[Theo]

According to this article, the new rules “prohibit phone and cable companies from abusing their control over broadband connections to discriminate against rival content or services, such as Internet phone calls or online video, or play favorites with Web traffic”

How is that a bad thing? Is there more to “net neutrality” than that?

[jersey117]

Is there more to “net neutrality” than that?

I'm sure there is. It's a couple thousands pages long. No one's probably even read it yet.

[kidd]

How is that a bad thing?

1) The USSC ruled that this is outside of the FCC's jurisdiction.

2) The FCC is not in the business of telling companies how to price and provide services. Generally the free market does that.

[Psycho_Bunny]

Nose. Camel. Tent.

[Steve_Seattle]

"How is that a bad thing? Is there more to “net neutrality” than that?"

What this does is establish a precedent for the federal government telling Internet providers how to do their business. The expression "net neutrality" sounds a lot like "fairness" to me, and there are many in the Obama administration who've been grousing about the influence of the Internet, how it supposedly fosters rumor and false infoprmation, and how it supposedly allows people to live in their own compartmentalized universes.

So expect "net neutrality" to morph into attempts to impose a kind of "fairness doctrine" over the Internet, in ways that can only dimly be imagined.

"Net neutrality" has been described as a solution in search of a problem, which makes me think that its supporters have a hidden agenda to do something that couldn't be stated openly and honestly. There have been practically no real-life examples of the kind of problem that this policy is intended to solve.

[Reese Hamm]

“Net neutrality” is best compared to the common carrier restrictions which telephone networks operate under. When you dial in a phone number (type in a web address), the telephone company (ISP) can't give your request a higher or lower priority than anybody else’s (911 being a possible exception).

If I'm an AT&T customer and I'm calling my mom's Verizon number, Verizon can't break up my signal or charge AT&T an extra fee or end the call to make room for more Verizon-to-Verizon calls. This is what makes the telephone network a reliable backbone service for nation-, even world-wide telecommunications.

Same thing with the internet. ISPs are still allowed to negotiate their own pricing to their customers. (i.e. If they want to offer different price levels for differing bandwidth usage, that is allowed — just like the phone company is allowed to offer deals and packages based on usage.) But once that fee is negotiated and paid, they can't tinker with the integrity of your signal based solely on the number you choose to dial.

[Windflier]

How is that a bad thing? Is there more to “net neutrality” than that?

It's the proverbial "camel's nose under the tent".

If the FCC is allowed to have the jurisdiction to do this, they can do much, much more. None of it good for America and the 1st Amendment.