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Republican Lawmaker Introduces Net Neutrality Legislation (variety.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Variety: Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) introduced net neutrality legislation on Tuesday that prohibits internet providers from blocking and throttling content, but does not address whether ISPs can create so-called "fast lanes" of traffic for sites willing to pay for it. The legislation also would require that ISPs disclose their terms of service, and ensure that federal law preempts any state efforts to establish rules of the road for internet traffic. "A lot of our innovators are saying, 'Let's go with things we have agreement on, and other things can be addressed later,'" Blackburn told Variety. She said that she was "very hopeful" about the prospects for the legislation because "an open internet and preserving that open internet is what people want to see happen. Let's preserve it. Let's nail it down. Let's stop the ping-ponging from one FCC commission to another. This is something where the Congress should act." Blackburn chairs a House subcommittee on communications and technology.
Then government also shouldn't make it artificially hard, or even impossible, for other providers to offer competing services, which is what they are doing now.
Try to differentiate between local government and the federal government - it is your local government that awarded cable companies and telcos monopolies on providing service in an area to encourage them to invest in infrastructure to provide those services.
If Acme ISP is the only providers that is legally allowed to operate in your neighborhood, then government should butt in to ensure they don't abuse their government-provided artificial monopoly.
A regulation that prohibits blocking or throttling of any traffic is fine, few would object to that regulation.
Allowing Netflix to pay my isp to zero rate their traffic does nothing to speed up or slow down competitors traffic, it is purely a billing/accounting issue.
Allowing Netflix to park a caching server at my ISPs head office to provide better service to Netflix customers does nothing to speed up or slow down competitors traffic.
Depending on the implementation, allowing Netflix to pay for 'priority' service could lead to effectively throttling competitors service, but it would also throttle every other service equally as the priority service 'steals' available bandwidth from all other services.
Ken
1 whenever there is not a signed SLA in effect and as a minimum an ISP must provide not less than 75% of advertised speed/bandwidth 90% of the time or better (so if you advertise up to 20MPS speed 90% of the time all of your users should have not less than 15MPS available all the way to the next peer)
2 any bandwidth shaping or service restrictions must be part of a signed and notarized contract (copies to be on file in the local office and original STAMPED copy to be on file at the corporate office).
3 any ISP that owns directly or indirectly any content service may only promote said content as part of a "bonus"
where any future charges for said service must require an affirmative action on the part of the client to begin (any free %service% package must automatically cancel at the end of the promo period unless the client performs a clear action like checking a box on a physical bill or checking a box in an electronically presented bill)