I have been thinking a lot about this subject, from the regulation or de-regulation standpoint, which is a pretty hot topic in the anarchist/libertarian community. This also ties into a greater problem, but let me just tell you my opinion about it.
I do support Net Neutrality
Now before you downvote this post into oblivion, let me make my case here. I can prove to you, logically, that supporting Net Neutrality is the best choice if you want to maximize freedom and choose the least coercive way, even if it sounds controversial.
What is Net Neutrality
Net Neutrality would be a Government regulation whereas the Government would force ISP's to not discriminate between packets, and forbid them from throttling any of their user's clients.
So basically I am advocating here for Government regulation, as an Individualist Anarchist/Anarcho-Capitalist, which I might not forgive myself for this later, but I have weighted in the drawbacks and benefits and it looks like this regulation would actually reduce coercion. You know very rarely the Government does something good too, even a broken clock is right 2 times a day. This is one of those rare times, let me explain.
Proof
Usually the Government only wants to expand it's own power. Make no mistake about it, this case is no different. They only want to gain more power, I know that. So I am not supporting this regulation because I like these useless bureaucrats, but because the alternative is far worse.
I also know that all problems can easily be linked back to the Government, so it's probably an earlier regulation that made the situation so bad, that you need a new regulation like this to correct it, but all that does it just aggravates the situation. This might be the case but either way, the Government will not go away on it's own, so either it will collapse under it's own weight, or we play inside this system, and try to make things easier for average people. There is no way in my opinion.
And on the Internet, there is a lot more threat from giant Corporations than from the Government. Let's face it, the Government can already do whatever they want, they are unaccountable, so 1 more regulation is not going to make a difference, it literally can't make things worse. It can only make things better.
However Corporations, ISP can easily fuck with people, slowing down their internet because they might be suspected of piracy? No trial, of course, just suspicion. Or establishment social media slowing down Steemit, or basically any establishment Corporations, slowing down webpages of their competitors, by bribing the local ISPs. It can turn out very bad.
You know Google is a massive beast, they control a massive chunk of ther internet and they have their ISP, Google Fiber, and they have already been caught censoring competitors (ProtonMail), I kind of hate the EU because of their Nazi origins and many other reasons, but they did 1 thing right by fining Google for their malice.
So State power is not really that invasive other than a few websites get taken down from time to time and of course the surveillance (which is questionable, I mean these Corporations can log just as much data about internet users than the Government). But other than that, it's mostly the big players that control the internet.
So we have the following giants:
- Twitter
... and the others
And they are all censoring people one way or the other. So is this the internet what people want? Because they are already entrenched.
And on the ISP side, you can't outcompete them if the lousy ISP is allied with these. They can slow down a website so much that everyone will just use the establishment system, where any dissent and criticism is censored.
This is totalitarianism. In fact, these Corporations behave exactly like Governments, they don't use violence, but they own the Internet, an ISP is like a sovereign from which you rent your access to the internet. So it's like a proto-State.
What is the difference? So enforcing net-neutrality literally can't make things worse, it can only make things better, by providing a kind of neutrality, since the internet is now a warzone between mega-Corporations, and we don't want that to affect our casual browsing.
And this is a huge political risk too, these censored social media platforms like Facebook, can influence elections and public opinion. Do you want these to reign supreme forever? Because Steemit would guaranteed get throttled if these ISP's get their way.
So in this very very rare occasion, this particular regulation is useful.
Meshnets
So we have to understand there are no alternatives to ISP's yet, a future potential solution would be Meshnets:
But of course these are hard to achieve since a Government regulation blocks this, the radio licensing requirements:
So it's kind of ironic that you need a new regulation, because an old regulation blocks competition. Yeah I know, it's lame, it’s always the Government that is the root cause, although I am not sure what would happen if everyone would start up their radio broadcast from their garage, the interference would probably make all frequencies unusable, so a radio license might not be a bad regulation either.
However these are the facts, it doesn't matter now ideally speaking how things would be better without a Government, we have urgent problems, the massive Corporate control and censorship of our lives on the Internet is a pretty damn big problem.
So in my opinion enforcing net neutrality, until meshnets become widespread, is necessary for us to have a decent open internet. Otherwise get ready for all cryptocurrency websites, Steemit, Bitcointalk (due to bankster influence) and freedom oriented competitors like Protonmail, DuckDuckGo, and companies like this, to be massively throttled and censored. Do we really want that?
Check out this place where you can learn more about Net Neutrality:
Sources:
https://pixabay.com
I've always been distrustful of net neutrality as well. The intentions are good on the surface, but politicians will likely sneak some bullshit into the bill to line their pockets.
Probably, but at this point the corporate dominance and censorship done by giants is more alarming to me personally. The government can already do all kinds of evil stuff if they want so this doesn't add or subtract anythin. But from the perspective of average internet users and small cryptocurrency projects, this could be advantageous.
Startpage is a good substitute for DuckDuckGo
Nice post (:
https://searx.me is also good
And Ixquick
W3C just approved DRM on internet 😞
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/07/over-many-objections-w3c-approves-drm-for-html5/
Yes that is kind of bad. But how does that affect webpages? What if the website editor just doesnt care about their standards, because I think they are just like a standard issuing organization, so people can just ignore them.
No idea. Lets see the outcome...
I did some more research, I think it's overhyped fearmongering, it only adds some encrypted content system into video players like flash and silverlight.
So basically if you watch Netflix and other private videos it makes it harder to copy them. Well it's kind of ok I guess, if everyone would just pirate these videos then the content producers would go broke.
But it doesn't really affect other parts of a HTML website. And even then it will be the choice of every website to upgrade to this or not.
So if your favorite website owner adds DRM to his website then that is clearly his choice.
Oh... Thanks for letting me know. :)
I feel that this is a lost cause.
But, for the sake of argument, I will offer my perspectives.
Boogle is owned by the deep state. They are known censorers. And have never let regulations get in the way of offering advertisements.
Everything the govern-cement has done with regulations has hurt the little person while helping the big corporation.
The govern-cement already has black boxes (and yes, they are black) installed all over the internet. They control whatever it is they want to control. Bamf'ing, DNS, packet capture, metadata recording...
To me, net neutrality will end up with the wolves making a deal with the foxes to guard the hen house. Yes, I think it would be a great idea to have a new constitutional amendment, such as "Don't fucks with the interwebs", but I just don't see it happening.
My efforts will go into providing an internet alternative/improvement.
Well the EU just fined them, so that is not entirely true.
Yes but in this case there is no little person. All ISP's are giant datacenters basically, it's like banks, you need billions of $ of capital to open one due to the regulations and operating costs anyway.
So there is no small ISP that would get hurt, in most countries there are only like 3-4 ISP's, well that is not a very free market by default isn't it?
Yes exactly, so this regulation doesn't really add any more power to the Government per se, but it can take over some of the censorship capabilities of giants.
Let me put it this way, if the government wants Bitcoin gone, they can probably do it. Same way with Steemit.
But the Government really doesn't care that much, but I bet big social media companies would want Steemit gone, so it would be easier for them to "lobby" an ISP to throttle traffic of Steemit users, than to lobby the Government to ban Steemit.
So I think a lot of the hostility towards cryptocurrencies will come from entrenched corporate oligarchs, and not necessarily the Government.
Yes a Meshnet would be nice, but until then, this is the best we got.
I agree, net neutrality is a very important issue and something needs to be done about it