Costs

Despite the many benefits of net neutrality, there are still many who remain against it, whether for economic or ideological reasoning.

Most ISPs, especially large ones, do not support net neutrality, as it opens them up to regulation and limits their future ability use their position as the gateway to the Internet to promote themselves and their paying customers and disadvantage their competitors. Net neutrality, ultimately, is to the benefit of the consumer, n.ot the company; otherwise, regulation would not be needed. ISPs do lose economically.

Others believe that putting any form of government regulation is a dangerous proposition with the power to stifle innovation. Rooted in distrust of the government, this viewpoint neglects to address the nature of the proposition itself–that is, to protect innovation from the machinations of ISPs, such as Comcast, which has a demonstrated record of throttling, or purposely slowing, Netflix data. While it is very possible that an over-regulated Internet could result in slowed innovation, Title II classification is not over-regulation but rather just enough to ensure that the power to communicate content is distributed equally across content creators.

There have also been concerns expressed about net neutrality giving the government control over content. This is more fear-mongering than anything else; Title II regulation didn’t cause the government to declare that certain conversations over the phone were forbidden–the goal is to protect content transmission, not censor it.

It is also possible that net neutrality could lead to slightly higher taxes–as do all beneficial government programs–but that is a small price to pay for a free and open Internet.