Come on, throw your fucking weight around, jesus...
Come on, throw your fucking weight around, jesus...
One thing to consider here is the large juggernauts in the tech industry would actually benefit to this type of legislation. Let's say Comcast adds a fee to get priority access. Google, Apple, Microsoft; pretty much all of the existing and large-enough companies would likely be able to pay for it without much issue. While this would cut into their profits to some degree it makes the bar much, much higher for competition to come into their space.
If competition springs up it'll likely not grow as fast in an environment with many paying for special access so the tech companies could buy them at a likely cheaper price if they see them. Alternatively this may help kill existing competition like Spotify who has razor thin (or negative, I can't remember) margins so they wouldn't be able to compete.
Aside from a, likely very small, cut into profits there isn't much down side for any of the big tech companies. Are we sure they will want to band together?
This legislation dries up the well. No small companies to buy = no progress.
Which is perfectly fine for incumbents.
Just as they were last time: https://www.theverge.com/2014/5/7/5692578/tech-coalition-cha...
It's just that this time, it simply wasn't enough.
I'm not saying it will happen, but if the ISPs present a large enough target of themselves, there's a lot of investment dollars waiting on the sidelines to pick their pockets.