I want to voice my support of Net Neutrality and the FCC's duty to uphold it.  The Internet needs Net Neutrality if we expect it to continue to grow.

Removing net neutrality would cause a lot of harms.  The first is that new technologies will likely be dead the moment they are conceived.  ISPs will slow or block many forms of Internet traffic.  When this happens, if a new technology is thought up, it will only be able to succeed if the traffic it needs isn't already blocked or slowed by ISPs.  If the traffic is blocked, then the new technology will not work, and so it must be abandoned.

Why would ISPs block or slow traffic?  There are several reasons.  They will do it to reduce their own bandwidth usage.  They will do it to attempt to create a new sort of plan to sell to "power-internet-users" for which they can charge more money.  And they will do it so they can charge large companies more money to get their traffic through.

This has already nearly happened.  Comcast once slowed down peer-to-peer traffic in an attempt to block torrenting.  If they had been allowed to continue this, they could have extended that peer-to-peer block to additional high-bandwidth products.  This would have killed an application like Skype in its infancy, and no one would have noticed.

Additionally, the ISPs want to sell power-user packages to people who use computers often, and sell cheaper packages to people who use the computer less.  And when a new Internet technology is created, it is the power-users that will adopt it first.  The ISPs will want to make power-users purchase their expensive plan, so they may look for technologies like this and make them only work with their expensive plan.  This will create a barrier for that new technology: only a small portion of Internet users can use it.  This barrier will likely stop most new technologies from ever being broadly adopted.

One might think that free market competition will solve this issue.  But it will not.  By blocking traffic, ISPs will be able to attract the same customers for less bandwidth, and will be able to charge power-users more.  Even if customers realized this, there is no place to turn: most everyone in the US only has one choice for cable Internet.

The second problem with getting rid of Net Neutrality is that it opens the door to ISPs using their power unfairly and in a fashion which violates the free market.

There will be cases where an ISP's own products compete with a third-party product.  The ISP may then decide to simply block the third-party product, so that only their exists.  They could conceivably do this with any product that already exists on the Internet.  Want to take over search engines?  Simply block Google and Bing and make your own.  Want to take over email?  Block all existing email services and implement your own.  Some customers may be upset, but most will simply see the new search box and email and say "looks a lot like my old one" and just use it.  And those who are upset don't really have any ability to switch providers.

ISPs would also be able to price gouge any company however much they deem fit, or even form exclusive contracts so that a large company pays a lot of money in return for its competitors to be slowed or blocked from sending internet traffic.

The third problem is simply a moral matter.  People should have the freedom to send messages where we like.  Postal Companies should not be allowed to open our mail, read it, and use that to determine whether they will send that message and how fast.  Phone companies should not be allowed to listen in on our conversations and force us to pay additional fees if they're of a certain topic.  So why should Internet companies be allowed to do these things?

Add these downsides together, and removing Net Neutrality would be a distaster.  And what are the benefits of it?  There appear to be none at all.

Some suggest that cable companies have less incentive to expand their capacity because of Net Neutrality.  But the opposite should be true.  If cable companies can block traffic, they can get by on less bandwidth and can stagnate on their existing hardware for longer.

Some suggest that cable companies can reduce prices by violating net neutrality.  If this is true, it can only be because they have stopped people from using the Internet as much they would like.  And with little competition, cable companies have no incentive to offer low prices, and any dropping of prices that might occur would be temporary.  And there is no avoiding that prices would be higher for anyone who wants to use the full Internet or provide services on the Internet.

Some suggest that cable companies can offer more choice to customers without net neutrality.  But they aren't talking about implementing some special new offerings.  They're saying they'll offer restricted choices to customers, giving them less than they get today, for what will probably end up the same price.

So I would argue that there is absolutely no benefit to removing net neutrality, except to the bottom line of cable companies.  The rest of us will suffer with reduced jobs, difficulty in providing new Internet services, less technological advancement, roadblocks to competition and free market, and higher prices to get the same Internet we got before.  I think this is clear to anyone technical who looks at this issue, which is why there is so much support for keeping net neutrality around.

So I urge you to keep net neutrality on the books and enforce it.  This is the only moral course of action.