You just have to look at the what the BushII-era FCC did about policing broadcast media to see the potential dangers in letting the FCC heavily regulate every ISP in America.

Title II will heavily disincentivize investment into faster networks because of the uncertainty.

I agree that net neutrality should be law but not if we need Title II to get it. I'd only support that if the ISPs started fucking up the internet massively. Sort of a "nuclear option."

So, say they propose a fast lane for the internet. Or don't invest in the connections to level 3 to be able to provide Netflix to users.

Net neutrality wouldn't fix the Level3/ Verizon&Comcast issues. Net neutrality doesn't force free peering.

When I mean fucking the internet up, I mean significant degrading of service to extort huge payments.

The internet hasn't had net neutrality most of it's history and it's grown up just fine.

If the choice is no net neutrality or net neutrality and Title II, I'd take the former.

Title II in the wrong hands could be devastating.

The person watching pron and paying the same price for internet as you doesn't think so.

Neutrality would still allow the user to pay for different speeds or qos, ie 15mbps at modem versus 100mbps at modem, or a 100% guaranteed qos vs no guaranteed qos (current residential). So, the market pricing would determine which gets to your modem faster, the pron or vpn.

That would require that someone somewhere would have to actually look at the bits to make a value judgement.

And then you lose privacy and security.

Additionally, you open the door wide for moral judgement of your bits, because we're people and that's what we do, rightly or wrongly. It's probably fine because you may work on something innocuous - but what about the artist, the protestor or the troll?

Personally, I dislike trolls intensely, but in certain forums they're apparently desirable.

The transport itself should be totally neutral to content. Only the endpoints should matter.

That would be great for you of course by why should ISPs get to determine whose packets are more important especially if the entry criterion to being important is basically "pay up"? What if the reverse were true and other users' packets were prioritized over your work ones simply because Netflix, YouTube, Valve, etc. could afford it and your company decided not to?

It certainly wouldn't be the end of the internet.

Moreover, this sort of price discrimination already happens at some level. Certainly that is the reason CDNs exist, to get a better, faster connection. Even Netflix puts its own servers into local ISPs for a fast connection.

The internet is far from a level playing field.

Isn't this exactly what Comcast already did to Netflix? And they ended up paying up ...

It has to do with profit.

Here is a quote [1] referring to how Mitch McConnell (Republican Senate Minority Leader, soon to be Majority Leader) handles nut-jobs like Ted Cruz:

"Mitch has very carefully, very methodically, very much under the radar, isolated Ted Cruz. He's kind of sealed him off like the body puts a sack around some foreign matter"

I believe that's how most Republicans feel about him. Cruz echoes the idiotic thoughts of a very very small minority. But, since they sound like such bizarre nut-jobs, they get media coverage.

[1] http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2014/1...

The GOP is masterfully adept at deciding on a set of talking points, getting them into the hands of key people in politics and the media, and then beating voters over the head repeatedly with it until the voters start repeating it back.

The Republicans just won the Senate back on the idea that Obamacare is the root of all evil. Watch them leverage that idea into every. single. thing. from now until 2016 (and beyond).

Yes, Cruz is popular among the rank and file, but he is very unpopular among the leadership and media. He is a very good speaker and makes a fair number of good points. He is also very easy to soundbite-attack.

If you look at rhino369's comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585565 you can see what many of the Republicans fear. The boogeyman of "fairness doctrine" has even been raised. If you are serious about net neutrality and brush aside the concern then you are not going to advance any issue.

I don't expect anything to advance on this issue. Its to mantra and flags now.

If someone would narrowly define a technical definition of what techs actually want for net neutrality, then I think you could a fair bit of Republican support. Particularly if it was phrased as keeping the fairness doctrine out of the internet. Never mention the poison phrase net neutrality.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/page/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/...

Obama had a 17% nod from Democrats two years before the 2008 election. It was all Gore, Edwards, and Kerry in that year.