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Congress to Debate Net Neutrality
evw writes "The NYTimes is reporting that legislation was introduced in the Senate on Tuesday in support of Net Neutrality. It is bipartisan legislation introduced by Olympia Snowe, R-Maine and Byron Dorgan, D-N. Dakota, however the article notes that Senator Snowe is one of the few Republicans that supports it. "Senior lawmakers, emboldened by the recent restrictions on AT&T and the change in control of Congress, have begun drafting legislation that would prevent high-speed Internet companies from charging content providers for priority access." This isn't the first attempt. Last year a similar amendment was blocked. However, conditions placed on AT&T in its merger with SBC have emboldened supporters of the legislation."
Congress spends almost a century enacting policies that have restricted the growth of communications that the market desires -- the FCC and a variety of laws and regulations that have mandated micro and macro-level monopolies. Instead of working to promote free enterprise, they want to enact MORE laws that restrict where the market will head based on consumer demand.
Net neutrality is fraudulent, because no one knows what the market will want tomorrow. When selection is mandated to a certain level, nothing rises above it, and little falls below that bar. Instead, you end up with an attempted "one-size fits all" scenario, which never works. It restricts long term development, new technology, and also restricts those who want to spend more for more, or spend less for less.
Net neutrality is bad idea -- just like most regulation of industry. How about revoking some of the pro-monopoly laws that exist, and allowing the market to go where the consumer wants it to? Voting with your dollars gives us cheaper goods in greater quantity. Setting regulations does the opposite.
because Elbereth knows, when I think about things that are helpful, efficient, and beneficial to everyone, the first thing that comes to mind is "US government regulations".
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Yeah I know, nothing to do with the article, but I'd prefer that congress draft legislation to ban the use of the word embolden. I also nominate incentivize and impactful.
Feel free to mod me down.
Oh and to you it's a living language people, I know, but these bastardizations can in no way improve our ability to communicate.
C'mon congress, learn from history. The second internet companies are allowed to make tiered internet is the day internet and porn dies. Do you want to be on the receiving end of THAT backlash?
This is a step to limit the internet companies from rippnig the money from my wallet, but letting AT&T regain itself from a century of being split was a mistake. The evil has respawned, and threatens my porn.
In Soviet Russia, dots slash you!
How does the idea of net neutrality affect possible quality of service efforts needed to make IPTV and VOIP solid and usable? I mean, what if an ISP actually wanted to make it easy for you to use VOIP providers for phone service. Bell South already has test IPTV service for really really special people in Atlanta, so obviously, they're looking into how to roll that out en masse. It'll be important to be able to ensure that enough bandwidth is available on the pipe for an uninterrupted IPTV signal to be feasible.
So, as long as net neutrality doesn't preclude those QoS efforts, it can work. But besides that, why is it the government's place to dictate that kind of stuff? I mean, ideally, competition in the marketplace would be the determining factor of whether a non-neutral policy of charging for priority is a workable model for data access, right? I guess there isn't a whole lot of competition among high speed internet access providers, but I'd think that between cable modems, ILEC DSL, Earthlink DSL, and satellite connections, we'd be able to see this thing shake out in the marketplace.
I don't understand Net Neutrality all that well but I'm sure I'm more knowledgeable than than any Congress Person.
Who can blame them for listening to a AT&T/Mega Ma Bell loybbyist-friend-wife?
I do have faith in the "market" and the community. Our (US) POTS have sucked for a long time but they market responded. Many people have abandoned the "government solution" because it is slow/wrong/evil/expensive/wasteful.
They're perfectly cromulent words that embiggen the language.
on those in the center to make the rational choices to help lead our country forward. Olympia Snowe is one such example, and has continually been in her years of public office.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Why don't you stop being a knee-jerk libertarian for a minute and think about things. It sounds like you would like to repeal all laws. I'm sure you'd scream bloody hell if some Govt. backed Corporation walked up and took all your land for a casino for the "Betterment of the Community". Anyone that thinks that large corporations will look out for any interests other than the large stockholders needs their head examined. Look what happened to Enron. That's the poster child for your deregulated market.
Why do people focus on this bit of what Ted Stevens said? It's just a metaphor, and as such, about the only part of his whole statement that made sense.
I'm just curious
--
Long-term effects of Bush deficits
...how does "non-net-neutrality" affect us non-Americans? Does it affect us at all? If so, then any bid to degrade the quality of service of the intertron in return for more money should be definitely shot down.
Any 'internal' US policy that could drastically affect the lives and businesses of people outside of the USA should not be passed, or even allowed to be considered, because not all of the people it affects can have a say.
Tell this to your local utilities company,they'll agree wholeheartedly because it's incredibly expensive to lay down the infrastructure to compete. Your electricity bill and water bill will go through the roof without the government smacking them on the hand. These sorts of things are natural monopolies where the cost of competing in the industry outweighs potential benefits to the consumer. There are very few cities in the US that i know of which have multiple cable companies servicing them, do you really want your only option for high speed internet access to have the freedom to determine what services (that they're not providing to you, they're just delivering) you have to pay extra to see?
You never know. Enforcing net neutrality may prevent the development of a ubiquitous high bandwidth wireless Internet which can compete with the land lines for performance and cost. When you institute a law like this you are essentially trying to hold development static at the current state of affairs.
Take for example the massive subsidies that rail gets in the UK, this certainly holds the cost down to about half of the real cost for the small minority who use it, but it also makes it extremely difficult for alternative transportation systems which are potentially superior to compete, even to get venture capital.
In short, just because you (or a politician) don't know the solution to a problem doesn't mean that someone else hasn't already found a solution and is just dying to put it into practice for you.
Deleted
I have a confession to make, I haven't been following the net neutrality issue closely at all. The extent of my understanding is that its proponents are calling for federal legislation ensuring that the private companies who do some infrastrutural magic to make the net possible, aren't allowed to discriminate or otherwise let business decisions apply to how they treat network traffic.
As I see it, this should give rise to a philosophical point of contention:
Namely, how do you reconcile libertarian free-market capitalism with legislation that at the end of the day will still be restricting the free-market actions of private companies.
To distill the point, let's put it this way:
Any good answers to this? I promise there will be many +informatives/+insightfuls in it for you...
And actually, the internet is a series of tubes, in the sense that a tube is a conduit through which things travel. It's just that the tubes are really huge right now. So you could make a case that the internet is a series of huge tubes that you use by putting your data in big trucks and sending them down the gigantic tubes.
Think, Die Hard: With a Vengeange.
Why should anyone be entitled to all you can consume bandwidth for a miniscule amount each month? We aren't getting that with electricity, and I think most people here would go ballistic if there were a serious effort to allow anyone to buy unlimited electricity for $40/month. The abuse alone would make the electrical grid unstable to say the least.
You're asking Congress to start directly regulating technical policy with how the Internet works. Once they act, they very rarely do anything to fix their mistakes. You get it wrong now, it'll permanently fuck the American section of the Internet. Stick a fork in it, it'll be done because Congress will at best make another vague, ham-handed attempt to address a technical problem most of them couldn't ever understand.
This is why I can't stand the pre-emptive regulatory arguments. There are other alternatives, such as putting pressure on ISPs that arbitrarily block access. Get a bunch of popular websites to block all of their customers. Get Google and MSN to display blacked out pages to their users. Shut off MySpace, block all outgoing email and IM protocol ports from them. Basically go two steps away from being a brownshirt on them in the private sphere until they knock it off.
This is the same Congress that puts people on anti-terror committees who think that Shiite is probably a misspelling of shit. Do you really trust them to care enough to get it right?
If I pay for my 8Mb/256k ADSL line and connect to a sever thats pays for its xxx/xxx connection, wouldn't any interference be a Denial Of Service attack?? I really don't understand it. One of my customers uses AOL for it's ISP, yet they have to pay a surcharge to email receipts to AOL customers, most others ISP's don't add surcharge business emails. They also have problems receiving emails from some other business (excluding spam that still floods thier inbox). If you pay per GB at each change of service provider, why can't you use it?
A couple of points.
1: If you spend less on cheaper goods, you have more to spend on other things, like family, friends, education, charities, whatever.
2: Things tend to get better, not just cheaper. I can call my girlfriend pretty much any time, anywhere in the world and instantly get hold of her on a mobile phone, I can see my niece on a video phone because I choose to pay for the things which matter to me, not to you.
Deleted
How the hell did 'plutoed' beat out 'embolden' for word of the year?
Technoli
I think this Network Neutrality debate is a bit misfocused. If we want to ensure the ability of people to speak their minds on the Internet we would do better to attack the near-universal practice of ISPs blocking ports and restricting the use of home servers.
THAT is where the free speech comes from: the people. The NN debate seems to be rather focused on the ability to choose between large companies that want to profit through our expression. Even though there may be more options it still represents a consolidation of content. If we want information we must get it from these providers; the only way for individuals to express themselves is to partner with some provider.
It doesn't have to be this way. If ISPs would let us use even our measly aDSL uplinks (that we pay for) to legally serve our own content people would be able to self publish. Software would be created to deal with the technical challenges that would arise, perhaps with legitimate P2P providing interesting solutions to some of these problems. In any case, that small change in policy has the potential to really change the way people view and use the Internet.
Network Neutrality proponents love to talk about a level playing field... lets level the playing field between the consumers and the providers as a whole.
The Telcos are supposed to be a transport service. They are not supposed to care what is being transported (as such federal law forgives any illegal use by users). Now because they see all this money flowing and only a portion entering their coffers they are trying to put a dam to redirect the flow. Both content providers and surfers PAY for access to the internet already. What telecoms are trying to do is hold providers hostage for ransom. Thier claim is they need to have someone else pay for the imporvements they should have been performing the last 20 years. Most Internet services I have used DO NOT provide the stated bandwidth I pay for all the time, I can reach it now and then but not very often. We all are overpaying for substandard service. If ebay (or what ever sites you use) has to pay more for internet access then so do the rest of use because it's a service we use and they get all thier money from us. I don't like the idea of government regulation getting in the mix either but they already are when dealing with the telcos so there you have it.
If closed the mind be, so then the mouth should follow.
Corporate fraud, on the other hand, comes from corporations.
Toddlers to debate particle physics.
Surely this will end well...
Gulp.
I'm not sure why but everyone on /. seems to think libertarian must be 100% free market. The libertarian view is that government should get only get involved when the free market cannot regulate itself. Last I checked, the telecoms aren't interested in playing fair. This means we need the government to get involved.
The public highway system is most definitely better than not.
The USPS is fine for most peoples' needs.
Corporations can't fund an army.
The above government controlled systems are working pretty well. There's nothing wrong with the government legislating fair play. We need net neutrality.
You don't have to make anyone into a boogieman and you don't have to prevent providers from offering premium services. You just need to make sure that people get the bandwidth they pay for.
If a content provider pays for the bandwidth to serve 10,000 people downloading at 500kb each, then 10,000 people should be able to download at that rate (assuming they have paid for a 500kb connection).
It is the responsibility of the provider to ensure that they have fat enough pipes to meet their obligations. If they want to create and sell fatter pipes on top of that, then they should be free to do so, as long as they can meet thir current obligations.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Wow, first Congress solved the spam problem, and now they're going to address net neutrality!
Why don't I feel comforted?
Actually, the middle class emerged during the middle ages as the bourgeoisie, which consisted primarily of merchants. The rise of the middle class over the last century or so has been primarily due to industrialization and mechanization, which has shifted more workers from away from production type labor and into mercantile and technical fields.
You're assertion that the whole of human history, up to recent times, has been the history of the free market is entirely false. For example, in feudal Europe and Japan you needed a lot more than a shop to be a shop keeper. You needed to be a member of a certain land-owning class, something a great deal more difficult to obtain than a business license. And where exactly would you say that slaves fit into the free market?
You also claim that Socialism and regulated economy are inventions of the past 100 years. However, Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto in 1848.
Your entire statement is nothing more than supposition and conjecture, interlaced with flat out falsehoods. The free market is far from perfect. There are plenty of areas where regulation is needed to ensure things operate smoothly (economists refer to these as externalities). However, you completely fail to understand the respective benefits and shortcomings of the free market and socialism, not to mention basic history.
Congress, don't clog the Intertubes!
I'll be honest, we're throwing science against the wall to see what sticks. -Cave Johnson
> loopholes don't exist in a free market
Sure they do. Collusion, form monopoly, remove 'free' from 'free market' and because you're a private company with apparently no accountability to the public ("how dare you pass laws restricting us!"), no one can stop you thanks to your monopoly power restricting the market.
Now, you may say that that's a cheat because they work by removing the free market, but it's why you can't avoid having ANY regulation of the market--the companies will find it in their best interests to set up their own de facto regulation and won't be accountable to anyone.
Okay, economic theory...
Producing products (or services) by a firm have two basic costs, the fixed cost, and the variable costs. The fixed costs are costs that are generally fixed over the "short term" (i.e. you can sell the factory in the long term, but in the short-term, you have to pay your property taxes). Variable costs are the costs of producing the units, and we generally look at "average variable costs," i.e. if we spend 1000 on making the units, and produced 100 units, the AVC is 10. Marginal costs are the cost of producing the last unit.
We assume that marginal costs are increasing at the interesting point of the market. i.e. when I start a farm, the first plot of land that I farm is the most productive, then I start farming less valuable land. Similarly, the early oil fields produced a lot of cheap oil, modern oil exploration is expensively looking for smaller and smaller amounts of oil. While their are increasing returns to scale initially (spreading out the fixed costs over more and more units, so average fixed costs come down), we assume that as you start pushing harder and harder to produce more (paying a premium to buy parts on the spot market, paying overtime to run a second and third shift, etc.), costs come up, and eventually we get decreasing returns to scale.
Now, we can graph the "average cost per unit" as a declining curve (increasing returns to scale) until a minimum point, then an increasing curve as the increase in marginal costs over time. For non-physical products, remember the dot-com boom, less and less qualified employees were getting hired, and salaries were going up, meaning the cost/output of these people was going up...
Now, we can plot that cost curve as the "supply curve of the firm," and collectively with its competitors as the "supply curve of the market". If we plot that against the demand curve, we can see where the intersection lies. If the firm's decreasing costs area intersects the demand curve, then one single firm will have lower costs than two firms competing will. This is called a natural monopoly. If one firm can produce at 10, but two firms producing at that level makes costs 15, then in the "free market" costs should drop to 14, and one of the firms exits the market.
Now the problem is, introducing competition to this marketplace increases costs and therefore dead weight loss, but leaving the company with the monopoly will cause them to seek monopoly rents. These are markets that tend to be regulated.
The problem is, most markets that we are interested in today are not static. AT&T had a natural monopoly, but technology changes (satellites, microwaves, etc.) created the cellular phone, alternative means of long distance than stringing wires between cities, etc., making it no longer a natural monopoly.
With cable companies, there is room for competition in limited areas. The franchise agreements normally require universal wiring. If you notice cities letting competition in, they aren't wiring areas for the poor, they are poaching customers from the wealthy areas that buy premium packages and data services. This works because the incumbent monopolist has to maintain universal services, and the competitor is able to compete in isolated submarkets. If the monopolist competed with the competitor, they would lose their excess profits in the rest of the region, so they lose some market instead.
There are natural monopolies, but it is questionable that in terms of technology monopolies, should you accept them and regulate them (the generally accepted approach to older industries), or leave the monopolies, expecting monopoly profits to bring in competition. Given the pace of technology change, it may be more reasonable to accept premium pricing in the short-term to get competition in the long term.
The Telecom Act of 1996 promised to bring in a bold new era of competition by deregulating the companies, but from 1997 - 1999 people just howled at the exploding costs of cable television. However, a
I feel dirty making this joke but wth.
"And where exactly would you say that slaves fit into the free market?"
In the produce section?
Here is what I forgot to say or summarize in my previous post:
Government Regulation that promotes monopolies is bad.
Government Regulation that promotes competition is good.
That is what real libertarianism is about. Government is a necessary evil (and I emphasize the evil part) but we need it so that non-government monopolies and despots do not enforce a will of their own the people and prevent free trade.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
No, I'm just "wrong" because you don't agree. That is a common slashdot technique.
First, Socialism was not embraced as a form of government the same year that Marx published his theory. Second, Even if it happened that same year, it is 150 years. I'm OK with rounding. Especially when we're working on a timeline of many thousands of years. The pedantry you illustrated in that criticism is like a neon sign flashing "Don't listen to me. I'm just a useless dolt." (Hey, I didn't say it. The neon sign did).
Third, in the feudal times you mention you weren't a proper citizen unless you were part of the "land owning class" or nobility. So that is a given. A free market in a country only applies to that countries citizens, no? If you could implement free markets in America, would you let just any foreign citizen walk off the boat and open up a Jamba Juice franchise?
Fouth, despite my tasteless joke in the previous post, slaves were a _product_ in the free market. And in fact they illustrate it nicely. You could buy, sell, or trade a slave whenever you want. That paints a vivid picture about exactly how unregulated that market was.
In summary, your entire statement is nothing more that supposition and conjecture, interlaced with flat out assholeness. The regulated market is far from perfect. There are plenty of areas where regulation should be eased to ensure things operate smoothly. However, you completely fail to understand the respective benefits and shortcomings of the regulated market and capitalism, not to mention basic history.
You are only half right. Corporations do their taxes exactly like you or I do them. They try to pay as little as possible. Now, just as there are loopholes for individuals, there are even more loopholes for corporations. Bad accounting is enabled by voluminous tax code filled with special cases and exceptions. It is remarkable to see the wild difference between what any Fortune 500 company reports on its taxes and what it reports to Wall Street.
There is one concept that you are missing in your analysis, and that is "natural monopoly". Unless we want fifteen different wires coming into people's homes, the telcos, power companies, and cable companies will have a natural monopoly on service to your home.
That's the point: just like in LLU, sometimes you want to regulate one thing (A), in order to create conditions for some other thing (B) to "explode", because you consider that an increase of B results in benefits for more people; i.e., it's worth the sin of regulating.
The thing is: what do we need the DOGMA for? Libertarianism, although sounds nice, don't make you rich, right? It's always sane to balance the pros and cons of every choice, instead of choose "don't regulate because regulation is evil" by default.
I don't have a sig.
Deleted
Yep. It is now officially the fault of Jeffrey Skilling, Andy Fastow, the Arthur Anderson accounting firm, and a British bank called NatWest.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
"First, Socialism was not embraced as a form of government the same year that Marx published his theory. Second, Even if it happened that same year, it is 150 years. I'm OK with rounding."
That's funny because I was under the impression that socialism was embraced as a form of government WELL BEFORE Marx every published his theory. I think the point was that Marxism is the most famous application of socialism in recent history and even IT predates the 100 year time frame you gave.
"Third, in the feudal times you mention you weren't a proper citizen unless you were part of the 'land owning class' or nobility. So that is a given. A free market in a country only applies to that countries citizens, no?"
That's a pretty interesting definition of a "free market" you've got there.
You've essentially just argued that a market where the government gets to decide who can and can't participate (since the government dictates who is and is not a citizen as well as imposing the arbitrary rule that only citizens are allowed to participate) and other people can forcibly prevent you from participating (I don't think many slaves volunteered for the position) can be considered "free".
If that's your idea of free I'd hate to see what you consider a regulated market to be.
I wish I were as sure of anything as some people are of everything
I now have a mental image of Comcast giving equal priority to all VOIP calls--but only if you're calling 911.
Oh, and if your 911 call is long-distance, then you are in trouble.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
"That's funny because I was under the impression that socialism was embraced as a form of government WELL BEFORE Marx every published his theory."
Well, then you're under the wrong impression. Before Marx published his work socialism was nothing but an idea bantered about by european scholars. Marx and Engels were the first to roll it all up into a cohesive political theory. Thus the distinction between utopian socialists and scientific socialists. There was no party aparatus or other political organization. Just dinner party talk for the European intelligentsia. In fact, it wasn't until the 1870s that any real political power was held by socialist parties.
Which is close enough to roll into the nice round number of 100 years. Deal with it. If you want to correct me to 137 years, be my guest, but it's worth pointing out that if you want to be pedantic, you ought to be _correct_.
<i>"You've essentially just argued that a market where the government gets to decide who can and can't participate (since the government dictates who is and is not a citizen as well as imposing the arbitrary rule that only citizens are allowed to participate) and other people can forcibly prevent you from participating (I don't think many slaves volunteered for the position) can be considered "free".</i>
Are you serious? Your idea of a free market is that non-citizens can hop off the boat and open a business, no questions asked? So by your measure there has never been a free market in the history of the world?
In every civilization since Greece (and probably even before that) there has been distinction in privilege of those that are citizens and those that are not. And as far as I know, removing the concept of citizenship has never even been a part of the libertarian platform?
Either you are so far off the deep end that you actually think that the concept of citizenship is too much government regulation, or you are just bullshitting because you dug yourself into a hole and feel you have to defend your (under-thought) arguments.
I think your mistaking socialism for communism. Look up the parisian communes. Also the french revolution. Both, to my mind, are expressions of socialist governments, and predate Marxist communism by a fair margin. Flame begins now
Actually, before Marx wrote his manifesto, communism and socialism were interchangeable. They meant the same thing.
"Socialism" was the preferred choice in England because "communism" sounded too much like "communion," as in holy.
So, perforce, communism predates Marx. And i think your wrong on socialism and Communism being interchangeable. I was under the impression that prior to the word coming to discribe marxist theory, communism reffered to communes - thus my reference to the paris communes. I'll freely admit I'm going from memory here tho, link me sources and I shut the hell up :)
I don't have time to prove my point to some dude who I couldn't care less about. I am sure about this, I don't really care if you are.
But I'm sure that wikipedia, infoplease, brittanica, or any other reference could shed some light on the subject for you.
I don't think it is a good idea to make laws for future problems. It can have consequences that you don't see now. I know that a few problems have already come up, like dearaol, and the Level3 and that other company fiasco, but they mostly worked themselves out. I think the answer is less laws, not more.
Notice the AC? That's because I know I'm disagreeing with most of the slashdot community. Disagreeing with the slashdot community is a sure way to lower your karma.
Early communism
You're right, that wikipedia thing is really handy.
I wish I were as sure of anything as some people are of everything
Here you go jackass:
The term "socialism" was first used in the context of early-19th century Western European social critics. In this period, socialism emerged from a diverse array of doctrines and social experiments associated primarily with British and French thinkers--particularly Robert Owen, Charles Fourier, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Louis Blanc, and Saint-Simon. These social critics saw themselves as reacting to the excesses of poverty and inequality in the period, and advocated reforms such as the egalitarian distribution of wealth and the transformation of society into small communities in which private property was to be abolished. Outlining principles for the reorganization of society along collectivist lines, Saint-Simon or Owen sought to build socialism on the foundations of planned, utopian communities.
The words socialism and communism were used almost interchangeably in the beginnings of the socialist movement, prior to the formation of communism as a distinct movement. People chose to use one or the other on the basis of perceived attitude to religion. In Europe, communism was considered to be the more atheistic of the two. In England, however, that sounded too close to communion with Catholic overtones; hence atheists preferred to call themselves socialists.[2]
Early socialists differed widely about how socialism was to be achieved; they differed sharply on key issues such as centralized versus decentralized control, the role of private property, the degree of egalitarianism, and the organization of family and community life. Moreover, while many emphasized the gradual transformation of society, most notably through the foundation of small, utopian communities, a growing number of socialists became disillusioned with the viability of this approach and instead emphasized direct political action.
Ok fine. If you want to argue that 19th century Western European social critics coined the term "socialism" and therefore by definition no form of government before that time could be correctly called a "socialist" government then go ahead, but such an argument is pedantry at it's best.
Socialism is generally defined as "A system based on public ownership of the means of production and distribution of wealth", and such forms of government were experimented with long before Karl Marx. If you want to argue that they weren't socialist because no one had coined the term socialism then there's nothing I can say to convince you otherwise.
I wish I were as sure of anything as some people are of everything
"Well, then you're under the wrong impression. Before Marx published his work socialism was nothing but an idea bantered about by european scholars"
I've already argued this point in the follow up thread from kneejerker so I won't bother to repeat it here.
"Are you serious? Your idea of a free market is that non-citizens can hop off the boat and open a business, no questions asked?"
Well in so much as a free market is defined as "One in which any individual may exchange their products or services by competitive bidding, open to all, without constraint", then yes I am making that argument. By definition a government rule that says that non-citizens are not allowed to engage in trade is a restriction on the economy which makes it less "free". Now, do I think that such a rule is a bad thing? Hell no! In fact I would argue that it is probably beneficial to society. But I'm at least grown up enough to acknowledge that a government restriction that I happen to agree with is still a government restriction.
That's what this whole discussion is about. Many opponents of Net Neutrality claim to oppose it because it is "against the notion of the free market", as if this were somehow sufficient to make it a bad thing. My point is that just because something is counter to the free market doesn't mean it's something we shouldn't consider, the same way we do with rules concerning illegal immigrants and other non-citizens.
Now that I've (hopefully) cleared that up, let me ask you a question.
Is your idea of a free market feudal Europe where everything was by default owned by the nobility, and the Monarch could hand down any arbitrary decree about who was allowed to engage in what type of business?
Is your idea of a free market early America where black people were not only prevented by law from participating in trade, but were themselves legally classified as chattel and all the benefits of their labour were automatically given to their "owner"?
If not, then perhaps you could explain what you meant by
"The success of the freemarket can be measured by look at the whole of human history prior to the 20th century."
I wish I were as sure of anything as some people are of everything
Net Neutrality (and laws gauranteeing same) are not about preventing you (or anyone else) from applying QOS so that VoIP traffic gets priority over large file downloads.
What it is about is preventing ISPs from deliberatly applying bandwidth restrictions to certain network protocols/ports, or source/destination addresses (such as "video traffic comming from google video is going to be bandwidth limited whilst video traffic from msn.com or cnn.com or trailers.mpaa.com is not")
Some ISPs already do this by e.g. limiting traffic over BitTorrent to 64kbps or 128kbps or something even though you have a 1024kbps internet link (if people are downloading stuff over BitTorrent and sucking up too much bandwidth, make them pay for what they use)
The owner of a good (including an IP network) should be allowed to decide how much to charge for the use of it.