Ok, before you all jump down my throat please hear me out.
On the whole I believe that the government getting involved in any industry and regulating it or making rules for it is bad. I think the whole net neutrality thing is a perfect example. Why, because it is only needed because the government got involved in the internet game to begin with. I know it sounds far fetched and crazy but bear with me because I will get back to this point.
For those who aren’t familiar let me do a basic over view along with why it is needed. Those who are familiar hop down to the next paragraph. Basically by the Federal government adopting net neutrality it would mean that all internet would be considered equal. Why is that important? Lets supposed that your internet carrier is Comcast. When you are downloading your Netflix On Demand Comcast may slow down your service. That could be so you don’t “slow the network” or because they want you to get premium channels through them and not get Mad Men through Netflix. Either way you are paying for a service and your traffic should be considered equal with everyone else. Internet companies will point out that there are people clogging traffic by downloading bit-tor material (which is usually illegal) so it is their right to prioritize traffic. Of course I don’t agree with groups messing with internet traffic but the idea of the government telling businesses how to run just bugs me.
The internet, like traditional phone service, power, and garbage is semi regulated. It doesn’t seem to be a truly free market. Many places only have 1, maybe 2, choices for dependable, ground based internet service. But why? Why isn’t this a wide open market? The lines that are in the ground are a utility and should then be open to all businesses using them. If that was happening I think the need for Net Neutrality legislation would be gone. Say Comcast decided to not allow media downloads, well then go to someone else. Would this possible effect pricing? Yes and in both directions. People who have no need for substantial traffic might pay less while people who use the internet as their exclusive source of entertainment along with regular gaming traffic, might pay a little more. But there would be more choices and there more competition. If you want to prioritize traffic, go ahead but that would make many people buy the internet commodity elsewhere. The problem would solve itself.
So how about we just deregulate this along with all other utilities. Then maybe we can have a free market with not only the flow of ideas but internet traffic!
(That said, if we don’t deregulate Net Neutrality is a necessary evil.)