You probably don't really wish this... because it will ultimately be bad (think of your local power or gas company).
What you really wish for is more competition on a level playing field, ie. 6-10 ISP's per city who compete with each other for your business.
Only because the US apparently can't do regulation properly. In the UK, Ofcom regulate properly, and therefore we have plenty of competition and all the forces in place to ensure that the last mile infrastructure company doesn't touch content, allows any ISP to use its services at the same rates, and does its job of keeping the cables working. I can get Internet from any number of providers, all competing with each other fairly on top of this company's cables (and one or two providing their own cables instead).
The thing is, the last mile infrastructure company doesn't run an ISP itself, so it doesn't have any reason to muck it up for the ISPs. That's the key. That's all you need to do - split the ISPs apart from the infrastructure companies.
That is not net neutrality.
Sure it is. There's competition, semi-regular speed upgrades, if I don't like my ISP I can take my business elsewhere. As a result, I'm currently on an entirely unlimited plan with no throttling, and no angry letter if I download more than some hidden limit. My understanding is that a significant amount, if not the majority of the US is unable to do that.
> the government thinks they can force-regulate things like a "porn filter" and content filters
They could do that in the USA already, monopoly regulation or no monopoly regulation. Monopoly regulation is practically entirely separate from content regulation.
In any case, they only regulate that the porn filter and content filters must be an option - I've certainly never had such a thing on my connection. The only sites that are blocked for me are blocked under court order. This is practically equivalent to regulating that ISPs must provide a free copy of Net Nanny to all customers to use if they so choose, it's just done on their end rather than mine. (Also, hilariously, there isn't actually any regulation on this - ISPs are currently doing it willingly.)
I think you are thinking of the state of US mobile industry and it's data plans. I'm not aware of any large ISP that has throttles or bandwidth caps (comcast has a supposed 300GB cap but has never to this day enforced it).
> In any case, they only regulate that the porn filter and content filters must be an option
You're forgetting that it's by default on, and that one must call their ISP and "opt-in" to seeing porn. Social stigma aside, how can you realistically and with 100% accuracy block only true porn websites? You cannot, and the UK has shown that over and over as legitimate websites get blocked, including news websites that run stories that relate to porn, etc. The same is true if the filters were expanded to say download websites. And who's to say a website is illegal or not - I for one certainly don't want my government telling me some download sites are legal and others are not.
Not to mention who's to say I intend to break the law simply by visiting a website? Maybe I'm doing research (Brian Krebs), etc.
The very notion of filtering some content goes completely against what net neutrality means.
Really? I've heard countless stories of US ISPs doing deep packet inspection to throttle torrents and other peer-to-peer traffic. If they've stopped that, my googling suggests it's primarily due to FCC regulation.
> You're forgetting that it's by default on, and that one must call their ISP and "opt-in" to seeing porn.
Ah, incorrect. All major ISPs (a) ask during sign-up, and (b) provide a web-based tool for turning it off. There's no need to ever talk to anybody.
> Social stigma aside, how can you realistically and with 100% accuracy block only true porn websites?
You can't, but there's already products on the market which claim to provide content filters which block porn. Net Nanny is a personal one, a good many companies implement one.
> And who's to say a website is illegal or not - I for one certainly don't want my government telling me some download sites are legal and others are not.
Your Government actually decides that more websites are illegal than any other country, delisting them from the .com DNS space for everybody, whether in the US or not. Perhaps you should fix that before worrying about an optional content filter that nobody in the US is currently talking about creating.
> Not to mention who's to say I intend to break the law simply by visiting a website?
Nobody. It's an optional content filter.
Then you haven't been paying attention[1]. I live in one of these areas, and have already been getting 1-2 robocalls a day this month about my data usage. They're calling it a "trial", but the costs are very real, and it's all in place to go national when people here don't complain enough. If I go over in the next two months, I will start getting hit with that charge.
[1] https://customer.comcast.com/help-and-support/internet/data-...
As was pointed out in an earlier thread (I think to you, but perhaps I'm misremembering) it's reasonable for the President to include a qualifier like 'legal content' in order to avoid headlines like 'Obama supports child porn?!' in the sensationalist media.
Furthermore, just because a website's activities are illegal does not mean I intend to break the law simply by visiting them. If that were the case, Brian Krebs would be in prison by now.
What we don't need is mandated filters by the government like they have over across the pond. Opt-out but defaulted to opted-in - and impossible filters that catch up a lot of legitimate websites and content which then have to file some sort of petition to be unblocked, meanwhile costing them all traffic and a lot of business (look it up, news websites have been taken down numerous times by the UK "porn filter" because they ran a story relating to porn and the entire site was blocked).
Certain industries are inherently slanted towards a monopoly, and a regulated monopoly is often preferable to an attempt at forcing market conditions. The two industries aren't the same, and I think electric/gas utilities are significantly more inclined towards a natural monopoly, but it is important to realize what situation we currently have, rather than applying an idealized narrative.
I have already addressed the competition thing in a couple of comments on this thread... It does not exist right now and it would take a while to be a reality so ending Net Neutrality right now just makes things worse.
We can look at the cities Google Fiber has rolled out to. In every instance, competitor's pricing has decreased while bandwidth speed has increased. That is what we are fighting for -- we are not fighting for a government set bare-minimum level of service for government set price. That will get your DSL-like service -- just barely "good enough" and no innovation because there's no real competition.
We need to somehow get to having 6-10 ISP's in every major city. This will drive quality of service up, and pricing down.
I also think it's a conflict of interest to be a content provider while also an ISP (comcast, time-warner, etc). Either deliver bits, or create the bits -- not both.
The reality RIGHT NOW is that their is no competition in 99% of the US. Ending Net Neutrality right now and hoping in a decade things change would be stupid.
We need more of that from more companies.
Perhaps a better solution is to government fund small ISP's (they exist, look for them) and help them develop their own infrastructure in major cities. It will not be an overnight solution no, but it's far better imo than permanent legislation that might just kill the innovation you seek to spur.
Look at the state of DSL. It's delivered over POTS lines and falls under the legislation governing said lines. If an ISP runs lines to provide DSL service, they are required to lease the lines to whoever wants them (other isp's) for cost (not much profit made from this transaction). Suddenly everyone abandoned DSL in favor of Fiber and Cable services, and we've seen speeds exponentially grow in this area.
POTS lines already exist to every home in the USA, why not use them? DSL2+ has greatly increased the speeds, but still few ISP's use it. It's because of the huge legislative hurdles they have to jump over just to provide the service (I have a friend who is a WISP in the bay area of CA, and this is the reason he gave me for why he's not currently also running DSL to homes in his service region).
We risk doing the same if we regulate all internet carrying lines.
I really think it's better to somehow grow a lot more ISP's that operate in great competition. I don't know the perfect solution or how to go about accomplishing this -- but I do know free competition almost always trumps legislation. What we don't have right now is free competition (we have monopolies/duopolies).
The thinking that government regulation is always bad is wrong. There is no reason why the government can't classify ISPs as public utilities AND help create more players.
Any solution would take time so what we can't do right now is allow Net Neutrality to end and make the situation worse.
I'll take Comcast's terrible pricing and service. Give me some of my taxes back. If me and a few buddies want to start an ISP then that's on us.
I much rather have the government regulating my ISP which (in theory) I have a say in then my local monopoly Internet service provider calling all the shots.