Net Neutrality DOES NOT Mean the Internet’s Demise

Your posting about "net neutrality" is interlaced with logical confusion.

In one place, you state that "it would be completely illogical for ISPs to stop peering with each other" and then later state that it be wrong for ISPs to "be able to do whatever they want regardless of the effect on other stakeholders". So tell me, given that you correctly state that de-peering would not be in the best interests of ISPs, why would you even suggest that an ISP would want to de-peer? Is there an incentive for an ISP to peer or to de-peer? Which way is it?

You also state in one place that "net neutrality" is essentially a good thing for us to do, and yet you also state that "the status quo" is actually a good thing. OK. What is it going to be? "Net neutrality" or the "status quo"? Isn't "net neutrality" essentially about getting the government to intervene and disrupt the current status quo? I have no clue what you are getting at here.

You have added absolutely nothing but logical confusion to the debate.

@Clark M.

I think you may need to retake your reading comprehension test. First, as you point out, the authors correctly state that depeering would be in the disinterest of ISPs. Nowhere do they state, as you claim, that the ISPs would want to de-peer. They are using their previous point to discredit the claim from Ms. Johnson that ISPs would depeer if net neutrality was enforced.

Secondly, there is no contradiction in logic. I don't know what crappy ISP you may have but net neutrality IS the status quo right now. Federal NN rules would be there to enforce what is happening now (the status quo) and prevent the things Comcast and its ilk have been attempting lately.

Get your coffee, re-read the article and it will come to you. Or maybe you're just trolling to introduce your own logical confusion and FUD up the whole debate.

I agree that the effect of net neutrality rules is to preserve the ability for all end-points to connect regardless of who or what they are - the danger is when ISPs can decide to detach their users from other end-points on the Internet, either in whole or for selective protocols. I believe the proposed legislation on the matter is to prevent the Comcast's of the world from intervening in the currently-open end-point connectivity status quo. In fact, peering is entirely dependent on having legislation that will preserve the ability for any type of connections between any point on the Internet. Emerging technologies of all sorts are also dependent on this capability, so innovation is dependent on net-neutrality being preserved (and restored in some specific instances). I much prefer the option of paying for a specific bandwidth and being able to use as much of it as I need rather than paying for a specific amount of bit traffic, especially if the bit rates end up being much more costly when compared to the cost of a specific amount of bandwidth used continuously. A change in the charge structure should reward low-bandwidth users rather than penalize content providers who need to move lots of bits just to serve their content to the world. If it becomes too costly to serve content, then content will end up being limited, and that's not what we want for our beloved Internet.

The real question we should be asking is why the govt is trying to regulate what providers can/cannot do at all. In what is now nearly forgotten, the govt got into regulating the telephone business because it was a monopoly. Now there are so many choices that the govt needs to get out of this business and let the free market forces drive down prices and increase functionality. There are cases where it makes good sense to not force a puristic view of network neutrality but rather allow providers to offer enhanced services. Just because person X does not want those services doesn't mean the govt should regulate them from ever possibly existing. Person X can 'vote' with where they take their business and providers will adjust to gain the optimal market share for their business approach. It's called free market (as opposed to govt regulation).

It is entirely understandable why the "logical confusion" commenter is confused because some are trying to spin net neutrality regulation as the introduction of something new. It is quite the contrary. Net neutrality is the de facto status quo, and the intent of the regulations is to codify it.