISPs services are dictated by who puts in the most money for favors, then it’s not so far fetched that they just make it so hard for every person to access any site that the legal entities deem “illegal.” So the MPAA and the like probably can get what they want while playing by the book.
I may be missing the point totally here, but I just noticed that if the MPAA has enough influence to actually trigger another country government to take action when they shouldn’t have – that they probably have enough influence in the American government itself.