There's a lot of misconception and misunderstanding on net neutrality. Prepare for a long post, as we are going to look at the details, enough to really put the issue to bed. This topic is right in my wheelhouse, so I can give you guys a lot of info on what it does and what it doesn't mean. If you're worried about political bias, I can tell you my voter registration card states "No party affiliation", because I don't feel either of them represent my interests.
I'm gunna use FoMoCoSHO's post as an example here
FoMoCoSHO says: "I dunno, I don't remember any issues prior to net neutrality being signed into law"
That's because we have essentially ALWAYS had net neutrality in place. It was enforced by the FCC at least as far back as 2010. Verizon sued the FCC over it in 2013. Verizon vs FCC resulted in an appeals court stating, in 2014, that the FCC did not have the authority to enforce the 2010 rules. So for the second half of 2014 we didn't have net neutrality, and in 2015 they passed the current laws. So really about 6 months in 2014 is the ONLY time we didn't have some form of NN protections in place.
FoMoCoSHO also says: "I don't have any more decent ISPs than I did prior."
He's 100% right. The reason being the NN rules have nothing to do with what ISPs are available to you. That is a totally different set of regulations that are usually done at the local level. It's usually a problem of local governments making deals with ISPs over who has access to the transmission lines. Enforcing or repealing NN has zero impact on this. NN only deals with preventing ISPs from interfering with what you see over the lines, not anything to do with who owns the lines.
So what does NN actually do then, and why should I care?
NN prevented ISPs from blocking or throttling what you look at on the internet. It sounds simple at first, but what it actually means is staggering. For example with NN you gave your provider your $80 a month and they gave you an open doorway to the internet. Where you go is your choice. Without NN, you still pay your provider, but they decide what sites they let you see. If your provider partners with Hulu, they can decide to simply not offer access to YouTube. Your provider can make a deal with Amazon to throttle (artificially slow down) traffic to Netflix, so that Netflix feels crappy, and subscribers switch to Amazon Prime. They can say "Your $50 a month package only includes these 20 websites. If you want to look at your car forum, that's another $2.99." It gets worse because the ISP can charge on the other end too. The can say "Mr. Ecoboostperformanceforum, if you would like to be offered to our customers you will need to pay Comcast to be listed as a partnered site."
The lack of NN kills start ups. Without NN we would never have gotten Skype. Some of the telecom companies were sued because they were blocking apps that used Voice Over IP. VOIP competed with the cell plans that they offered, so they tried to kill the competition by blocking that traffic. They only stopped because they were forced to. Any startup that competes with anything your ISP does, in ANY WAY, can just be blocked by your ISP.
If you're ISP decides to get political, they can block news sites that publish stories that are harmful to the ISPs bottom line. A CEO can do what Hobby Lobby did, and claim religious beliefs to block everyone from any sites that they personally disagree with. An ISP can even lobby a politician and offer to block access to news sites that support other candidates.
By removing the NN rules, we are still stuck with the same limited choices in ISP. Even monopolies in some areas. NN was not intended to address that issue. Now those monopolies are given more control over what we are allowed to see and do with the internet.
This is the reason 80% of the country wants NN rules left in place. The only ones who benefit from their removal are telecom companies. Which makes it so frustrating that the chair of the FCC is Ajit Pai. A man with very questionable connections to Verizon.
