There's been a lot of talk about the 'attack on net neutrality' and I wanted to talk about why I don't inherently think what is happening is an attack on the nets and in fact could be a good thing. Because this topic is both complicated and passionate I want to make something clear first. I'll debate this issue with almost anyone but I will not be responding to insults.
To understand exactly what is going first a term must be explained, a term that has been pretty much ignored from what I have read here. That term is "peering agreement". What is a peering agreement? Well to answer that we have to discuss the internet in broad detail. Broadly speaking content providers (like netflix) pay an ISP to route content (this is generally referred to upstream content) to us the consumers. We the consumers pay for down stream content. There is a lot of details in there some of which I am fully aware of and some of which I am not completely aware of. I'm not going to get into those details because I do not think they are relevant. That said there's a really really excellent series called Everyday Magic by Technomancer that really gets into the details of how the net functions. I can't recommend it enough.
So basically the internet in theory functions a bit like a tube where in content goes from the content provider to the consumer. However there are dozens of ISPs so how exactly does that work? I mean if Cox for example had to build their network to go everywhere that would take forever and be horribly expensive. It would also be replicative as all the others ISPs would have to do the same thing. During the formative days of the nets this would have killed the world wide accessibility and even national accessibility. It still would because even the biggest ISPs do not have the capital to build their networks everywhere and maintain them (never mind that such a venture could easily take centuries). The solution to this was to create peering agreements. These agreements had 2 points to them; the first being that the networks agreed to regard all traffic between the ISPs as equal (meaning that one network could and would pass it's data off to another without having to fear unequal treatment) and the second being that the ISPs would do this for free.
The first part is what "net neutrality" is about as there has long been the concern that the ISPs would eventually to gain an edge stop treating all data as equal. This concern is not unjustified. There have been for example recent attempts by ATT to get into the over the top video business and people have wondered if ATT would start "zero rating" that service. Zero rating refers to not counting certain things against a data cap. And this is just one of many examples where the ISPs either have started to encourage on network neutrality or possibly could do so.
Equally as important though is the second half, the part where these agreements function without cost. The question becomes why would the ISPs agree to this? The answer is that the ISPs agreed to do so because at the time traffic was more or less equal across their networks. In the beginning the most network intensive strain on any network would have been the same on any network (and likely would have been pictures though there are others that could probably answer that in better detail). This has slowly but exponentially changed since the launch of video on the internet. Video on the internet is much more data intensive than anything else on the internet. For quite some time this was not a huge concern as video was mostly a niche thing with clips of only a couple minutes at most on youtube (and Google has long been willing to pay to offset any inequality) or a few hours on Netflix or something similarly small scale.
The internet however has continued to grow both in reach and capacity and eventually it exploded. A lot of this started in January 2008 when netflix removed their previous limit on streaming (it used to be 1 hour for every dollar spent per month). The rest is as they say is history. Netflix took off like a rocket because of streaming. I can not help but think that people forget how different the internet was even 6 years ago. This has though put a huge strain on peering agreements precisely because video is the most intensive thing one can run though a network. This strain is proportional really to the popularity of Netflix and in effect Netflix has become a victim of its own success.
All of which leads us to the recent agreements by Netflix for a "fast lane". These agreements were in many way inevitable because of how unequal network traffic had become. They do not however break net neutrality. I can say that because data is still being treated equally the only difference is that Netflix is now paying for the difference. Much like I would add how Google has for a very very long time with youtube. Thus a "fast lane" is not intrinsically a bad thing and in a way is quite necessary for the rest of the internet to continue to function as it has.
Lastly I would like say something about Wheeler. I know that a lot of people have been more than happy to blame Obama and declare Wheeler is selling us all out. That may eventually be true but it's not true right now. For example Wheeler was instrumental recently in a ruling tightening the rules against sale alliances for ads which in turn will help smaller stations. Wheeler has also publicly stated recently his intention to strike down any law banning local/municipality ISPs. That alone would invalidate any need for additional net neutrality as one of the biggest threat to the nets comes from a lack of competition. As a scientist I at least am going to wait for the full evidence before I decide anything. That's not to say people shouldn't continue to make it clear that the nets must remain neutral either though. I guess what I am trying to say is let's make ourselves heard but let's also acknowledge things are complicated too.