Davos (John Perry Barlow) of Switzerland wrote a short but frighteningly prophetic piece in February of 1996 dubbed A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace

It foretold all of the government's attempts to cripple the free and open internet which would follow in the 20 years since its drafting.

Of course, these acts are by no means surprising; they simply mimic the events associated with every other technological revolution that empowered the people and offered greater transparency of the hand of their masters.

Thankfully, as history has always demonstrated, it is the people who have triumphed in each of these communication revolutions. Especially in the case of the internet, the implementation of corporate "fast lanes" for the wealthy would undoubtedly be met with an equal but opposite innovative response from the people. I'm confident a free and open alternative network would rise directly in proportion to the powers' attempt to constrain it. The tighter they squeeze their financial fist, the faster our collective waters would escape its grasp.

Alright, as much as I've tried to understand this whole thing even since SOPA/PIPA, I still can't wrap my head around what any of these articles are going on about. Can someone explain this in terms of someone who knows next to nothing about networking and the legal system?

If this is wrong, obvious to you, or stupid, I apologize in advance.

The way I understand it is giant website/corporations have a symbiotic deal with Internet providers to give them an unfair amount of the bandwidth and fast access avenues to their sites so they open fluidly and quickly. When someone tries to compete with them, no matter what they try their site is clumsy and slow making them non-competitive. There's been legislation proposed to regulate the situation so it's more fair for the little guy. Some people oppose the legislation because they want to keep the Internet organic. For now, the attempts at regulation have failed.

Cue corrections.

http://data.whicdn.com/images/34810757/large.gif

I wasn't aware of that, but that basically sounds like a pseudo-Mafia protection racket. I imagine that would eventually lead to breaking anti-trust laws. At the very least it would be in the same spirit of bigger companies temporarily selling products at a loss to put smaller companies out of business, which is very illegal.

Very illegal?

I thought that was known as "loss leader" and used all over.

I'm not arguing, I'm trying to learn. That's different than price fixing so what's that called?

Absolutely right. Unfortunately, Obama appointed the head lobbyist of the cable industry as the Chair of the FCC - an act that John Oliver famously likened to hiring a dingo to babysit your infant child.

Oliver did an excellent job of summarizing each of the critical points of net neutrality in a segment on Last Week Tonight, as well as contextualizing the circumstance of its political threat.

He also points out that the US pays more for cable and internet than almost anybody else on Earth, and yet, our download speed is crappier than lesser-expensive services in countries like Estonia.

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Ah yes. Sorry for the oversight. Tristan, what of Oliver's explanation are you not clear on? Or more specifically, what part of SOPA/PIPA?

Just looked it up, and apparently it's not directly illegal, but if it can be proved that it will result in a monopoly that hurts consumers, then the business can be hit with anti-trust laws.

Wikipedia: Predatory Pricing