Right now the world looks on as the US government officials accept donations from lobbyists on destroying net neutrality, and as an Australian looking on, I can’t help but see the end result before it arrives.
In Australia, we have a situation where there is only one choice for pay TV/cable, Foxtel. Foxtel, may not be the only game in town, but due to the buying power of Telstra behind them, if you want the shows that would usually encourage you to sign up, Foxtel is literally your only choice.
Now in recent years, there was a report that came out about the large percentage of Australians the pirated Game of Thrones. Given that Foxtel had Game of Thrones episodes behind a two package paywall, the only game in town is literally milking it customers for access to the one specific show, it is no surprise that a large number people turned to the only other game in town to watch the show, piracy.
With the reports that came out during Season Six of Game of Thrones, the Australian government then decided to crack down on piracy by implementing tougher penalties and enforcing actions from ISPs to prevent people from downloading illegally.
The reaction from those pirating was to turn to other methods to get around restrictions, the most common, being hosted VPNs. But here is the rub, people are paying for the VPNs. This tells me that when the only game in town was fleecing people for access to its product, people were still willing to pay for a service to access programs. This tells me that when the price is right, people are willing to pay for a product, and if the price is not right, they will find a way to circumvent any blockages.
The reason that this is a bad thing, is because of the Foxtel paywall, HBO is missing out on receiving substantial subsidies from the airing of its show in Australia, in short, because of the lack of flexibility of the provider, it is literally sending its business away.
Removing Net Neutrality in the US will see a similar scenario play out, people who would be willing to pay a reasonable amount for access to certain sites or services will find other methods to access the content they desire, and in doing so, hurt those offering the content in a legal and fair manner, and then try to penalise those who would ordinarily pay a fair price for those services.
The only winners in this situation are those selling the paywall, and those selling the pirate supporting services, like VPNs and advertising on the pirate sites. Oh, and any politicians receiving contributions in this scenario.
Farreg 