We should do both at the same time.

I think the population would go in hysterics if the big four ISPs started asking the million of website owners to start ponying up money to ensure their site would load as fast as possible. After a big portion of users and businesses leave in protest, the policy of site "protection" would go away. If all the big ISPs did colude to do such racketeering and no laws were erected, some ISPs would be touted as neutral and money from subscribers would flock to them.

What kind of system degradation would occur for these ISPs to filter millions of websites based on throttle speeds?
web1.com full (pays $10000/mo)
web2.com 4MBps (pays $10/mo)
web3.com .25MBps (does not pay)
...
...
...
web214553421.com 12.54MBps (pays $20/mo)
web214553422.com .25MBps (does not pay)
etc.

What unseen problems would occur once laws start being made to make sure the net is "neutral". There will be no magic bullet law that would suddenly make these ISPs suddenly think "well, we did want to charge website owners/operators some money to ensure their wesite access was safe, but that law now makes unable to. guess we will just continue to charge access to our internet switches for downloading what the users want." Once laws are in place, some people will find out where the line is drawn and push it to the limit. Then it will become acceptable to go to the line, where ever that currently is. It will take more laws to refine and punish, but that cycle will not ever stop.


If there were to be laws regarding net neutrality, the simpler the better I would think. Maybe make it stand that ISPs are just charging for access to their switches to allow subscribers to download. The packets being transfered cannot be tampered with, or even analyzed. But again, once you start down that path it is a slippery slope. It is probably better to let users and influencers (like slashdot readers) decide if companies are pushing the limit and how to properly take care of it. The net has been doing well so far with that kind of influence, we just need to keep doing what WE are doing. If we hand it over to laws and lawmakers, it is out of the hands of the dynamic and intelligent and into the political and corruptible.