The Internet Is Dying. Repealing Net Neutrality Hastens That Death.
When the rules go, the internet will still work, but it will look like and feel like something else altogether — a network in which business development deals, rather than innovation, determine what you experience, a network
that feels much more like cable TV than the technological Wild West that gave you Napster and Netflix.
A handful of broadband companies — AT&T, Charter, Comcast
and Verizon, many of which are also aiming to become content companies, because why not — provide virtually all the internet connections to American homes and smartphones.
In a legal journal, he outlined an idea for regulation to preserve the internet’s equal-opportunity design — and hence was born “net neutrality.”
Though it has been through a barrage of legal challenges
and resurrections, some form of net neutrality has been the governing regime on the internet since 2005.
order would undo the idea completely; companies would be allowed to block or demand payment
for certain traffic as they liked, as long as they disclosed the arrangements.
At the time, there were persistent reports of broadband companies seeking to block or otherwise frustrate
these new services; in a few years, some broadband providers would begin blocking new services outright.
When I pointed out to a Comcast spokeswoman that the company’s promises were only voluntary —
that nothing will prevent Comcast from one day creating special tiers of internet service with bundled content, much like the way it now sells cable TV — she suggested I was jumping the gun
