ratbastid

One of the most subtle but most destructive things ISPs could do without strong network neutrality regulation would be "tiered" internet services.

You know how your cable company sells blocks of channels in "tiers"? Well ISPs could do exactly the same thing. You could get "basic internet" with low price and access only to say Yahoo and certain other websites. Then you could get the "Google bundle"--pay a little more and you can suddenly see Google and its constellation of services. The "Social bundle" gets you Facebook and Twitter, etc. The "Video bundle" would get you access to youtube and vimeo, etc. The "Adult bundle" would be expensive indeed. No bundle would get you 4chan, of course; they'd just go dark, from your perspective on the internet.

This was actually a PROPOSAL from an internal sales team at Time Warner Cable. They've been considering this. Locking consumers into a limited and expensive selection of choices has been vastly profitable for their cable TV division, so it's a natural for their ISP business as well. And naturally the sites they allowed into the lower tiers were ones they had business relationships with--all the sites they own, and sites belonging to cable channels and other media properties they own, etc.

Net Neutrality ensures that the bandwidth provider is agnostic about what's going through their network. They'll still have legal obligations to report any fraud, identity theft, kiddie porn, or other illegal activity they notice on their network, so set THAT strawman down. Just that they can't manipulate access, availability, or throughput on their network based on the source or type of traffic. I don't mean type of content, I mean type of TRAFFIC--video, text, image, audio, etc.

This is a good thing for consumers. Unmitigatedly good. So those of you bitching about the no good money-grubbing pothole-filling gummint interfering with private enterprise... You WANT this kind of interference, you really do. Whatever political nonsense you've got going on about the role of government, either let yourself stay blinded by that, or set it aside and look at what the thing is you're being saved from.