The War on Net Neutrality

tech stuff, you may remember that joke. I'm making it again, make the same joke in the Okay, So today we're talking about net neutrality, and um, Jonathan and Chris did an episode called how Net Neutrality Works way back on December fifteenth, two eight, and I made that same joke then some jokes. Just I'm glad. I'm glad that you've advanced so much as a joke teller in the intervening five years. I learned from my mistakes. I can repeat

them almost exactly. Yeah. So we're gonna talk about net neutrality. And the reason why we're bringing this back up is because it's in the news again. It's also you know, back in two thousand and eight when Chris and I did the the episode that was before a lot of the actual FCCS rules and regulations on net neutrality had been formalized, so there's actually been quite a bit of development since we first did it. Now the basics remain the same as in what the actual concept of net

neutrality is. And before we get any further into this, the reason we're doing this, besides the fact that's in the news, is that one of our valuable listeners actually asked us to cover it, right. Yeah, Bob m via Facebook wrote in and said, how about a podcast on net neutrality? What other topic is there? Yeah, And and honestly, I mean it's it's big, it's very big. It's very ongoing, as we will slowly unveiled over the course of the next four hours. No, we're not gonna We're not gonna

do that. But first of all, I mean, this is a concept that is core to what the intent was of the Internet. If you're to talk to any of the architects of the Internet, any of the people who built the protocols, whenever they talk about the Internet, this is the kind of stuff they say was their idea from the start was this net neutrality approach. So what

does that mean? Well, on a very simple level, it means that you should be able to use any Internet service provider to access any kind of legal service or site that's available on the Internet. And it should be a level playing field, right, You know that no I s P should be allowed to deny a content provider

access to that UM disbursement. Yeah, exactly, So anyone using it on either side, whether you are someone who's creating websites and services or you're a person who wants to consume them, should be able to use any Internet service provider and expect the same experience. Now, we all know that things can happen, right There's the Internet is a network of networks, and so sometimes you can get traffic on the network of networks. Sometimes you can get a

server that's overwhelmed. That kind of stuff is based on the hardware and the signals that are coming through at any given point in time. You can run into as as we all have many different kinds of of slowdowns and problems. But right now, so so that's that's that's just, that's that's what, Yeah, exactly. You don't want to artificially introduce those issues, which is really where net neutrality comes along. So I thought it would be fun to use a couple of examples, so I wrote them down in my

notes and I got super technical. So you use Joe's Internet service for your I s P. We're talking, of course, about Joe McCormick, our co host from Forward Thinking. Clearly, he I'm sure has aspirations of running his own Internet service provider business. And Joe has a lot of aspiration. He does. He aspires constantly. So Joe has his Internet service provider, that's your I s P. You use Joe's. Now, you typically visit three sites. Now, one of those sites

happens to be run by Joe. He's not. He's not just the provider. He's also a content creator. Oh yeah, he's a really good writer. Yeah. So then you've got these two other sites that are not Joe's. Now, under the rules of net neutrality, you would be able to visit all three of those sites with an equal playing field, and that the same speed and bandwidth would apply across all three sites. Keeping in mind, like we said before,

sometimes on the Internet, traffic clog stuff up. So maybe one day one site loads a little more slowly than another, but they're all using the same kind of connections. Now, let's imagine a dark scary world where net neutrality is no longer in play, and you again are using Joe's Internet service, but now it's not acting the same way dead back in the in the glory days of net neutrality. Now, when you visit Joe's website, it loads incredibly fast, it's

almost instantaneous. But whenever you try and go to one of those other two sites you used to go to all the time, it just takes forever for them to load. Sometimes they don't load at all, and you might even be denied the access to them. This is the world where Joe is able to decide what stuff you can access and how quickly you can access it. So what you're saying is that Joe is on purpose throttling my connection to these websites that he doesn't known, throttling the

life out of it, Lauren, That's exactly what I'm saying. Yeah, So this is the fear of net neutrality, uh, and and what would happen if it goes away? And why the story is so important right now? So there are a lot of different implications with net neutrality and or the absence of net neutrality. Uh. You could end up not just having an I s P that gives preferential

treatment to certain sites while holding other sites back. You could also have an I s P that ends up creating a tiered system, right, you might have imagine all the different scenarios. I could have a system where, uh, let's say that for one price, like a baseline price, I get the I s P service where certain sites load up very quickly. Anything that belongs to the Internet service provider or partners with them loads quickly. Everything else

loads really slowly. Maybe there's a higher level of service where if I'm willing to pay more as a customer, then I get a level playing ground. Like that's a possibility, but it means that you know, you suddenly are are having to choose, you know what, what's going to happen. Or if they don't offer that choice, then you have

a scary world where you have a fractured internet. Right. So, depending upon which Internet service provider you happen to subscribe to, you would have access to certain sites and not and services and not access to other ones. So let's say, Lauren, that you are a Comcast customer and I'm an a

T and T customer. It's possible that our two experiences of the Internet are completely different, and that you go to sites that I can't go to and vice versa, kind of similar to the to the way that some cable television providers will offer certain packages of channels that others do not. Yeah. In fact, it really reminds me of the old days of online service providers, where you might have like a O l as one and I have uh Spring Prodigy, thank you, Yeah, I'll have Prodigy.

Is another one which means that you get content over the Internet, but well, not over the Internet online, I should say, because online service providers, you get content online. I get content online, but it's two totally different packages of content based upon what those companies curate for us. That's kind of what the Internet could potentially turn into without net neutrality, and it's why a lot of people are upset. Now. There of course, are multiple sites of

this argument. It's not all just you know, it sounds like I'm I'm painting this picture where there's just one side, ah right, right, and you are kind of painting the the deepest orwelly in kind of dystopia of of the absence of net neutrality. But there are arguments against net neutrality and to be fair lot of them are are being put forth on behalf of people who could who could um stand to financially benefit from the absence, right right? Um?

But you know, the arguments against it state that like over regulation of the Internet by the government could create uncertainty in the Internet market, um, thus discouraging investment and stifling innovation. Um, which maybe, I mean there are other the The counter to that is saying that a fair

playing field creates a fluid market that everyone can play on. So, for example, a smaller internet service would be able to effectively run a business on a level playing field, but could be completely run out of business in a world where I s p s choose who they play with and who they don't, right. Or you know, if if you set up kind of expense tears for how much bandwidth you're going to get, then someone like Amazon could play in that field. But could your you know, mom

and pop corner website do the same thing? Maybe not? Yeah, yeah, if you're a multibillion corporation, you're gonna milk billion dollar I should say billion dollar corporation. You you could afford this,

You're still gonna fight it. I mean, any any corporation is gonna fight if it means that they are going to have to pay something that otherwise they would not have to pay, they'll fight against it or pass the buck onto their customer a k A. Yeah, yeah, their customer ultimately will be us, whether their customer, like maybe their first customer is another company, but that company's customers

might be us. You know, Eventually it trickles down to where we end up having higher prices for the services and and and sites that we want to be able to utilize. Right well, although you know, I would also argue that the counter to that would be that either way we are paying for our Internet service, and whether we're paying more to the internet service providers or to these companies that might end up in a mafia like

situation have to pay their Internet service providers. The bandwidth Sure is a nice website you got here, be a real shame at someone out and they'll burn it down. No, I mean, I I think the analogy is perfectly legitimate. I mean, I would not back off of that for a second. I think I think the two of us are clearly a little bit biased that neutrality. We might be just a touch, but then again, our livelihood depends

upon the Internet. So it does, and you know it's so, so take take everything that we're saying with a little bit of a grain of salt. But um, but back to back to arguments against it, because I do think that that creating uncertainty in the Internet market due to overregulation is a completely fair Yes, for sure, you could you could make rules and regulations that far overstep the intent level playing ground. Yes, I agree, that is entirely bad.

If you put in regulations that put the I s p s at a disadvantageous position, then there's no reason to be in that business anymore, and then we're stuck in a totally different problem. So yes, the regulations have to be fair and they have to be level. Yeah,

otherwise it's just bad news. And there's there's also the argument that those kind of regulations could prevent I s p s to from managing traffic on their networks, and those those arguments have been made in court before, and most of the time, from what I've seen, the FCC has said the which we'll talk more about the FCC later, but they tend to say, uh that networks do have

the right to to take care of traffic. So if there are traffic bottlenecks or problems rerouting that is perfectly within the rights of that company, because ultimately that's better for everybody. Oh sure, not no one. I don't think that. I don't think that the government wants to have their fingers that deep in it, because that sounds problematic for Yeah, that would be I mean apart from the n s

A who has their elbows deep into it. Yeah, I don't think the government really wants to get that involved. Oh that's a whole other podcast. But they're not so much concerned about about traffic bottlenecks. They're more concerned about the content. So let's be fair, Okay. Another argument against IT neutrality says that competition between I s p s will naturally discourage anyone company from throttling business from content providers.

I would I would agree with that if it were the case that as a consumer I had equal access to all I s p s. Because here's the reality in the United States. I don't know about the rest of the world, but in the US, it is uh not uncommon to have a very few, a very limited selection of choices when it comes to I s p s, particularly if you live someplace like say an apartment complex,

which might have a contract with a particular provider. I've I've lived in an apartment complexes where you didn't have any choice. If you wanted to have cable access, cable internet access, or just cable TV access, you had one option, uh and if you didn't want that option, then it meant you didn't have that service. So it's not like

I have access to all of these. You might have access to some smaller I s p s. But even though smaller I s p s most of the time are working on the larger I s p s actual networks. So it's possible that if a larger I s P has these policies that go against net neutrality, that it would trickle down to these other smaller one And so you feel like you're going to avoid it because you're not going with the big guy who has the scary policy. But if the little guys working on the big guys network,

it may still affect you. So I mean, I wish we lived in the world where we had all those choices, because then I think this wouldn't be a problem. All you would what would happen is you would have UH I s p s that would experiment with throttling certain traffic and allowing other traffic to go quickly. Other I s p s would say, Hey, if we don't do that, we're going to get lots of customers, and then the playing ground would would level out through that. But that's

not the reality. Yeah, that's the way that it stands. It's not really all. That's not real. Yeah, problem um. But so in essence, what this campus saying is that creating net neutrality regulations is fixing what's not broken and that generally bad. Yeah, I I and I can understand that. My counter to that is net neutrality rules prevent it from breaking. So it's not that it's fixing something it's

not broken, it's making sure it doesn't break. Because it's better to be proactive than reactive in this case, is my is my personal point of view now that I can't stress that enough. That's my personal philosophy. Is it's better to go ahead and have these in place to protect against breaking. And and especially considering that a lot of you know, like we've been talking about using Joe,

is that example. For example, Comcast has its own streaming services and it might be advantageous to Comcast to throttle, say Netflix, sure, yeah, exact financially, because then you've got you know, if you are discouraging people from using a competing service, then they're more likely to use your service.

At least that's generally the line of thinking. So if I happen to be both an I s P and a content creator, then it certainly is within my interests to make sure that the experience of getting to my stuff is painless. And if I can make getting to competitor stuff painful or at least not convenient, it, then

I am making extra money. Right. Not only am I making money off of charging people to use the Internet because I'm an Internet service provider, but theoretically there's some other means of generating revenue through the content I create as well, So you end up making lots of cash. And if you then charge other companies to be put on that same fast track, you're making money that way too.

There's a lot of money here in build books. That's kind of when I'm getting at um, speaking of money, money, you know, it actually costs money to build out infrastructure. It costs money to be able to support the amount of traffic that's going on a network. So you know, it means that, you know, they have to have that money because it is a business. It's not like it's it's some sort of weird charity or public good thing. This is a business and businesses are in it to

generate revenue and profits. So in order to do that there and and still build out a competitive infrastructure and maintain it, uh, that that's a cost. That's an ongoing post and it's it's a really high and really um intricate cost. Actually, I mean, I think that probably most people listening to this show have have broadband internet access and take it a little bit for granted at this juncture because it's probably in your pocket and your desktop

at home and etcetera, etcetera. But that is that is not what most of the world has at this point. And if anyone I s P or or any number of is sp s even could afford to build out their infrastructure further, that would be a great boon to them. Right. So, so obviously this is you know, like we said, it's a pretty complicated issue that the concept of net neutrality is incredibly simple, but the end, the the consequences of

what happens if net neutrality isn't a factor. Are pretty complex, So there's you know, there are a lot of different ways to approach this. I mean, there's the hope that the market would support net neutrality simply on its own because it's the most advantageous for everybody. That's that's sort

of the ideal, but it's not necessarily proven. Uh. Then there's the fact that we've had some government agencies step in and try and create some regulations and some rules to codify the net neutrality so that it ends up being de facto. That's that's the situation, right, that's gonna be the status quo, and to go outside of that would be breaking the law. But that itself is complicated, so complicated in fact, that we're going to take a

quick break right now to thank our sponsor. Alright, So, like we said, there are there's a in the United States, we've actually had some government regulations step in and recently it was overturned, which is a big thing in the news.

But to start off, we need to talk about the agency that tried to create actual legal rules to govern net neutrality, and that is the Federal Communications Commission or f c C. Now, their their job is to regulate interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable. So some of the FCC's duties have gotten a little cloudy because those definitions aren't as clear cut as they

used to be. Yeah, when the FCC was created, the Internet didn't exist, So what to do with all of this new fangled stuff has been certainly in question many times over the past few decades, and early on the Internet's life, there was a fear that putting it under the mantle of the f c C would stifle its ability to grow. And you know, that was one of those real concerns, was the idea that you know, you could kill this before it could be anything by putting

in too much oversight and regulation. So there's a lot of hesitancy on the part of the government to step in and really, you know, get involved in this. And in fact, if you if you look at the history of f c C getting involved with with net neutrality,

it's relatively recent. I mean keep in mind that the Internet and the Worldwide Web even it's been around for a few decades now, but it wasn't until two thousand five that FCC really gotten of the net neutrality well to well to back up just a little bit, I did want to put in that the FCC defines broadband providers as being different from other telecommunication systems, and that was laid out back in with the Federal Talngue Communications

Act of Yeah. And then the thing to remember is that broadband providers are in information services, right, which is different from the telecommunication services, which was considered more of the actual networks that allow people to uh to make calls or whatever whatever those systems happened to be that

the FEC looks over. So that's important because that that distinction ends up being the very key to the to the arguments that we're seeing come to light right now, right, And this this distinction was upheld in a two five Supreme Court decision of the National Cable and Telecommunication Association versus Brand X Internet Services. This will come back in a moment. But um, other things that happened in two five, well, yeah, that's when the FCC created the Open Internet Regulations, also

known as net neutrality. And these were rules that were announced in two thousand five and included that well, they said essentially that consumers are entitled to certain rights which include access to the lawful Internet content of their choice, So clearly anything that's against the law, things that violate copyright for example, or have illicit material in them, they

are not protected. Also the ability to run applications and services of their choice, so again internet connected services, in other words, not limiting it just to using a browser to look at a website, but all things connected to the Internet, including things like email, etcetera. Then also the ability to connect the types of devices of their choice to the network, assuming those devices are legal and aren't

designed to hurt the network, which is great. This is saying that your internet service provider would not be allowed to, uh, say yes, you can completely hook up your your laptop to the cable modem, but we're not going to allow any mobile devices to hook up to WiFi rite or to say, um, yes you can hook up your Mac, but you cannot hook up your PC. Yeah, that would

be That would be another great example. So this rule would essentially say no, it has to be agnostic towards all platforms that are capable of connecting to your network, assuming that they're not designed to hurt it or be you know, or that there they themselves are illegal, and then also said that uh, customers are entitled to access

to competing services among networks and content providers. Uh, well, there's a little I mean, like I said, in certain areas in the United States, internet service providers operate at an effective monopoly, so that one is probably the weakest among those four. Uh. At any rate, those were kind of the proposed rules, but it wasn't like it was again a formal thing. This was uh, you know, sort of what they were saying, this is what we want

to protect, right right. Nonetheless, people started kind of possing up on on both sides of net neutrality. Um, hands off dot org was in favor of the Internet service providers and Save the Internet dot Com was in favor of net neutrality, and both were saying that they were trying to save the Internet, and it was a little

bit confusing. Yeah. Um so on October twenty two, two thousand nine, so this is after the original text Off net Neutrality episode went out, the FCC saw out public input on drafting formal rules that would guard the Internet's neutral status, and they adopted the Open Internet R and

O on November two thousand eleven. And those rules are actually a little odd in that not everyone is treated the same way, the wireless providers were given a slightly um looser leash in a way, because wireless at that time was starting to was just starting to take off, whereas the wired broadband services had been around for us.

But yeah, yeah, things like UH three G four g UM and and other wireless UH standards and protocols were relatively young, and so the idea was that we don't again same sort of idea that was around earlier, saying we don't want to overregulate a young industry and thus UH end up inhibiting its ability to blossom. So the wireless ones have a little bit there. The restrictions aren't

quite as um tight as the wired ones. So then you know, everything was great, right, I mean, everyone just said these are fantastic rules, and I absolutely agree with everything you say, and the world is a better place everyone except the internet service providers. Yeah yeah, okay, So it didn't take very long before these rules were challenged,

um like officially in court. Yeah, Verizon Communications stepped up to the plate and challenged these rules, and they said that the FCC doesn't have the authority to make such regulations and that Congress had never given the FCC any authority to make such regulations. Therefore these rules are moot it. You don't have the authority to make the rules. Therefore the rules don't exist. Yeah, and trying to make them

is illegal. And your face is downb Yeah, that was pretty much I think was actually in the deposition was your dumb face was in there somewhere. They used legal ease, but the intent, we think is there um at any rate, this this one through the courts for a good long while because I mean, you know so, so we just we just said that that was late Yeah, and it's early February when we record this, and uh so it hasn't been that long since this decision was handled handed down.

It was the Court of Appeals for the d C Circuit which ruled two to one that the FCC does in fact have the authority to regulate broadband and wireless service providers. That against Verizon Communications, they said that the FEC didn't have that authority. This court said, no, they've got the authority. But those rules of the open Internet that the f CC came up with, we're based upon a flawed foundation and therefore are not valid. So it's

not that the FCC doesn't have the authority. It's just that the justifications they used to build their rules, they don't they don't exist, right, right that they were saying that because the f c C has has previously put out that broadband service providers are not to be treated like telecommunications providers, that rules for telecommunications providers cannot be

applied to broadband service providers. Yeah, this is where that definition comes back to bite us, right because that definition where we say that broadband providers are information services, not common carriers, then that's where that's where it all breaks down. Because the rules that the FCC had had created were for common carriers. It was based on the rules for common carriers. And if if it's if you know, it's saying like, you can't treat an orange like an apple

because an orange is not an apple. So just because you have rules for apples doesn't mean those rules apply to oranges. That's essentially what we're saying here. So I know, one thing that I wanted to clear up was what the heck is a common carrier? What what does this common carrier thing mean? And it actually dates back to a concept called just common carriage, and common carriage was that if you have a business that uses some form of a fundamental service that that that uses public rights

of way, you cannot discriminate with that service. You have to you have to allow open access to every everybody. Right. So here's an example that I read that I thought was a good one. Let's say that you operate a ferry. So you've got to You've got a little boat that you ferry people across a river. But that river is a public right of way. You can't deny anyone's service on that ferry because you're using a public right of way.

And so telecommunications, those networks are considered a public right of way, and it was really important in those early days because it meant that if you were one telephone company and you're competing against another telephone company, you could not deny your customers the ability to call the other companies customers. All right. We talked about this some in our A T and T Mini series. Yeah, we did exactly. Yeah, it was one of those things where it was an

important decision. It meant that it leveled that playing field, so you had options on what company you wanted you wanted to use, depending upon how many were available in your region. And you didn't have to worry that the option you chose would limit your ability to make phone calls. Well, those rules don't apply to broadband service providers because they don't. They aren't under the definition of common carriage or common carrier.

And and this is just a legal distinction. It's it doesn't mean that the FCC couldn't make up rules that do apply to broadband providers, right And and in fact, this decision upheld some of the FCC's powers over the Internet at large, which we'll get into in just a moment. But but I did I did want to say that this, this entire court decision was not quite what either side

was really hoping to hear. I mean, it was clearly on the side of the I s p s, But both sides are kind of looking at this and figuring out whether and how exactly to further appeal the decision, right, because you've got the FCC, which still apparently has this power to regulate broadband providers, they just have to figure out a different way of going about it. Then you've got the broadband providers who are told that these net neutrality rules don't apply to them because they were based

on a faulty foundation. But you know, neither side really is ready to move forward, because if if the broadband providers decide to just throw net neutrality to the wind and the FCC comes up with new rules, then they're going to have to reverse everything anyway. And meanwhile, the FCC doesn't really know if they like, they know that the providers are going to challenge the FCC's authority again.

So yeah, and in some cases a few Internet service providers have have prior regulations that are applying this to them, right. You found out a little about Comcast. It was I

did not know this. I I was looking through one of the articles about net neutrality and about this decision in particular that that overturns net neutrality, the formal net neutrality rules, and it stated that in a previous decision against Comcast, which had challenged the FCC as well UH, Comcast had agreed that it would abide by the rules

of net neutrality for seven years. Actually, and I don't even know when the date was of this particular court case, but I know I know it was not seven years ago, but Comcast agreed that they would abide by the rules of net neutrality for seven years. Even if those rules were to change or be thrown out entirely, they would still abide by them. So uh so, that means that Comcast at least will be playing fair by the by the standards of net neutrality for as long as those

seven years are still in effect. So if, even if, even if net neutrality is completely a thing of the past for a while, anyone who's got Comcast service will still be experiencing it at least, you know, there's they should be like, assuming that everyone's behaving themselves. You know.

So maybe sometime I'll write up a blog post once I figure out all the details of that, because I thought, wow, that's kind of interesting, certainly an interesting agreement to say I will abide by these rules even if the rules

cease to exist. It almost seems chivalrous. Um. So we're recording this on February five, and in the interest of full disclosure, because on February three, a group of lawmakers introduced bills both in the United States Senate and in the House of Representatives in an effort to restore the rules of net neutrality as they had been created by the FCC. Essentially, this is a stop gap. It's not

meant to be a permanent thing. But if this, this legislation was signed into law, then you would have those rules in effect until the f CC was able to draft something permanent to catch up and and make actual rules. Right. Yeah, this this one's being called the Open Internet Preservation Act. Yeah, so obviously open Internet preservation meaning that they want to

preserve those rules that have been made before. So if this gets passed, um, then we would see those rules remain in effect until the FCC came up with something more permanent. Uh so, what what are the what are the odds that's going to be passed? Well, it's bound to face some opposition in the House of Representatives. You see, the people who have proposed this bill are Democrats. The House of Representatives is controlled by the Grand Old Party,

the GOP. Uh and historically Democrats and the GOP tend to vote against one another usually actually sometimes sometimes you can see people reach across the aisle. Certainly, certainly, and a lot of the people that I have a lot of the Congress people who I've seen opposing net neutrality have been on the Republican side. Yeah, yeah, and uh, and you can draw your own conclusions about that I will leave all commentary aside for the yes, it's hurting me.

But then uh, in the Senate, it's expected to pass because the Senate happens to be controlled by the Acratic party right now. So so it may be that we see one bill passed in the Senate, one bill fail in the House of Representatives, and the the bill in the Senate would go to the House, and we have to see what would happened there. But whatever happens with that, proponents of net neutrality seem overall hopeful right now, and

for for a couple of different reasons. And that's first because, like I said earlier, that the court's ruling upheld the f SEC's power to regulate the Internet at large um that was set forth specifically under section seven h six of the Communications Act. And some people are even saying that the decision could have granted the FEC power that

the Communications Act didn't really intend. D C Circuit Judge Lawrence Silberman, said he was one of the judges involved in this recent decision, said in his dissent that the ruling gave and I quote the FCC virtually unlimited power to regulate the Internet in the future, um, which I

think is a little bit of an overstatement. Um. But but you know, there are certainly some fringe theorists who are who are passing on a little bit of doom and gloom about all of this, But it's also being talked about by net neutrality proponents as a promising it's promising, right, So yeah, I think the point when the FCC reached out its gloved hand in the middle of the court proceedings and said join me now, and you will be more powerful than you could possibly imagine that people got

a little weird feeling about it. But I can't imagine why nothing but sunshine and puppies after that. Uh No, But seriously, you know it's one of the dark side. We have puppies, puppies and chocolate, but not chocolate puppies. Alright, so except for chocolate labs, which totally different thing. No, now I've gotten off on the rails. It's clearly too warm in this room. Let's talk about some of the the quotes you've grabbed here. I found them really interesting. Yeah.

These were actually from the House Stuff Works article on on how net neutrality works, which was published way back in two thousand six. So these are so these are two thousand five, two thousand six Eric quotes, but I think that they're still extremely elevant. Yeah. The first one is from the Economist and and gives a interesting perspective

on the whole thing. Uh. The writer said, blocking your interfering with existing traffic on the Internet is unacceptable, but if operators want to build fast lands alongside it, they should be allowed to. So in other words, uh, don't throttle, but if you can build faster stuff, two things go on ahead. I mean, you know, that's one way of looking at it. Letting letting people make money, they're essentially saying, is not a bad thing. It's kind of going back

to that tiered approach I talked about earlier. And in fact, I mean we see I s p s offer tears right now where you can get a certain guarantee. Yeah, you get a guarantee of a certain bandwidth, like a certain download speed. Uh. And if you pay more than you can get more. Uh. It may very well be that, like I said, we might one day see a tier where it's a it's a lower price, but you trade off with access to certain things, or you pay the higher price and you you get access to everything that could

be an outcome. Um. My second quote is from John Hannibals Stokes who is writing for Ours Technica, and this is a long one, so stick with me, folks. He was saying the simple truth that you can't have a free market without government regulation should be so obvious that it hurts because markets rest on the rule of the law. The relationship between markets and regulation is not a binary opposition, but a continuum. Anarchy at one extreme and overregulation at

the other are both emtithetical to free markets. You have to have rules to play by because the rules guarantee that the game is fair. An excellent quote. Yeah, I agree. I mean again, you have to have rules. The trick is to make sure that the rules don't break the game, right, which is that that's the fear. I mean, it's that's tricksy. Yeah, especially when you talk about technology, which tends to outpace law by about ten years at least. So you know,

I understand why this is a complicated issue. I mean, people have a lot of dake in this and uh, and I understand why there there's opposition. I'm still very much for net neutrality personally. I like the idea that if I if I have a certain i SP that I'm going to have just the same experience going to one of their sites as one of their competitors. Um, because I mean, I'm still paying that i s P for that service, so I feel like I should have

access to everything that's out there. I don't want there to be a fractured Internet where Lauren's Internet is different from my Internet, and then I can't see the awesome cat video that she's posted because it's not on the service that my Internet service provider uses. And that right there is the best description of a dystopia that I've ever heard, you know, the inaccessibility of cat videos madness.

There would be riots in the streets, alright. So the cats and dogs living together, no, or if they did, we wouldn't know about it. At least anyone not using that i SP wouldn't know about it. Don't let that world come to be all right. So that wraps up this episode of tech stuff. Our update on net neutrality, what it is, what the arguments are, why it was in the news. Guys. If you have any questions about net neutrality or you have suggestions for other topics, you

should contact us. Let us know what you think and uh. That email address is tech Stuff at Discovery dot com. You can also send us a message on Facebook or on the twitters, or even go to tumbler. You can look for us. We have tech Stuff hs W as our handle. We'd love to hear from you, and we will talk to you again really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics, does it has staff works dot com