14 DAY TRIAL // Given their stance on piracy thus far, Hollywood studios and the music labels should probably be the first ones to protest against the FCC’s new plans for the Internet.
Even through the FCC has vehemently denied having any plans to kill net neutrality, it doesn’t mean that its view on the topic is the same with the one that most of the world has.
Net neutrality rules should make sure that Internet providers cannot block or discriminate among legal Internet traffic. That means that the rumored plans that the FCC has are not going to respect this principle.
Basically, reports indicate that the FCC wants to allow Internet providers to create an Internet fast lane and therefore to be able to tax content providers that need a lot of bandwidth to deliver the promised content in a hasty manner.
This means that a deal such as the one that Netflix was bullied into by Comcast would be out of the question since Comcast would no longer be allowed to provide such services or to sabotage any company’s speeds if true net neutrality rules were implemented.
Therefore, on top of the fact that the FCC’s new plans would violate the principle of net neutrality, there would also be a lot of consequences to affect regular customers.
On one hand, if a company such as Netflix, for instance, has to sign deals with all Internet providers to be able to make sure that its customers are getting quality content, it may just decide to increase the subscription prices since its costs would grow quite a bit.
With a heavy bill already coming from the Internet provider to make sure that they have decent speeds and another one from video streaming sites or online games, customers may just decide to be done with it all.
However, people won’t just stop watching movies or shows and playing games. Instead, they’ll find less than legal options which are plenty online. Basically, the number of illegal downloads of copyrighted materials will just grow and users will certainly find ways to avoid the warnings they get from ISPs by hiding their tracks online.
Film studios already argue that Internet piracy is costing them millions of dollars in lost revenue every year, but they should really consider what the death of net neutrality will actually mean for their business and how one little decision will knock down an entire line of dominos.