This was a clear victory for property rights. They own the equipment; they should get to control how their property is used (in accordance with their contracts).
The problem here isn't the lack of regulation, it's the lack of competition (as other's have pointed out). No ISP can afford to be shackling their users in the face of unshackled competition.
I hope we'll have a vibrant 4G broadband market in the next 5 years.
Then I want my chunk of the property back, the amount that the taxpayers shelled out to subsidize the telcos laying down said equipment, and which Comcast and others readily accepted.
If parent means to assert or imply that taxpayers in the U.S. paid for more than a tiny fraction of the costs of laying down the copper and fiber over which residential internet service is delivered in the U.S., I would like references supporting that assertion. The argument parent probably wants is that in much or most of the U.S., local governments granted the telcos and cable companies a government-created monopoly in the local jurisdiction, in exchange for which it is reasonable for government to expect the companies to submit to certain rules, especially since the rules are essentially the same as the rules by which monopoly power in the railroad, telegraph and telephone industries were somewhat-successfully ameliorated, and especially since there exists in the fundamental architecture of the internet a bright line in the form of the boundary between the IP layer (and everything below it) and services that ride atop it that can serve as the target of network-neutrality rules, and especially since most of the architects or "technical founding fathers", many of whom are libertarians and lovers of private-property rules, BTW, of the internet support the imposition of network-neutrality rules. Reader who doubt the existence of a "bright line" at the IP layer should make sure they have read the classic paper "The End-to-end argument in system design" and the history of the internet since the publication of that paper. (In other words, the "quality of service" arguments used by the telcos etc to argue the impracticality of network-neutrality rules have always been on the losing side of debates for the first 30 or 35 years of the history of the internet, and consequently suffer from a high burden of proof.)
For these reasons, even a lover of property rights and constitutional limits on government like myself can support network neutrality after having familiarized myself with the pro-network-neutrality arguments by people with a track record for good calls in internet design and internet policy and with the history of industries with very strong networks effects, like the railroad, telegraph, telephone, cable and residential-internet-service industries.
And I have to say that the largeness of the number of opinions arrived at with almost no knowledge in this comment section is very depressing.
They don't have the usual responsibilities of property owners, though, like a requirement that you maintain sufficient control over your property to prevent it from being used for activities that are illegal or a nuisance.
In telecommunications, common carrier status was a trade: if a telecom treats their network as neutral infrastructure, not discriminating between customers or exercising control over the data that passes over it, they'll be indemnified from legal responsibility for the data that passes over it.
ISPs are attempting to get (and have largely gotten) one half of that understanding without the other half. They want the legal indemnification of common carrier status without the requirements of neutrality that it entails. (The various "safe-harbor" laws passed over the past 20 years, with no strings attached, largely give them that.)
While it is a clear "win for property rights", when their property is delivering you, the subscriber, to a "free market", they should only be able to charge you for delivery, not say "I'll let you in the free market, but you can only browse certain stores or for certain periods of time, etc."
That is ludicrous.
Could you imagine flying USAIR to a city and when getting to the airport you were under USAIR's restrictions in that city?
Sounds like a crazy analogy until you really think about it.
Wouldn't then there be a market created where you weren't locked into these restrictions?
In addition, how long will these cable monopolies last when we'll be able to erect wireless towers and get internet that way, completely superseding cable carriers?
"They own the equipment; they should get to control how their property is used (in accordance with their contracts)."
The Internet was developed with tax-payer dollars. Parts of it are now owned and maintained by various corporations, but the existence of this part of their business is based on public investment.
How is it then that select businesses then get to have exclusive control over what gets passed over certain parts of the 'Net?
I'm not a fan of centralized control nor do I want a nationalized 'Net. I would prefer as a much of a free market approach as possible. But we're well past the point were private companies are going to be inventing and building their own infrastructure, with free and open competition, and arguing for the telcos on the basis of private property or free enterprise seems disingenuous.
The problem here isn't the lack of regulation, it's the lack of competition (as other's have pointed out). No ISP can afford to be shackling their users in the face of unshackled competition.
I hope we'll have a vibrant 4G broadband market in the next 5 years.