[cr0atian]

Do not agree at all with this, while I do think that nothing majorly wrong is going to come with is and I don't think we are going to be oppressed by our ISPs I do not think that trusting large companies to self-regulate when they have no real competition is a good idea. Verizon, AT&T (and Sprint) don't have any competition, and I can see that AT&T is also happy with this deal.

[ryandvm]

The larger point is that people are trying to legislate a solution to a problem that we don't even have. The few times that the potential for network abuse has even dared to raise its head, it was quickly defeated by public outcry and market pressure. Network neutrality proponents love to prophesy about the gloomy scenarios that will play out unless we have network neutrality codified - except we don't have it now and it turns out it's not really a problem.

That said, I completely understand the point of the network neutrality advocates. Wouldn't it be nice if we could just write some laws and make sure we don't have to worry about our ISPs shafting us? Sure, but it never works out that way. Industries have a long history of squirming out of the grip of their regulatory bodies until they're using (and writing) the regulations themselves. That is a problem that we have now.

Look at how agribusiness controls the USDA. Or big pharma controls health care legislation. Or Wall Street's influence on economic policy. What do you think will happen when Verizon, Google, AT&T, etc. are pumping millions into Capitol Hill and their ex VPs are heading up various FCC committees...

And that doesn't even touch on the inevitable unintended consequences. Perhaps the darkest side of network neutrality legislation.