While the aims of net neutrality are noble, those who promote it fail to notice the potential dangers. One problem is that for different people, net neutrality means different things. At one level are college students, who don't want to be charged extra for downloading movies or using youtube. At another are small web sites, who fear that their sites will be shut out as big companies buy out available bandwidth. The biggest supporters of net neutrality, however, are companies like Google, Facebook, Craigslist, Youtube etc, who do not want to see their empires threatened by other big companies.
These companies know that their revenue depends on people wasting extra time on their sites, without worrying about any extra cost. Youtube is especially dependent on this, as it would be the most affected by restriction on bandwidth use. Google fears that a company like Comcast might charge a small fee for using its search engine. This might hurt Google, but isn't it more fair to people who use only email.. that they be charged for using only email?
A more worrisome situation is one like the following: Microsoft might pay Comcast a licensing fee for Bing to be its sole search provider. However, proponents of net neutrality fail to notice that this situation (an agreement in restraint of trade) is covered by existing anti-trust laws. In fact, the vast majority of truly worrisome outcomes (mostly related to ISPs preferring access to certain sites over others) are covered by these laws anyway, since telecom providers usually have localized monopolies as is.
While it certainly would suck to have to pay more, to use more, it seems fair: simultaneously those who use less would pay less. My prediction is that usage based pricing will eventually lead to lower costs over the wide range of normal internet use.
