> Its odd to talk about net neutrality as something that might "perish" as if it ever existed for more than the couple of years before the FCC's order was struck down.

The FCC Order was motivated by a desire to preserve what was seen by many as the status quo ante that was, at the time the order was adopted, perceived to be under threat as big providers began discriminating against certain remote endpoints and applications. Mandated neutrality may only have existed for a short time, but the mandate wasn't the origin of neutrality it was an effort to preserve/restore what was perceived as pre-existing neutrality

If the status quo ante was in place for decades, why do we need new laws to preserve it now?

I don't see the apocalyptic future neutrality advocates envision. I think there is a battle over Netflix because its such an outlier in terms of bandwidth usage, and because their stance on peering was at odds with the accepted understanding of free peering (the "status quo ante"). I don't think the ISP battle with Netflix can be generalized.

> If the status quo ante was in place for decades, why do we need new laws to preserve it now?

Because the voluntary behavior which maintained the status quo ante was observed to be changing.

> I think there is a battle over Netflix because its such an outlier in terms of bandwidth usage

While things like the attempt by broadband providers (largely also cable/IP TV providers) to impose anticompetitive discriminatory pay-for-access on competing video services were already on the horizon when the original FCC Open Internet Report and Order was issued (which is why such acts against competing video services were specifically called out in the Order in discussion of how its more general non-discrimination and non-blocking provisions would be applied), discrimination against particular edge providers isn't the sole focus of, or even really the main behavior change that motivated, net neutrality efforts. Blocking/discrimination of particular lawful end-user applications is at least as important in both aspects (of course, application-based discrimination and edge provider based discrimination overlap, since often an application is tied to a particular edge provider.)

> I don't think the ISP battle with Netflix can be generalized.

The issue, concerns, and specific behaviors at issue both predate the "ISP battle with Netflix" and have always been more general than it. Its not a matter of generalizing that battle, that's battle is simply today's most visible current manifestation of a general set of behaviors (Comcast's bittorrent blocking was the most visible recent exampe at the time FCC Open Internet Order.)

Because the status quo is changing.

ISPs are suppressing Netflix not because of traffic asymmetries; the relatively small dollar amounts involved reveal it as an excuse.

Their real concern is that services like Netflix reduce the value of both traditional streamed TV content, and whatever value-add on-demand services that ISPs create and operate. Their worst nightmare is being reduced to dumb pipes, because that's a revenue growth dead-end.

At one point cable "on-demand" was a hot new technology that people were excited about (i.e. willing to pay for). Now people just get a Netflix subscription. Cable companies are not psyched about that.

yes exactly

this point is at the heart of the misleading rhetoric of the anti-NN crowd

I would propose that it did exist as sort of a defacto state of the internet. Only in recent years have the telcos begun looking for revenue grown, leading them down the path of treating their subscriber base as some sort of resource to be bargained off to the highest content provider/bidder, while still charging large sums of money for the customer to have a connection.

That's not true (about the recent years) - there has been a lot of lobbying spent by the telcos and big cable for at least the past 10 years. Every time someone influenced by their lobbyists have tried to bring a bill to Congress to authorize them to charge for consumption, Congressmen have found that it was an immensely unpopular action and it would fail. The only reason why the actual charging started happening recently is because the FCC lost a court battle stating that with how they chose to regulate companies, they did not have the authority to impose net neutrality.

I realize it isn't only a recent years activity. However, when it was floated 10+ years ago, it was met with a certain air of hilarity. The groundwork has since been laid (including that court decision) to get us where we are today with respect to providers starting to get bolder in their operations and lobbying efforts, to the extent that certain assumed beliefs about the behavior of the Internet are being threatened in a legitimate way.

yep that's right -- it was the de-facto state of affairs basically from the beginning of time until now

To me that makes its death all the more untimely.