I get the impression from reading this article that the proposed legislation would require websites to pay for bandwidth. Is this true? Because if so, it's absolutely insane - it would make DDoS attacks so much more effective by directly draining money from the target.
Every website already pays for bandwidth. Net neutrality is just a debate about which ISPs they should pay. As it turns out, every ISP wants a cut when someone's traffic goes through their network.
I wish ISPs would sort this out among themselves and send a unified bill to each of their own customers, instead of every website having to sign a contract with every ISP individually. Wait a second, they already do this. It's called peering and transit.
Edit: Come to think of it, if ISPs want to be paid when website traffic comes their way, websites should also demand to be paid when DDoS attacks from ISP networks come their way. That will teach ISPs to take better care of their own networks. :)
It's not my field of expertise, but I thought network peering worked both ways. So if a website like YouTube had a lot of content on its network then peering agreements could be such that in certain cases YouTube actually makes a small amount of money from the arrangement.
