(07-12-2017, 01:09 PM)Jags02 Wrote: So, if I'm following, Net Neutrality is already the law. It's just these companies are looking to change the law, and this cause is intent on not letting that happen.

Effectively correct. 

Part of it is reclassifying what category the ISPs like Comcast & Verizon & AT&T fall under and by doing so would change what regulations they must obey. 

At the end of the day the ISPs want the ability to tamper with and prioritize specific websites/data sources over others.

And, because the ISPs want it bad enough to run national advert campaigns and spend millions upon millions lobbying and team up with their ISP rivals, they want it to save themselves money. Which means they are not gonna be speeding up the sites that pay them extra (or make them extra money), they will slow down the sites that don't.


In summary, how does this site get to you?
We pay a per-GB fee* to transmit data to the 'central core' of the internet**. You pay some fee (per GB or a flat rate for internet) to access that same 'core'. All is happy.
What ISPs want is to be able to charge extra to some sites — we can use Netflix as an example is an example — because Netflix uses so much data that it drives up the network utilization on ISP's networks (and thereby makes them need to increase their infrastructure's performance to handle everyone watching Netflix). 
But, since they can afford it and their customers demand it (buffering sucks!) they would. But we couldn't. So our site could be slowed down.

It's an old picture and an extreme case, but there is no legal reason why this couldn't happen. And since most areas have 1 or 2 ISPs, they could all agree and do it and there is no way around it.




*We pay per GB because that's AWS's billing rate to help lower the costs for sites that don't use much data. Many other hosting providers just bill you a flat rate for a specific speed of connection. 
**There is no central core, but it's enough of an example to make this make sense.

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