This makes no sense, Ron usually takes the freedom / libertarian angle on things. I'm sure there's some nefarious reason for their stand (campaign dollars?). sigh wish there was a way to 'hack' politics...
Given congress's track record, I think there are plenty of rational reasons to be wary of asking them to start telling ISPs how to run their networks. Why should we think such regulations wouldn't simply favor incumbents who are big enough to play the political game, like most of what congress passes?
If the problem with the telcos is that they're wielding publicly-granted monopoly powers, then let's address that directly. For an example alternative, I like the model where neighborhoods or municipalities own their own last mile infrastructure, giving them plenty of leverage to buy transit at competitive prices. This solution is practically illegal thanks to the legal barriers supporting the existing monopolies. Streamline the process for startups to get approval to compete and I don't doubt we'd see many innovative new models.
An argument can be made that government funding of teclos should come with certain restrictions - those restrictions must be present when the money is doled out. Government creating problems in order to solve them, is an easy way to further their involvement. Additionally, I believe the Pauls would be against the funding.
I don't want to be paying extra to access certain popular services, or to be rate-limited while accessing a service that my own ISP owns an alternative to. And that's only the tip of the iceberg.
That said, I can benefit in some areas that would no longer exist with government-enforced net neutrality. For example, here in the UK BT offers an unlimited broadband deal with 'exclusions' -- without them I suspect there would have to be bandwidth caps:
"We want to give everyone the best possible speeds at all times, so we only manage speeds on P2P (peer-to-peer) file sharing networks at peak times. All other broadband use isn't affected – and there's no limit to how much you can download." -- from the products and services page on BT.com.
Remember, there's no such thing as a natural monopoly in Paul's world, individuals are on equal footing in bargaining power against giant companies, there is no information asymmetry, any harm can be set right by a monetary settlement, and Nash equilibria always give the best outcome for all parties, and so free markets alway are best and don't need any regulation to make them actually work.
Read it yourself here.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/99193487/The-Technology-Revolution...
Even so, I think the libertarians are coming to the consensus that IP are something to be opposed. Ron Paul is just a little bit behind on the time.
Expansion of the public domain is the kind of things that any anti-IP libertarians will applause.
Why?
I happen to disagree, because internet operators tend to operate in a quasi-monopoly state in the US, but the simple freedom/libertarian angle here is against net neutrality.
If Google changes your ranking, you lose traffic and visitors just as surely as if Comcast throttles your bandwidth and people bail on your site for slowness. But no one is talking about "search neutrality" and regulating Google's rankings. And Google owns its own dedicated fiber connections, which obviously prioritize its own traffic.
Freeing up the telecommunications market is the solution here. With new protocols and new carriers, you could implement things like SPDY in hardware if carriers were free to discriminate between packet A and packet B.