Philip Rosedale Defends Net Neutrality, Warns of Dire Consequences to Social VR Platforms Like Second Life & High Fidelity If It's Ended

Second Life and High Fidelity founder Philip Rosedale just made a strong public statement in support of preserving net neutrality, the Obama-era regulation that preserves an affordable Internet for American consumers by prohibiting ISPs from charging extra for different Internet sites and services. Ajit Pai, Trump's appointee to head of the FCC (and formerly a lawyer for Verizon), is moving forward on his announced plans to scrap net neutrality, arguing that it will encourage competition and new Internet services. Rosedale, however, argues it will do just the opposite -- and adversely impact users of MMOs/social VR/virtual world platforms like Second Life and High Fidelity:

"The end of net neutrality would be especially negative for high bandwidth services like SL and High Fidelity that are delivered by less powerful companies," he tells me. "I would not be surprised to see providers with no competition simply re-introduce by-the-megabyte billing for 'non-premium' services, taking us all the way back to the stone age of AOL and other early online services. "

The "no competition" part is key, because a majority of Americans do not have a meaningful choice between competing broadband services. As Rosedale explains:

Many americans have only one internet provider. Removing the requirement for net neutrality would allow their opinions to be biased by the provider. Unbiased information will become a privilege of the rich. This is against everything we stand for as a country.

— Philip Rosedale (@philiprosedale) November 29, 2017

"We cannot be competitive as a country if providers effectively remove generalized internet service and return us to the age of online services for a large part of the population," says Rosedale. "This is one of those increasingly rare situations where a true monopoly still exists, as used to be the case with telephone service, for example. We absolutely must preserve net neutrality until such time as every American can choose from multiple competitive internet providers."

Philip's last point is an especially good one, as it acknowledges the valid points of both pro and anti-net neutrality advocates. In principle, it would be good to give consumers better and different options over their Internet services and how much they cost. But as it stands, the major ISPs who maintain a virtual monopoly on the market will have little incentive to offer those -- except at higher and higher prices.

Concerned? Consider contacting your Congressperson.

Comments

[buffet]

The greed that enabled LL and Phil to charge higher fees while delivering awful product is now happening to them.

And now they're sad.

boo hoo

[Nalates Urriah]

There is so much miss information going around and no one bothering to read the actual proposal or look at the history of the 1934 Title II Tel-Co Act to see how poorly it has performed.

Repeatedly people are telling us there is ONLY ONE ISP and... and... they are going to overcharge you... yadda yadda yadda

I live in a town of 100k and there are 22 ISP's. Where are these people with only one ISP choice?

Rosedale is just another misinformed person talking like he knows something.

[Wagner J Au]

"It doesn't affect me personally so therefore it's not a problem for anyone" isn't exactly the strongest argument. The big ISPs gained monopolistic or oligopolistic control of most of the US market for high end broadband BEFORE net neutrality rules were put in place in 2015:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/08/us-broadband-still-no-isp-choice-for-many-especially-at-higher-speeds/

As Philip says, that's why keeping it is so important. It's interesting that Trump supporters are so dismissive about the end of net neutrality when the Americans most likely to experience higher ISP bills and degraded service are in areas of the country where there's little or competition for Internet services -- i.e. areas of the country with the most Trump supporters.

[Clara Seller]

I live in a metro area of 6 million and we really only have two uncomplicated choices for high speed internet for residence.

I agree there is a lot of misinformation, but there's no pot of gold at either end of these rainbows. I think the devil we know is better than the deregulated devil that has destroyed everything it's touched in the last 50 years. Trust the two ISP's that have milked us bloody dry, enslaved us in mob-written contracts, constantly lied and twisted us like pretzels with their customer service, and delivered a horrid product? Ummm....when pigs fly.

[irihapeti]

@Nalates

suggest that in addition to reading the FCC proposal, you also look at the data provided by the FCC itself on which the proposal is based

https://www.broadbandmap.gov/number-of-providers

on this data map, set the minimum number to 6. The green colour shows where in the USA, people have a choice of more than 6 broadband ISPs

to rectify this issue the FCC is proposing that to grow the number of consumer choices then those who build the infrastructure can dictate what information services can be carried

the FCC proposal as wrote doesn't rectify the issue. It simply reinforces the market dominance of the existing ISPs by allowing them to gain extract more revenue from their existing customer base, to deploy against new entrants into 'their' areas

what does rectify the issue is that the infrastructure owner be required to be a broadband wholesaler and not a broadband retailer. This actual solution which does work in practice from a customer's pov, is rejected by the current USA Congress and Administration in line with their political view that the marketplace is a zero-sum environment

zero-sum is a tenet of monopolism. Which many in the current USA climate accept as normal and a good thing. Monopolists play this card quite well (and always have done), selling monopoly to the libertarian-leaning general public as freedom

[irihapeti]

ps

its the broadband wholesaler who has to be net neutral, and only them. The broadband retailers can package and sell whatever services they like, in any way they like. Buy some bandwidth off the broadband wholesaler and off you go

[Wagner J Au]

That's a really useful map and commentary, irihapeti, thanks!

[Ciaran Laval]

When people are talking about a lack of competition they are talking about residential broadband. There may well be x amount of broadband providers in an area, but they may not be providing residential broadband and they may not be providing services to all of the area, meaning they aren't competing with each other.

Taking a step back, as the FCC propose, is no sort of long term solution, will end up in the courts and is likely to be overturned in the near future, leading to more instability and hesitance. They need to go back to the drawing board and compromise.

[Boyd]

I live in a city of 200k people and we only have one truly fast provider the other one that says they offer it you can get 1 meg to 5 megs that is like dial up speeds in comparison lol so yeah the one here could charge what ever it liked for faster speeds and already does not offer allot of the deals here that other city's get.