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You might configure your household router to favor VoIP traffic over your torrents and that's fine. The problem comes when ISPs, especially the large ones, do things that stifle competition. A good example would be having AT&T get away with degrading the quality of service for VoIP providers. It would be easy for them to stifle video providers. The case I picked is a very obvious one since AT&T sells telephone service and fancies itself as a net cable-tv operator. But the situation is just as bad if they or another ISP give unfair advantage to some other big player.

I agree that things are too complex for a one line law. At the end of the pipe, consumers should be given the bandwidth they pay for regardless of the data type/port. And traffic should be treated equally upstream.

The majority of people in the U.S. are getting a very poor deal on "broadband" compared to a number of other nations.

Much good came from the breakup of AT&T way back when. But through corrupt regulators the cancer has grown back.

We've got many problems. Some are the result of our rights being sold off. The U.S. public lost a huge chunk of the UHF t.v. spectrum with the digital change over. We could have had a bunch of bandwidth for free community based networking. But almost all of it has gone to the major players.

If you don't think the wprocess was corrupted, look at the lack of diversity in ownership (and lack of local ownership) of broadcast stations. Besides functioning as leeches to suck money out of local economies, the narrowing of diversity in the selecting/gathering of music and news is very unhealthy. It's gone past having large players like Clear Channel owning huge numbers of stations. Now it's venture capital groups. The role of broadcasters as trustees of the public interest (and each broadcaster has a LOCAL public to serve) is not filled well.

I agree with you to a certain extent. However, I think that there is still some scope for useful regulations of established standards. For example http(s) should not have any limits put upon it. I would be happy with just that. The FCC will always be behind the times, but they can still offer some security in what would now be clearly unjust to tamper with.

>For example http(s) should not have any limits put upon it.

Entry of specifics into statute is not helpful - a lot of work was needed to alter laws (in UK) which included prescription of snail-mailing various forms or information so that the laws could be used with fax, then with email.

Hence, the specific protocol should not be used to limit only as an example (admittedly this was probably your thinking too) - "there shall be no prejudice held against network traffic sent using end-to-end encryption regardless of origin except in the following cases ..." or some such. The specific encryption can be mentioned in headers or in associated rules or in a definitions section.

"nor enforceable by federal prosecutors"

It is not the prosecution who would enforce it. It is civil law. I would take the ISP to court if they discriminate against me, not the prosecution.

Art. 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms is one line also. It states:

"Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. this right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers."

That is very much enforceable. You can take the government to court if they do not uphold this "romantic, childlike, wishcraft-dominated thinking"

Of course, the law being the law, there will be exceptions. These exceptions however in our common law system are created on a case by case basis when the facts are so as to merit an exception. Not to mention that freedom of speech is a much bigger area than the simple matter of internet traffic. Yet, we all know where we stand in regards to what we can say.

"I would prefer an ISP which privileged web browsing and VOIP over BitTorrent and bulk email/video/software downloads." - That is a debate to be had. I would not want web browsing to be preferred over e-mail, which can be web browsing, video, or software or even BitTorrent though I do not use it.

You can not however argue, just because you preferred it, by rhetorically asking "Why make providing a service some people will prefer a federal crime?" I am sure some people would prefer contracting a serial killer, stealing rather than working, or more close to home, smoking weed to be legal.

"We've made it almost 20 years without FCC rules to protect the internet."

My point earlier was that the internet was in its infancy. There were spots to be filled, small ventures to rise to big corporations, little guys to be made giants, the whole thing was very new and chaotic, everyone fighting to get a piece of the pie. Now the ISPs are sort of established, have their market shares, and perhaps just want to secure themselves. So too with big corporations. Sure they can be thrown out easier than in the real world, but the internet reflects the real world much more today than in the past 20 years.

In my personal opinion, the FCC would not be involved in the matter. The law would give rights to citizens. The internet is not like the telly where a few people control what we see, the internet is like the streets and just as I can sue my local council if I had an accident due to their negligence, so too I should be able to sue the ISP if they discriminate against my traffic.

"It is not true that "we must assume... vast powers of control" are about to spring some trap. We can wait until actual harms are demonstrated -- if ever. We can wait even further, until such harms persist after enough time "

First, they came for the communists...

Healthy scepticism is good. I think that currently we all know the telecos want to prioritise traffic to make a lot of profit for themselves, we also know that this would create a tiered system of haves and have nots. We know that a level playing field is better. We know that traffic prioritisation would only benefit the telecos and big companies and screw the little guys. I would rather such things did not happen in the first place and the competition focused on improving the infrastructure and innovation, rather than bang their heads against iron doors.