And as with a principle such as free speech, the best way to explore its topology and applications is to look at examples. Your example of preventing an ISP from slowing down another company's VOIP traffic is a great one. Paradigmatic, even. NN, in my view, can be seen as a generalization from that example. I'd also want to exclude ISPs from deciding that, say, VOIP traffic gets priority over WoW traffic, because I don't want ISPs deciding what the Net is for. Rather than having to detect similar such slowdowns and then petitioning the FCC for redress in each specific case, I'd like to see the FCC adopt (through legislative mandate) a _general_ principle that ISPs are not allowed to prioritize packets (with some set of hard-to-work-out and ever-arguable exceptions). That would leave room for ISPs to offer plans whereby users can specify which types of traffic and/or which sites _they_ want to receive priority (for the last mile, at least), and would certainly leave room for ISPs to offer tiered service.

My interest in NN is not theoretical, if only because I don't know enough -- and I greatly appreciate shimon's link and post. My motivation is exactly what shimon expresses in his third paragraph: The economic reality is that the large ISPs have a structural and just about unavoidable interest in treating the Internet as a way to give preferential treatment to their own content and services. For that reason, I'd rather have exactly the sort of structural separation that shimon mentions, in which case we wouldn't need NN regulation. This is a position shared by Yochai Benkler, Susan Crawford, and David Isenberg, to name three highly competent, reasonable, informed proponents.

As for shimon's claim that NN is all "vague and inactionable invective," well, there are lots of highly technical, reasonable, and smart people who are talking exactly about actionable specifics, along with more than occasional invective. Tim Wu, Harold Feld, and David Reed spring to mind.