The doomsday "propaganda" didn't come to pass because several states and localities promptly passed their own net neutrality laws after it was deregulated at the federal level. The larger ISPs couldn't find a workable way to implement their non-neutral bullshit in some markets but not others, and the local ISPs in places with no net neutrality laws never really had enough clout to do crappy things in the first place.
If that didn't happen, and the ISPs started profiting off non-net-neutral tactics, it could have been permanently fucked.
Once someone depends on a legal source of income, if that source of income gets banned in the future, they generally get to keep that source of income "grandfathered in" if they take the issue to court.
> Once someone depends on a legal source of income, if that source of income gets banned in the future, they generally get to keep that source of income “grandfathered” forever if they take the issue to court.
That’s… not true.
Otherwise, all the people depending on selling drugs that were later banned would have been grandfathered in when the drugs were prohibited.
Even when there is a regulatory taking (that is, government regulations eliminate the value of existing property in a way that is considered a taking under the 5th amendment), the remedy is compensation for the lost value of the property, not a lifetime exemption from the regulation.
Hm. I would encourage a different, less intense angle here. It’s possible the doomsday didn’t come to pass because a lot of passionate people worked very hard to make sure we avoided it.
Possible, but is there any reason to believe so? I'm open to hear it.
The whole point was that companies like Comcast don't give a crap what we think and will engage in this anti competitive behavior unless the FCC stops them. Don't get me wrong, I have no doubt they would if it was in their financial interest.
But can we agree that it is also possible that market incentives aligned and the infographics depicting tv-bundle-like internet packages weren't actually around the corner? To me it seems like the easier explanation. The incentive could be as simple as Comcast not wanting a new monopoly court case or to start being classified as a utility in areas where they have no real competition.
Sure, maybe those bundles weren’t right around the corner. But the fight for NN probably incentivized the MBA grads to not explore those options with fervor.
And it’s very reasonable to assume that avoiding a monopoly case or being classified as a utility is enough of an incentive.
But I have a preference for putting up the defenses on all fronts when it comes to ISPs and their unlimited creative chicanery.
The null hypothesis is that market forces takes care of it. Like your airline ticket prices. The onus of proof is on you to market forces aren't enough.
Similarly, the FCC net neutrality rules allow telcos to charge any price for the service while disallowing blocking or throttling particular Internet sites or protocols. If such rules weren't indeed necessary, big telcos wouldn't be spending their money campaigning against them, would they?
