No one is talking about the real reason net neutrality actually matters, and the real problem that needs to be solved: ISPs are content owners/creators! The fact that Comcast owns NBC Universal gives it direct and irresistible incentive to throttle (or charge extra to carry) content created by competing creators like Netflix and Amazon, who are not ISPs and therefore in no position to strike back with retaliatory throttling/pricing. AT&T owns Time Warner so Comcast would never dare to throttle it, but again, Netflix and Amazon can't fight back against AT&T either if it chooses to throttle (or charge extra to carry) their competing content. AT&T and Comcast are in a state of detente because AT&T would never dare to throttle NBC's streaming feed while Comcast would never dare to throttle HBO's, but Netflix and Amazon are fair game for any anti-competitive discrimination by both AT&T AND Comcast.

As soon as content ownership is divested from the ISPs then they will no longer be in direct competition with content owners who access their networks, and will no longer have any incentive to throttle/charge them. Suddenly all packets will be created equal regardless of their source, and all customers can be treated equally regardless of their product. Yes, the ISPs will still have to manage their networks to provide the best possible service with traffic shaping and such, but they will be doing so ONLY based on the requirements for maintaining quality of service, without bias based on who the customer is! Once the playing field has been leveled we can feel comfortable that any charges to content creators are being fairly assessed based on actual bandwidth consumption, but until then we must assume they are unfair and retaliatory in nature due to the inherent conflict of interest built into the ISPs today.

The reason this state of affairs persists is that ISPs are not classified as the necessary infrastructure utilities they have become, and therefore are not subject to regulations that could potentially be used to split them up; this is what Wheeler was attempting to address by classifying them under Title II. I'm not saying that he was going to try to force them to divest their content-creation divisions (though I'm sure he would have loved to!), but by defining them as the utilities they are he was at least able to forbid them from discriminating against packets based on origin, and focus only on QoS. Of course that was only a half-measure because discrimination in the network is difficult to prove and hard to enforce, and the "free data" plans Wheeler was investigating are a blatant example of the ISPs trying to cheat by restricting competitors' to promote their own services/content.

There's no way the current administration would have the balls to pass a law saying ISPs can't own content and Pai clearly isn't going to do it through regulation either, so welcome to the end of the free and open Internet as we knew it!

I don't know if what's on their web site has changed since the hoax was revealed, but did these authors actually read what PublishAmerica said on it's site? What it says is (emphasis is mine):

"Now, here's a word of caution.

The vast, vast majority of SciFi and Fantasy writers are serious, honest, great artists. They have spent tons of time working on their books, just as hard as writers on any other genre. They are positive, resolute, hard-working, earnest folks, who are finding it just as hard as anyone else to break through the barrier put up by the publishing dinosaurs.

But, alas, the SciFi and Fantasy genres have also attracted some of the lesser gods, writers who erroneously believe that SciFi, because it is set in a distant future, does not require believable storylines, or that Fantasy, because it is set in conditions that have never existed, does not need believable every-day characters.

Obviously, and fortunately, there are not too many of them, but the ones who are indeed not ashamed to be seen as literary parasites and plagiarists, are usually the loudest, just like the proverbial wheel that needs the most grease."

That sounds a lot like the Catholic church's response to the recent spate of child abuse cases, where they basically said the abuses were committed by a small minority of priests, and these cases do not mean that all Catholic priests are abusive. Sounds to me like the Sci-Fi writers overreacted in a big way to a commentary about a very few authors, which actually starts out being highly complimentary to the "vast, vast majority of SciFi and Fantasy writers"!