Imagine for a moment that salespeople had to give a chunk of their commissions to the airports they flew out of, and you'd have an idea of why the Internet community is horrified by Internet isolationism.
Computer World has an excellent opinion article by Dan Kaminsky explaining HR 5252 for what it is; A protection racket, extortion by the telcos.
Essentially what Comcast and Verizon are saying is, "Say that is a nice site you have there, making some money are you? It would be a shame if something were to happen to it, packets get lost you know. Tell you what, for a small fee we'll keep an eye on it, make sure nothing happens."
FedEx would never suggest intentionally losing your packages. But Verizon and Comcast and a number of other broadband providers are gleefully declaring their intent to drop traffic, starting with whatever you consider most valuable. They call this "innovation.
In other sectors it is called "Racketeering".
What the broadband providers are doing is trying to use their position as intermediaries in the internet value chain to siphon off money. An equivalent situation would be the Pennsylvania Turnpike charging fees based upon the value of what was in a truck.
This is not about innovation or service it is about broadband providers trying to grab more money:
Internet isolationism is actually about holding telecommuters ransom from the companies that employ them. According to Broadband Week, the size of the U.S. telecommuting market in 2004 was 40 million people. As commutes increase and oil becomes scarcer, the ability for knowledge workers to have full access to corporate resources no matter where they happen to be is critical to the success of U.S. business. If telecommunications providers could extract just $100 more a year -- under $10 a month! -- from each of the 40 million users, that'd be $4 billion of additional revenue per year.
Would you pay a quarter to check your work e-mail from home? Would your office pay a quarter to make sure you could? Broadband providers want that quarter and have essentially stated they'll alter and degrade the network more and more until they get it. ...
The broadband providers seem to feel that even though they didn't produce a sites content (ignoring the fact that they may offer a competing site) shouldn't stop them from making a buck off of it.
There money grab has very real consequences for the rest of the world. Any internet startup or new service will have to consider the unknown cost of the broadband tariffs in there business planning. A successful site like Craig's List, YouTube could suddenly find themselves having to pay for reliable service for their broadband users. The resulting cash crunch could sink new internet startups and the innovations that have driven the development of the Internet.
The broadband money grab will degrade the value of the internet for all users not just broadband users.
The Internet is too valuable economically and democratically to hand control of it to a small group of broadband providers. Under no circumstances is the loss of net neutrality valuable to the general public.
It would be a criminal offense for the USPS, FedEx, DHL etc. to tamper with or intentionally lose you packages. It should be a criminal offense for Verizon, Comcast, AT&T to do the same.