Net Neutrality for Dummies

Currently, it is legal for an ISP (cable company, telco, etc) to monitor Internet traffic that is coming to you and treat different data differently. They can differentiate between say, email, the web and streaming video and "throttle" one and not the other, so you still get your emails and can surf the web, but they restrict your bandwidth when it comes to watching Netflix. That's part one, and it's bad enough, but here's part two… the ISP can legally go to Netflix and tell them "we'll stop throttling your service and give your customers what they are paying for, but you have to pay us to have us do it."

Sound farfetched? Nope, it really happened last year:


Net neutrality is a policy that would prevent such shenanigans, by saying that the Internet is a utility (and a monopolistic one, at that, in most areas) and an ISP has to treat data as data, and not pick and choose what it delivers based on who is paying them.

That's one way to look at it, but digging deeper you will see that it also allows the Gov't to shut down what they want, regardless of who is in the WH. I don't like that idea at all.