That isn't quite what they said though, at least in the quoted text. They said they had no plans to block or throttle internet traffic. Regulations can have a broad effect limiting what businesses can do in a variety of ways beyond the narrow effect that is used to justify it. This law also includes prioritizing traffic and other things according to the article.
Eh, I wouldn't be so quick to hide under that tree for protection in the lightning rich environment of civil rights violations as a whole.
I think laws should be challenged in order to force coming to terms with second and higher order effects, and as a matter of course be measured and revisited for reconsideration over time.
That being said, from a heuristic driven, rhetorically defensive perspective, I totally get, and second your perspective in this case.
The "Thou dost protest too much" bell is strong with this one.
On the one hand yes, on the other hand laws intended to prevent some behavior are usually less efficient than participants just not doing that behavior, and add extra overhead to the people whom you're worried about doing that behavior.
It's hard to justify expensive litigation to block a law preventing you from something you weren't doing or intending to do anyway. The only reason to spend all that time, effort, and money is to at the very least make sure the door is open for you to do such things in the future. Or worse, to keep doing them as we speak.
I think the risk is that there will be more direct involvement by the governments in dictating what the ISP can and cannot show.
Politician's already criticize big tech for not doing enough to censor and remove fake news. I could see this laying the ground work for further involvement. Because "allow all legitimate content" can turn into disallow "illegitimate" content on the ISP level
Frequently, legislation intended to block things doesn't just say "this is illegal now – don't do it". It frequently includes things like reporting requirements to ensure that you are not doing these things without the government having to constantly keep tabs on you (and obviously hefty fines / etc if your reports are found to be inaccurate).
These reporting requirements (and other, similar requirements that usually accompany such legislation) can be an expensive hassle, possibly more expensive than "expensive litigation". The case only needs to be litigated once, while something like reporting requirements continue in perpetuity.
Going through the text of the bill [0] the ISP challenge I found nothing that implies such burdens on the them. If they exist in some other text I am not aware of them. Until shown otherwise I can reasonably assume ISPs simply fight a law that prevents them now and in the future from doing something that is financially advantageous to them, despite being disadvantageous to the regular consumer.
Wouldn't this prevent someone like t-mobile to offer a deal in which netflix streaming doesn't count towards their data cap before throttling? It limits their ability to strike deals like this with content providers. But I guess that's the point?
Well yes, because now you either subscribe to Netflix or you don't stream video because caps will cut you off.
It's funny how some cable operators also offered the benefits of their video service not effecting your data usage, while other video services do. That is anti-competitive and designed to make you buy their services rather than other people's.
It has nothing to do with infrastructure as customers are allowed to stream unlimited data, and even if they go to a competitor, people generally watch at the same time. So your bandwidth is going to get hammered at the same time anyway.
Yes, that’s exactly the point. A local monopoly’s deal with Netflix or even just their chose to exclude data sidesteps the free market and is thus bad.
If you had the choice of say 500 local ISPs then net neutrality isn’t an issue.