America has seen a major shift to right-wing conservatism and the removal of net neutrality is an example of this. They want to deregulate the rich and the corporations while adding more and more regulations on the working class.
Net neutrality policies helped create the most free and fair marketplace in history, allowing consumers to choose the winners and losers in a competitive marketplace. This resulted in the best ideas, products and services rising to top.
The new regulations will leave consumers with less choice and our economy with less innovation and competition. Without equality of access, such innovation would be diminished at best, or perhaps even begin to move to competing countries in the world economy. The new FCC regulations set the cable and phone companies up to become the equivalent of the mafia to the Internet. Today, consumers dictate the evolution of the Internet. Under the new regulations, cable and phone companies will be making the decisions. And their decisions will not be made based on quality, but rather on who pays the most "protection money" to be protected from the competition of a truly free marketplace.
The Internet currently provides a megaphone for political expression by virtue of the fact that every site, no matter how obscure, is just as accessible to every individual as any site with a multi-million dollar budget. Every American has the opportunity to create their own site and say what they want to the entire world.
Under the new rules, there is nothing to stop the cable and phone companies from now allowing consumers to have access to speech that they do not support. What if a cable company with a pro-choice Board of Directors decides that it does not like a pro-life organization using its high speed network to encourage pro-life activities? Under the new rules, this could happen and it would be legal!
Allowing Internet service providers to control what people see and do online would fundamentally undermine the principles that have made the Internet such a success. But such things have already began.
1) In 2004, North Carolina ISP Madison River blocked their DSL customers from using any rival web-based phone service
Given that most Americans have just one (or at most, two) companies through which they can get broadband access, the free market principle of competition for consumer dollars doesn't enter the picture, just like the old Ma-Bell monopoly. Much like the trade-off involved in allowing a telephone monopoly was that the company had to provide equality of service, so too should it be with the Internet duopoly.
Consumers that are already paying monthly fees for broadband access will soon find out they do not actually have what they thought they were paying for. Americans will not have broadband access to the entire Internet, just the part that the cable and phone companies allow them to see.
Congress has wisely decided many times in the past to avoid stunting the growth of the Internet via new taxation. They should follow the same logic in this case and not allow the cable and phone companies to stunt its growth with new fees and content based discrimination. In the end, the losers will be consumers. This is Corporatism at its finest where corporations are controlling and regulating everything and the suppression of freedom of speech. By removing regulation, the FCC in essence has created an internet for the elite and rich. So the question is why the FCC is removing this regulation? The short answer is that corporate interests are using their extensive influence to promote an internet for the elites. Rather than accessing internet content as you see fit, you might have to purchase bundles of services and sites set by the opaque decisions of unaccountable for-profit firms. Imagine, for example, that you're surfing online, and someone sends you a link to a hilarious cat video. When you click on it, you get a message from your internet provider: "We are sorry, but you do not have access to Web Video Service. Would you like to add it to your plan for $9.99 a month?" While these corporations are supposed to serve the function of a public utility, they clearly exist to serve the interests of their elite shareholders and executives -- pursuing lax regulations and maximum profit rather than transparency or consumer choice.
So the question is why would any sane person would want to live under an oligarchy (corporatism)? Luckily we live in Canada that is not yet taken over by the conservatives and we still have some freedom so hopefully net neutrality will remain. But I am certain that if a Conservative gets into power in Canada say good by to net neutrality.