Net Neutrality. What Does It Mean To You? A Primer.

Today, the FCC approved Net Neutrality rules governing how your Internet provider can control bandwidth based on the content and the source.

What does this mean to you?

Thankfully, absolutely nothing because the FCC put rules in place to keep things exactly as they are today. That means that everyone is an equal content provider and we are all equal content receivers.

Which is why conservatives, republicans and greedy corporate fucktards have their panties in such a twist! THEY FUCKING HATE EQUALITY! They are screaming that this is another over-reach of Big Government into the private sector! It's more Socialist Obamalism!

Corporations don't want equality. They wanted to ease us into a tiered/metered Internet instead of the flat rate model we enjoy today.

Let's say you pay $30 a month for broadband Internet access from your Internet service provider. Whether you only use the Internet to check your email twice a week or whether you sit at home 24/7 streaming movies, you still pay the same affordable rate for access.

The Suits don't like that. The Suits want to charge power users more than they charge casual users. That's not such a foreign concept. People who consume more electricity have a higher utility bill than people who consume less electricity.

That's metering.

But it's a false comparison. If an Internet service provider wants to offer users streaming video, they have to put the infrastructure in place to accommodate it. If they don't, users who want that broadband service will find another provider. Bandwidth is a commodity. There isn't much in the way of service differentiation.

So they tell you it's all about the users, but it's not. It's about the deep pocketbooks of the content providers.

Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner, all of The Big Suit Internet Providers have huge corporate content providers. What they really want to do is give "preferred bandwidth" to their own content and choke out everyone else through tiered access.

So lets say your Internet service provider is Time Warner and you want to get streaming video via Netflix or Hulu.

Time Warner wants to be able to reserve the largest bandwidth and highest speeds on their Internet service to content owned by Time Warner. All other streaming video providers would have to pay fees for tiered bandwidth that would all be below the Time Warner level.

So ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX and all the major networks might be able to afford Tier 1 and be equal with Time Warner.

Local outlets like KMBC, KSHB might only be able to afford Tier 2 access so their content would be slowed down.

Public outlets like YouTube might not be willing to pay for anything higher than Tier 3 access so their content would only be delivered after the Tier 1 and 2 level content had been delivered.

But if you are a blogger and want to provide your own content over the Internet, you would be at the bottom of the barrel. Tier 4,5,6 or 7. What ever the structure was. The average Internet user would never, ever get to your content unless you were willing to pony up Big Money to get the Tiered Access controlled by your Internet Service Provider.

What the FCC did today was guarantee that corporate greed cannot silence you on the Internet.

The content that you offer on the Internet is treated in exactly the same way that content from CNN or Time Warner is treated. As completely neutral bandwidth with no regard to content or source.

The FCC made the right call.