Net Neutrality to Protect the Commons

Americans for Tax Reform has taken the ISP side of this issue in the name of less government regulation. This issue has nothing to do with tax reform and if handled properly has no regulatory burden any more than we have to regulate who gets to use America's roads.

The Internet is a commons and it's the government's proper role to make sure that it remains available for the benefit of everyone.  I, for one, subscribe to Internet service at home and via my phone so that my ISP will deliver the world to me - and I'm already paying for the access so I reject any idea where the ISP will further restrict what I can access by charging the other side for it as well.  This is highway robbery - everyone has already paid for their access and now the man in the middle wants a bigger cut.  

The Internet has grown because the free market works but ALSO because all sites are on an equal playing field:  business owners control how well their site is accessible by investing in better servers and more bandwidth, and customers control how well they access the internet by choosing their devices and bandwidth. Now some ISP's see a new profit venue by charging businesses more money to ensure their data flows well to customers accessing it through that ISP - even though both businesses and customers have already paid for their bandwidth separately. This is going to lead to the OPPOSITE of a free market because as ISP's consolidate, more and more customers are forced to access the internet through less and less ISP's. So this means that just A FEW entities will have a large amount of control over what people see by simply adjusting how much it costs.  Only large well-funded businesses will be able to afford having great performance and customers will gravitate towards those sites, some which will inevitably become mere portals like AOL.  Because this model will work well for ISP's, they'll exploit it as much as possible, which means for smaller businesses, the barrier of entry into the internet marketplace will be raised again and again until eventually starting an online business will become very prohibitive.  It turns the Internet from a free market to a very controlled market - but controlled by a few really large monopolies.

Sprint, Verizon, and the like didn't invent the Internet and the prospect that they will reduce their individual investments in their  network infrastructure doesn't scare me at all. They'll cut jobs? Fine, you can't terrorize me.  If they don't think it's profitable they can quit the business and someone else will happily take over their customers.  It was tax money that led to the creation and many subsequent innovations of the internet, and the livelihoods of a lot more people can suffer as a result of letting ISP's dictate what we see online.