| Net neutrality has been a pretty hot topic lately. There | | | | immediately the thought of illegal file sharing comes to |
| are those on both sides of the debate that point out | | | | mind. While there is illegal file sharing through a torrent |
| some very good arguments. When discussing the | | | | there also is sharing through http and ftp. It would be |
| topic, one must note that the debate is over net | | | | like shutting down the post office or UPS for everyone |
| neutrality as written and not the concept. Of course | | | | because someone did something wrong or illegal with |
| users want the concept, but if the bill is written in favor | | | | it. It would be like closing off a street forever because |
| of ISPs, you as a user have lost. | | | | one time an illegal activity was done on it. |
| One part of the bill is that ISPs have the option to | | | | True neutrality allows users to have access to various |
| "prevent the unlawful transfer of content" as well as | | | | forms of bandwidth like a torrent which can save quite |
| have "reasonable network management". Now these | | | | a bit on costs if you are legally sharing large files and |
| seem pretty harmless because no one is advocating | | | | folders between client computers or peers however |
| to pay a low fee and cost the ISP more money for | | | | the congestion on the internet of the those sharing the |
| bandwidth than they can handle or to rip off as many | | | | files can slow down the system due to lack of |
| copyrights as possible because it's easy to do. | | | | compression and networks not being built out. |
| The problem lays in the fact that these two phrases | | | | On the pirating issue, if torrents are blocked, they will |
| are what ISPs typically use to justify throttling or even | | | | move elsewhere and still occur. The blocking of them |
| shutting off the ability to torrent. With this language it | | | | won't solve the copyright problems faced with digital |
| seems as if doing so would be legally justified. | | | | media on the internet. |
| Many have a negative view on torrents as | | | | |