Big money always wins big in the US of A. The irony is most US citizens are proud of how 'Free' their country is. It's mostly the freedom of corporations to exploit the masses and the freedom of the poor to having to struggle without proper government support. And the freedom of black people to have a far greater chance to go to jail, just for the colour of their skin. And the freedom of living among people toting guns, thereby increasing the chance of getting involved in a shooting manifold.

It makes me sad so many people (the USA is a big country) live in such a pitiful state of affairs as I sketched above. And pitiful that a lot of cultural developments in the USA make it to Europe, with a 5 year delay.

My condolences US. Hope that crap never makes it to the Netherlands.

Still amazing to see how many people are/were succesfully misinformed/ignorant about what Net Neutrality actually does. These misleading names should really be illegal

OP's obviously just a troll. Or at least, I'd like to think someone isn't so dumb that they think the internet not falling apart hours after a vote actually makes a point.

This is ridiculous on part of these decision makers as it kills the basic rights of internet users. I am truly against it and we should save net neutrality at all costs. We need to understand that this only can happen if we raise our voices against them by signing petitions which will put a lot pressure on these guys.

Source: vpnranks.com/save-net-neutrality/

I guess we should also get rid of laws that guarantee freedom of speech, because that's the goverment regulating what we can say?

Unless I'm mistaken, the FCC decision was to be expected - what's important is what the Congress does about it. It's a Republican majority, but maybe some of them aren't completely corrupt... So all hope isn't lost.

Lol, Yes its true that you cannot access all content. So if you want to access the neutral internet in US so you need to shift your IP location to other country's IP address through a VPN provider. What I believe in this current scenario VPNs can help bypass throttling imposed by ISPs, get one right now before they get banned too and you lose your chance to explore the internet freely

This guide would be useful to bypass the unwanted throttling of internet and access any site without letting your ISP know.
==> https://goo.gl/v5LW2J

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Trying to be positive here. Does this really have a chance of sticking? I mean at some point won't the screaming get loud enough from both sides? Eventually the people who are thrilled now are going to start feeling the pinch and opinions are going to change.

How long can this really last?

It'll last as long as people accept it as the "new" normal. Smart money says that ISPs won't throttle speeds and block webistes so they can tell the naysayers "Told you so.". They'll force out smaller competition and jack up your bill by $30-$50 a month. And there will be a bunch of things that we'll never see or hear about, but I guess I can file that under conspiracy theories and paranoia.

Maybe not the current big established services (like Netflix), but if there are new startups, new streaming or download services that want to try to compete with the established services, they might face issues, like some US ISPs demanding money for full speed.

Also it isn't necessarily about throttling speed, but putting (or keeping) monthly data transfer caps to competing services by default, and allowing unlimited transfers only from their own services, or those 3rd party services that have paid the ISP. Either way, giving an edge to their own services, and forcing extra fees on competing services.

It is just generally bad for innovation of new services (that might need lots of bandwidth), and in the global level it is just wrong that e.g. I would have to pay extra for some service, just because the service has to pay extra to some US ISPs (which I don't even use).

How would you feel if you as an American had to pay, say, 10% extra for Netflix, just because EU ISPs had decided that HEY let's coerce Netflix to pay all European ISPs extra money for data transfers, or otherwise block them from the EU zone?

Who knows, but let's say they did. Who would the affected people complain to? To GOG, most probably. After all, we have seen already now these reports like "I don't get full 100Mbps from GOG, why is that? And don't tell me it is my ISP because I get full 100Mbps from Steam!". If the telecom company has monopoly in the area (as seems to be the case in lots of US), complaining to them wouldn't help anyway.

So let's say then GOG starts paying up to those US telecom companies that are throttling down GOG.com. That would probably increase the prices for all GOG regions, not only US, and definitely not only userrs of those US telecom companies who are demanding GOG to pay up for full speed.

Most probably you won't even know who they are throttling and who not. You'll come just complaining to GOG how their speeds are shit. :)

Yes, that is one of the many things that is wrong with this whole idea.

That's one guess, but nobody really knows how it will shake out. It could turn out to be a minor change, wherein you won't see a difference unless there are multiple TV streams on the same connection. Could be that they slap certain sites behind a premium service wall, akin to, say, HBO on the TV side of things.

Could also be a mix of those, plus things staying the same. Each ISP will need to determine what they want to do, and each content provider / affected website will need to determine its own reactions if their business is changed.

In other words, there is a lot of "could happen" - much of it based on earlier comments from various ISPs - but it will take time to shake out. And while one local ISP might go the restriction / lane route, another competing local ISP might see this as an opportunity to gain customer base with a neutral stance.

I am a colossal moron but it seems to be the door swings both ways. Regulations, however or whoever imposed by, effect everyone, and won't that eventually hit the people who voted against neutrality? If they can be regulated, so can you.

Extreme example, and I don't want to get into a war here, but it makes me think of people who scream "They shouldn't be allowed to do or say that" who then in turn scream "censorship" when the same regulations they begged for are used on them.

What is going to happen when a lot of the people who voted for the legislators who in turn voted for this repeal find their own interest being, in this case, literally throttled? Right now David Duke can relish that those sites he deems "Un-American" can be banished, but what's he going to say when his sites are also deemed such and rendered just as hard or expensive to access?

Enough of that and eventually EVERYONE is going to want neutrality back.

I seriously can't find anyone who has a more punchable face than Ajit Pai. My colleague nearly makes the list but Ajit Pai is a one of a kind asshole.

I can.

I hadn't thought about the data cap side, though now that you mention that, it's pretty obvious this could be a result.

For the second part, I don't know. My slow speed makes Netflix, etc., essentially a no-go in my personal case. Sometimes youtube content comes in decently and music / audio streaming is fine, but video content is too iffy for me to pay for those services. Sorry, a lot of this is academic for me since I no longer get to use the internet in those ways, what with the speed I have. That's why I'm more in the "Let's see what they actually do before sharpening the pitchfork" group.

Haha, well, yeah. But my earlier point was that - even with a speed throttle - you might not see a difference for, in particular, streaming content since they would have to drop it pretty far for many customers to start to see buffering, for example. Wide-open download speeds could suffer, as mentioned. But I have a feeling that many people are worried about "Don't cap muh Netflix!", not realizing that their 60Mbps connection is overkill for that type of streaming content, and even knocking it down to 25% of top capacity won't change the watching experience - unless a household is doing multiple streams at once.

Guess there are a bunch of different ways they could screw with the customer, not just by slowing things down and then allowing you to 'buy back' the speed you're already paying for. Most worrisome for me would be outright blocking of content from specific sources.

With ISPs all over the country, this could really turn into a mishmash of offerings and plans. Some of them could really take a crap on their customers, and others might see this as an opportunity to market themselves as "Net Neutral Good Guys".