- Dec 17, 2013
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He's giving in to the shadowy likes of "Anonymous" and other Internet terrorists who are too stupid to realize that "net neutrality" doesn't mean "free Internet," it means "Internet too expensive for anyone but the very elites I want to bring down." Prohibiting broadband providers from cutting deals with services like Netflix to fund the infrastructure and network improvements necessary to deliver adequate service for their content would result in higher prices for everyone whether they use those services or not.
To the naïve Internet anarchists, net neutrality means they already pay their broadband provider for that data pipeline from their home to the Internet. The provider offers a few different tiers -- or speeds -- of Internet service, so the subscriber chooses the one that makes sense for their household and that’s the end of it. It is none of the broadband provider’s business how people choose to use the pipeline, or which sites or services they stream content from over the pipeline, and the broadband provider shouldn’t be allowed to extort additional money from those sites or services for the privilege of delivering that content to the end user.
As with most utopian stupidity, reality is bit more complicated. It isn’t just a question of whether or not Netflix movies gets streamed to customers' PCs at an acceptable rate to watch a movie without stuttering and buffering, and it isn’t purely a matter of “extortion” for a broadband provider to charge a company like Netflix some sort of additional fee. The broadband provider has committed to providing a specified level of service to its customers, and to deliver broadband content within a certain range of speeds. A service like Netflix that streams video content consumes an inordinate amount of network bandwidth -- much more than downloading email, or surfing the Web -- which can result in degraded services for all customers whether they use Netflix or not.
It’s also not an issue that necessarily impacts the whole network. Netflix customers are scattered around the world, but the Netflix servers only connect in to the Internet in a few select locations. Where the Netflix content enters the Internet, those nodes can easily become saturated, which means the broadband providers have to add more nodes and expand the network to accommodate the load from Netflix -- even though the demand is an issue unique to Netflix more or less.
If a broadband provider like Comcast can’t negotiate a deal with a service like Netflix and collect additional fees to fund the necessary network infrastructure, it has to bear the cost of upgrading the network itself. That cost would then be passed on to all Comcast customers regardless of whether they actually subscribe to Netflix or not.
From that perspective, the push for net neutrality doesn’t make much sense. Then again, very little of what Obama does, supports, or advocates makes much sense. He doesn’t understand that insurance is legitimately based on the level of risk assumed. He doesn’t understand oil and gas need to be left alone until other energy sources become commercially viable. And he doesn’t understand supply and demand. So we can add one more piece of idiocy to the list of stuff Obama doesn’t understand.
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