It is simple there are two positions:
1) Cable companies have paid for the cost and installation of a whole lot of fiber, wire, and radio communications to build what they call “their network”. They believe that they then have the right to say how that network will be used. In particular, the owners of the network want to either allow only certain types of traffic or restrict the use of certain types of traffic.
2) Other people believe that they have the right to force companies to use their private property for the benefit of others and at the peril of the cable company. They believe that the evil for-profit companies should be required to carry the competitors traffic, or at the very least, not be allowed to restrict the flow of certain types of traffic.
It is the classic private property righs vs the socialist collective.
Ahh! That’s more like it.
And of course the Ministry of Communications gets to decide how much bandwidth should be set aside for “public purposes” and “the greater good”, not to mention “minority set-asides”.
Thank you. I knew I wasn’t getting the straight story there.
Cable companies have obtained special privileges from local governments called "franchises", enabling them to gain artificial monopolies and shut out the free market. They wish to expand their government monopoly on the wires and obtain an additional monopoly on content, replacing the existing free market.Fixed it for you.Other people believe that the existing free market in content should be retained.
A provider owned by a left-wing company could very easily slow down traffic on conservative sites. Freerepublic could see itself on the information slow lane. Or providers could allow sites they are affiliated with to have enough speed for HD broadcasts but keep others from being quick enough for streaming video.
A cable company, to site your example, could easily slow down traffic from services like streaming netflix, hulu, or youtube because those compete with their services. Comcast already tried this. A phone company could put the squeeze on Skype, etc.
One of the great things about the Internet and one of the things that has allowed it to become such a democratizing entity is the fact that the architecture of the Internet doesn’t allow it to become dominated by those with the most resources to the expense of everyone else. Its allowed an independent conservative media to spring up and has made it easier for sites like FR to come into being. Its also made it possible for things like Google to come out of nowhere. It would be much harder for the next Google, Facebook, etc to spring up in a world where websites from the big media and service companies or their affiliates were allowed to run faster than anybody else.