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The thing most folks are concerned with is the ability for a network provider to request money from someone with whom they currently have no business relationship, and to penalize anyone who doesn't pay up. Here's an example:

Let's assume the that Google leases its internet connection from Bell, and that there are a large number of consumers using AT&T DSL service to access Google.

So, AT&T looks at its traffic, and realises that they are routing a lot of traffic from their customers to Google, and routing the replies back again. They send someone to Google, asking for money. Google tells AT&T that it already pays some ridiculous amount of money for its internet connection (say, $250'000 per month), and is not going to pay AT&T. Neither will it pay Comcast or Rogers, who over the last week have also asked for large amounts of money.

AT&T (and Comcast, and Rogers) go back to their HQ and tune their Quality-of-Service so that Google's traffic is slowed down significantly. Now only Bell customers can access Google at the speeds for which Google is paying 3 million dollars a year.

Now, the government is currently trying to enact legislation which will make the above possible. The supporters of the Net Neutrality movement argue that the rules should stay as they are: we've not needed explicit rules before, we shouldn't be adding them now. The opponents of the movement argue that network companies shouldn't be stopped from using Quality-of-Service in their offerings. Now, there were some important points there:

Firstly, the existing legislation is effectively in favour of Net Neutrality; it doesn't grant any privileges which aren't intrinsic to the operation of the system as a whole. There is new legislation being created which changes that, however, and that new legislation is what people are trying to get rid of, to keep the existing level playing field.

Secondly, you see the argument that Net Neutrality shouldn't be allowed because then Bell won't be able to charge more for higher bandwidth, or for better quality of service, and so on. This is a red herring, however: Net Neutrality supporters don't much care about that. We don't expect that everything will cost the same. It's perfectly acceptable to us that any consumer -- be they private or corporate -- desiring higher access speeds or better quality of service would pay extra for that. It's a service, you pay for it. That's fine. What we don't like is the way that a company like AT&T or Comcast could potentially charge money from any company whose data crosses their network at any point.

So, if an AT&T customer uses Google, they would ask Google for money. The AT&T customer is already paying them, and is getting exactly what they paid for. Google is paying their provider, and getting what they paid for. Some network providers, however, believe that data crossing their network is not being paid for, and so should be able to request reimbursement from the content providers. At which point one might well ask: What are the consumers of AT&T's home DSL service paying for, if not for their traffic to be routed across AT&T's network?

The arguments come thick & fast, but it ultimately comes down to something similar to that employed by Universal against the iPod and (successfully) the Zune: These people make money by selling something which works alongside our product. Even though we're paid for our product, we want money from the device our product works with, because without our product, the device couldn't function.

So, I hope this clears things up for you: charging your customers extra for better QoS is not a problem. Charging people who aren't your customers for QoS -- or explicitly lowering QoS for companies who don't hand you money -- is not. We're not asking the government to create rules disallowing it, we'd just like the new rules enabling that behaviour to be removed please, or at least rewritten to make it clear that this is unacceptable.

-Q

PS: In previewing this post, the following axiom occurred: A company such as Google can currently shop around to find the provider who can give them the best service at the lowest cost. Under the new rules (the 'non-net-neutral' rules), when Google picks provider A, providers B, C, and D (i.e. everyone else) could also charge them, thus removing much of the incentive for competition, and certainly removing the need for Google to shop around, since they'll have to pay all network providers, regardless of the one they actually choose to wire them up.