You might have a wrong definition of net neutrality. What the consumer-facing ISPs want is more something like tier levels: basic tier gets only 2mbps, platinum tier get 250mbps for instance (and other tiers in between) . So if I'm Spotify and I pay platinum , it is extorting other players, especially small ones as they can't afford paying platinum level. This is even more true if ISP decide that only one music app can be platinum, forcing all music services to bid for that platinum spot, raising the cost for it even more.

In the meantime, Backbone providers still provide Pandora, deezer, i<3 radio, and [new hot music startup, potentially more innovative than Spotify] at 250mbps to the consumer-facing ISP, but the consumer-facing ISP decided to create artifical scarcity and throttles those.

A theoretical counter argument would simply say: but in that case free market would penalize that ISP as consumers would choose a different one. But I think that's a naive answer because : some people don't see/know the issue, Spotify is good enough, as lycos search and MySpace were good enough at their prime. and more importantly it's a fact that 3 out of 4 Americans do not have a choice in high speed broadband provider. And for those who do, they're sometimes locked in because they still want that cable TV bundled with it. (hypothetically, This would be even more true if that bundle TV provided HBO at 250mbps where regular HBO would be deprioritezed because they didn't pay the platinum level, instead Netflix got it. HBO was business savvy enough to get prioritized via the bundle story.)

If we don't have Network Neutrality, we need to increase competition in consumer Internet access by an order of magnitude. In other words, its either net neutrality, or break up AT&T, TWC, Comcast, and Verizon into at least 40 companies, or riots.

With no NN, and no competition, we're going to end up forcing families who are aleady paying out the ass to choose between letting little Jimmy do the research he needs for his homework assignment, and Daddy sneaking some porn in the middle of the night. No way.

> Some people would rather everyone suffer than letting the market innovate on data plans.

And some people would rather everyone suffer than admit that "the market" is neither predictable nor a moral barometer.

You can't make a logical case on a liberal site like HN for anything. It's not allowed by the liberal elitists. Liberal here defined not as true liberal but progressive (destructionist) liberal.

My comment is not related to the topic at all.

Don't you think that these terminology we call each other by (liberal/conservative..) is stifling constructive discussion?

I am sure there is a popular or objective definition of these labels. However, there is also so much misinformation that loads these terms.

Whenever someone starts a conversation by calling the other side a liberal or conservative, there is an automatic implicit assumption of their beliefs whether that is correct or not. The social baggage that comes with these terms are automatically placed on the other person.

I see this so much in real life and online discussions. It's just a shame that people are using these words as an antagonist rather than a heuristic.