American will no longer be a place of innovation. Another country will have to lead the world now
I don't know how anyone could honestly say that taking away an important consumer protection is going to help innovation, outside of innovative new billing practices by ISPs.
It's like Russ Hanneman (Mark Cuban, right?) on Silicon Valley. We can take this thing called the "radio" and put it on this new thing called the "Internet". Not as mind blowing as he believes.
"As a preliminary matter, it’s important to recognize that net neutrality principles and protections in different forms have actually been around since 2005 and even earlier. So the flourishing of the internet and everything relying on it during that time occurred under the protections. A few years ago, however, the courts struck down one form of net neutrality protections (those that had relied on Title I of the Communications Act), so then in 2015 the FCC put net neutrality protections back in place under Title II instead (they also expanded the earlier protections, e.g., to include protections against abuses related to interconnection, which had not been the subject of net neutrality protections before 2015). Now, in 2017, the FCC under Chairman Ajit Pai is proposing to repeal net neutrality protections altogether (and the courts’ earlier decisions effectively foreclose a return to net neutrality protections under Title I). So that would be entirely new territory for the internet.
Why do we think that’s bad? Well, as I explained in my own public comment in the current proceeding (https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/10717583023587/FINAL%20RIF%20Co...), we’ve seen how companies behave in the absence of net neutrality protections, specifically in the area of interconnection before it was regulated in 2015, and their unregulated conduct harmed consumers. In essence, they made a deliberate business decision to let the quality of internet access degrade, knowing that it hurt consumers, to try to squeeze revenue out of edge providers like Netflix and backbone providers like Cogent and Level 3. Plus, we know that many consumers have few ISPs to choose from, so competition isn’t as effective a check as in other markets. So I believe strong net neutrality regulations are needed to avoid harms to consumers."
Did they do that before 2015, there are cases of it, but not really that much. Providers mostly want to slowly introduce it now or at least the option to introduce it. I don't think they want to switch it quickly, but giving them this power is very dreadful.
So saying it will go back to 2015 (basically not really an issue), is looking at things a bit closed minded.
Net neutrality has never been made law, as the 2015 FCC Open Internet Order is not a law. The FCC cannot write laws. Full net neutrality, as defined here [1], has also never been mandated in the US.
The 2015 Open Internet Order mandated "net neutrality protections", not net neutrality itself.